Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at the European Organisation for Nuclear Research (Cern).
Worcester locals feel the earth move
By Murray Williams
Staff Writer
An earthquake struck the Cape Winelands on Monday, causing a blaze on the slopes of the Waaihoek mountains above Worcester and concern among farmers.
The earthquake was first picked up when a farmer reported a suspected aeroplane crash on his farm, Draaihoek.
Emergency services scrambled the Air Mercy Service aircraft to the scene.
Instead of a wreck, the crew found only smoke and a fire, and called firefighters to the scene.
Meanwhile, the Council for Geoscience in Pretoria had been alerted by locals who felt the earth move.
Michelle Grobbelaar, manager of the council's seismology unit, said experts had consulted live information being fed from automated monitoring stations around the country and confirmed that the quake had been picked up in Elim, Grahamstown, East London and Sutherland.More
How about tasting your newspaper with breakfast?
Britains,The Sun has revealed a "revolutionary new printing technique," which has allowed the newspaper to print "the world's first flavoured page".
The page uses "hyrdocolloids," which allegedly "collide with each other to spread over your tastebuds". The tabloid has invited readers to lick a blank section of the paper (page 17, if you fancy trying it out) and email in their "taste test results".
Renewable feed in tariff good: Sawea
A renewable energy feed-in tariff (REFIT) would benefit the country, the SA Wind Energy Association (Sawea) says.
"REFIT would be beneficial as the penetration of renewable energy into the market largely hinges on investment security and with REFIT, the risk premium required by investors can be minimised by the high level of price security in the system," Sawea deputy chairman Mark Tanton said.
He was addressing a National Energy Regulator of SA (Nersa) hearing in Pretoria on the selection criteria for renewable energy projects under the REFIT programme.
According to Nersa, a REFIT is a mechanism to promote the deployment of renewable energy that obliges certain institutions to buy the output from qualifying renewable energy generators at pre-determined prices.
"Tariffs are high enough to cover investment costs and provide a reasonable rate of return," Tanton said.
REFIT had a strong track record as it had proved to be a success internationally, he said. More
SA Air Quality Act takes effect
Cape Town - The South African National Air Quality Act will come into full effect from April 1, the department of environmental affairs announced on Wednesday.
The act requires the national environment minister or an MEC to "identify and publish activities which result in atmospheric emissions that requires an atmospheric emission licence before they can operate", the department said in a statement.
According to a list published in the Government Gazette, such activities include mineral, metallurgical, chemical processing and certain types of waste disposal, among others.
"What this means for South Africans is that we now have a piece of air quality management legislation fully in place that is comparable to international best practice and that is specifically outcomes driven," the department said.
- SAPA
Signing boosts plans for Grahamstown wind farm
MAKANA Municipality, Rhodes University and wind energy operator InnoWind yesterday signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) indicating their support for and commitment to a proposed wind farm on the outskirts of Grahamstown.
It is envisaged that the wind power generation facility will utilise unique wind turbines to provide Grahamstown with an alternative, renewable and environmentally friendly source of electricity.
Makana municipal manager Ntombi Baart yesterday said the signing of the MoU was “significant” and expressed the municipality’s commitment to the proposed project which would benefit all in Makana.
She said the proposed Makana Winds of Change Education Trust, which would hold a 26percent stake in the wind farm company, would also be a direct benefit to the Makana community.More
Major carbon emitters commit to 2020 goal
PARIS: Seventy-five countries accounting for more than 80 percent of greenhouse gases from energy use have filed pledges to cut or limit carbon emissions by 2020, says the UN climate convention.
The promises, made under the Copenhagen Accord, are only a step towards wider action to tackle global warming, the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) says in its official report on December's world climate summit.
A total of 111 countries, plus the European Union, "have indicated their support for the accord", the UNFCCC said yesterday.
Cobbled together in the summit's crisis-ridden final hours, the Copenhagen Accord sets the goal of limiting warming to 2°C, gathering rich and poor countries in action against carbon pollution. More
Atom smasher cranked up more
Geneva - Physicists at Cern, buoyed by their ground-breaking success in creating mini-Big Bangs giving them a glimpse of the dawn of time, began on Wednesday to push closer towards the very birth of the universe.
Just a day after achieving the first megapower particle collisions at 50 per second, they set their sights on boosting that number up to 300 per second inside the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at the European Organisation for Nuclear Research (Cern).
"We are moving to ever new frontiers of science," said Cern spokesperson James Gillies as new bunches of particle beams were injected in opposite directions into the 27km oval LHC under the border between France and Switzerland near Geneva.
The aim is to increase in the coming months the flow of data on what happens when particles smash into each other at a total force of 7 million million electron volts, or 7TeV, and at a mini-fraction under the speed of light. More
Dioxin found in 8% of European food
Brussels - Illegal levels of cancer-causing dioxins showed up in 8% of food and feed samples taken in Europe between 1999 and 2008, a report from Europe's food safety agency said on Wednesday.
Animal and fish liver products had the highest dioxin levels in food while fish oil showed the strongest concentrations in animal feed, the Italy-based European Food Safety Authority (Efsa) said.
"Long-term exposure to high levels of dioxins has been shown to cause a range of effects, including cancer," Efsa said.
"Their persistence and the fact that they accumulate in the food chain, notably in animal fat, therefore continues to cause some safety concerns," it added.
The report used more than 7 000 samples collected in 21 European countries.
The high rate of illegal dioxin levels in the samples resulted partly from "targeted sampling during specific contamination episodes," Efsa said.
A lack of information on which samples resulted from targeted versus random tests made it hard to identify a clear trend in dioxin levels in food and feed, Efsa said.
Dioxins are toxic substances formed by burning - for example in waste incinerators or forest fires - and in some industrial processes.
Airborne dioxins are deposited onto plants and in soils and water, and enter the food chain when ingested by livestock and fish.
In recent years, health scares in Europe linked to dioxin contamination in food have included Italian buffalo mozzarella cheese and Irish pork.
Efsa said continuous random testing of "a sufficient number of samples" was needed to allow a more accurate assessment of the levels of dioxins in food and feed.
The Best and worst of April fools
It's the day office jokers look forward to all year round. From spaghetti harvests to semi-colon shaped African islands, we look back at the best April Fool jokes and take in this year's gags. Email adam.gabbatt@guardian.co.uk with your own tales of tomfoolery
The origin of April Fool's day is much disputed.
Some claim Chaucer's tale of a vain cock in Nun's Priest's Tale, written around 1392, inspired centuries of hoaxes.
Others suggest the reference within 1508 French poem Eloy D'Amerval to an "April Fish" (ho ho ho) is the truer source of the 1 April prank.
Examiner.com has a further 8 theories, including the calendar being changed and the notion of an April Fool being someone who mistook 1 April for 1 May, and thus launched into May Day celebrations a month early.
Whatever your theory as to the day's origin, the most famous April Fool is, according to Museum of Hoaxes, beyond doubt: the 1957 BBC Panorama piece on Switzerland's little-known spaghetti harvest.
Be sure to go and check out the flying penguins here.
Oh and do not believe everything you read! Especially today!
