Hidden Van Gogh painting revealed

…

…

By the Delft University of Technology, Netherlands, Wednesday, July 30, 2008.
A hidden portrait under the Vincent van Gogh painting ”Patch of Grass” from 1887.

…

…

AMSTERDAM, Netherlands (AP) — A team of European scientists unveiled on Wednesday a new method for extracting images hidden under old masters’ paintings, recreating a color portrait of a woman’s face unseen since Vincent van Gogh painted over it in 1887.

For years, art historians have been using x-rays to probe artworks hidden underneath other paintings, a technique resulting in a fuzzy, black-and-white image.

But Joris Dik, a materials scientist from Delft University, and Koen Janssens, a chemist from the University of Antwerp in Belgium, combined science and art to engineer a new method of visualizing hidden paintings, using high-intensity x-rays and an intimate knowledge of old pigments.

The pair used the new approach on “Patch of Grass,” a small oil study of a field that Van Gogh painted in Paris while living with his brother Theo, who supported him.

While not exact in every detail, the image produced is a woman’s head that may be the same model Van Gogh painted in a series of portraits leading up to the 1885 masterpiece “The Potato Eaters.”

The new method will allow art historians to obtain higher quality and more detailed images underlying old masterpieces. In Van Gogh’s case, it could reveal details of works that were painted over. For other works, it could provide new insights into the studies that the artist built a painting on.

Dik and Janssens used high-intensity x-rays from a particle accelerator in Hamburg, Germany to compile a two-dimensional map of the metallic atoms on the painting beneath “Patch of Grass,” which is part of the large Van Gogh collection in the Kroller-Muller Museum in the Netherlands.

Knowing that mercury atoms were part of a red pigment and the antimony atoms were part of a yellow pigment, they were able to chart those colors in the underlying image.

“We visualized — in great detail — the nose, the eyes, according to the chemical composition.” Dik said. Scanning a roughly 7-inch square of the larger portrait took two full days.

Though his paintings are now worth millions, Van Gogh was virtually unknown during his lifetime and struggled financially before committing suicide in 1890. He often reused canvas to save money, either painting on the back or over the top of existing paintings, and experts believe roughly a third of his works hide a second painting underneath.

The painting under “Patch of Grass” adds weight to the theory that Van Gogh mailed paintings from the Netherlands to his brother Theo, and, after moving to Paris to join him, found the old works and painted over them.

Teio Meedendorp, an independent Van Gogh expert in Amsterdam, said the underlying woman was probably painted between November 1884 and March 1885, while Van Gogh was living in the Dutch village of Nuenen. In that period he painted a series of heads in what Meedendorp called “oil lamps and candlelight,” followed by the famous “Potato Eaters” of April 1885.

Both Dik and Meedendorp were excited about the prospect of using the technique to probe paintings by Van Gogh and other famous artists such as Rembrandt and Picasso.

“I was really surprised by the quality of the image, which is really promising for the future of research,” Meedendorp said.

However, scanning other paintings may be difficult since the technique requires a particle accelerator, and few exist in the world and none in the Netherlands.

Dik and Janssens’ scientific paper was published online Wednesday in the Journal of Analytical Chemistry.

…

…

…

References:

……

Read More:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/dutch_vangogh_dc

http://www.vangogh.ua.ac.be/

http://www.examiner.com/a-1512849~Scientists_recreate_hidden_Van_Gogh_portrait.html

…

…

…

Microsoft and Yahoo’s shotgun marriage

…

Jerry Yang, The Co-founder, CEO and Chief Yahoo! of Yahoo! Inc.

…

 

…

ANALYSIS
By Tim Weber
Business editor, BBC website

Is this Bill Gates’ last big throw?

Microsoft’s proposal to buy internet veteran Yahoo for a whopping $44.6bn (£22.4bn) certainly grabs the attention.

But does it make business sense?

In a way this won’t be the Microsoft founder’s problem. This summer Mr Gates will leave the company to work full-time on fighting global poverty and diseases like Aids, Malaria and TB.

But the Microsoft managers who have to make it work will be asked whether this is a case of one failing giant trying to prop up another.

The Google factor

Yahoo has been on the ropes for a long time.

Once the top dog of the internet, the company has been haemorrhaging users and money. With advertising income not anywhere near where it should be, Yahoo’s share price is stuck in the doldrums.

Last June Yahoo’s board chucked out chief executive Terry Semel and brought back co-founder Jerry Yang to recapture the firm’s dominance – to little avail.

One word explains all of Yahoo’s troubles: Google. While Yahoo invested in content to lure its audience, the search engine rival simply focused on delivering what users really wanted: good search results.

Fighting over the mobile web

Microsoft has watched Yahoo’s struggle closely, and seen the writing on the wall.

As Google has grown into a billion dollar business, it has increasingly strayed into Microsoft’s territory, competing not just for advertising revenue but rivalling core Microsoft products like email and word processing.

That alone would not be enough to persuade Microsoft to make this unsolicited offer.

Don’t forget, despite its many challenges Microsoft is still in rude health. It has one of the world’s largest research and development budgets, and key software products like Windows and Office are still licences to print money.

But Microsoft also knows that its stronghold, the PC business, is getting less and less important.

The future of today’s IT industry is the rapidly growing mobile internet space, and Google has made no secret that it is prepared to spend a lot of money to conquer this market.

Ultimately, Google and Microsoft pursue the same market, although they approach it from two different directions.

Google wants to enable its customers to organise and find the whole of human knowledge, and is providing the tools to do so.

Microsoft is a provider of tools that just happen to help users to process and use information.

Now both firms are meeting in the middle and fight for market space.

Shotgun marriage

If Yahoo agrees to the deal with Microsoft, it will be a shotgun marriage, but it will be Google holding the shotgun.

If Yahoo’s management says “yes, I do”, it will be an admission that its attempts to turn around the company have failed.

Yahoo shareholders, in turn, will not be able to believe their luck. Microsoft was probably the only company with pockets deep enough to bail them out.

For Microsoft, however, this is the deal that could break it.

Making the offer is an admission that Microsoft’s management has been scared by the success of Google.

The bid is also an acknowledgement that its numerous attempts to become a dominant internet content provider have failed.

But to make it pay, Microsoft will have to demonstrate that the combined company can offer a superior business model.

The big bet

Microsoft is promising that together with Yahoo it can offer “a competitive choice” that offers “more value… to advertisers, publishers and consumers”.

That holds true only if the combined Microsoft and Yahoo can do what they did not achieve as separate companies, namely develop search algorithms that rival those of Google.

Anything short of that would result in one of the biggest destructions of shareholder value since the disastrous merger of AOL and Time Warner at the height of the dotcom boom.

If Microsoft succeeds, it will be able to extend its hold on the PC world to all aspects of our lives.

Bill Gates and his top managers are betting an awfully large part of the company in the hope of making it a success.

…

…

References:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/7222199.stm

……

2007 is America’s deadliest year in Iraq

…

…

…

…

This year has been the most deadly for American troops in Iraq since the invasion nearly five years ago, US military figures out today show.

Deaths peaked in May when 126 American soldiers died in coalition assaults on insurgent strongholds. The second half of the year saw violence drop dramatically with the American surge of 30,000 extra troops and a freeze on activities by some militias.

As of last night in Baghdad, 21 deaths were reported in December, one more than in February 2004, the month with the lowest death toll.

The 899 American troop deaths in 2007 surpassed 2004 when 850 US soldiers were killed.

The US military deaths are dwarfed by Iraqi civilian casualties, although the fluctuations show the same pattern. It is difficult to obtain accurate figures on civilian casualties but the Associated Press said Iraqi civilian deaths peaked in May with 2,155 killed, falling to 718 in November and 710 in December.

Over the year, 18,610 Iraqis were killed. In 2006, the only other full year an AP count has been made, 13,813 civilians were killed.

The civilian toll was compiled by AP from hospital, police and military officials, as well as accounts from reporters and photographers. Insurgent deaths were not included. Other counts differ and some are much higher.

The US military commander in Iraq, General David Petraeus, yesterday used the more recent statistics to give an upbeat assessment of the security situation in Iraq.

Overall violence across the country was down roughly 60% since June, he said, and the favourable security situation would allow some US troops to return home during the coming year as responsibilities were handed over to the Iraqi army.

Petraeus also drew attention to the significance of Sunni tribal leaders transferring allegiance to the Iraqi government. In the western province of Anbar, and in Baghdad, coalition of Iraqis known as Awakening Councils or Concerned Local Citizens groups that receive US money and expertise have been joined by Sunni Arabs previously opposed to the invasion. Their coalition in Anbar province, a Sunni stronghold, now numbers 70,000 fighters.

These Sunnis are threatened by Osama bin Laden in a video released on Saturday that is the fifth message attributed to him in 2007.

Bin Laden warned Sunni Arabs who had joined the US initiatives that they had “betrayed the nation and brought disgrace and shame to their people. They will suffer in life and the afterlife.”

Along with the increase in American troops, Iraq’s lessening violence has been attributed to a freeze on activities by the Mahdi Army, the militia of radical Shia cleric Muqtada al-Sadr.

British military casualties were also higher in 2007 than 2006. According to Ministry of Defence statistics released at the end of November, 46 soldiers had died in 2007 compared with 29 the year before.

Like America, the first half of the year was worse for British forces than the second half. Of the 46 deaths in total for 2007, 29 were in the first six months of the year as opposed to 17 in the second half.

Unlike the American figures, UK military deaths in 2004 were the lowest since the beginning of British operations in Iraq, known as Operation Telic, in March 2003.

In total, 174 British personnel have died in Operation Telic.

…

References:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2007/dec/31/usa.iraq

…

…

World`s Richest Person

…

…

Bill Gates (L) , Melinda Gates (C) , Warren Buffett (R)
…

…

Warren Edward Buffett is an American investor, businessman and philanthropist. He is regarded as one of the world’s greatest stock market investors, and is the largest shareholder and CEO of Berkshire Hathaway. With an estimated net worth of around US$62 billion, he was ranked by Forbes as the richest person in the world as of February 11, 2008.

Often called the “Oracle of Omaha,” Buffett is noted for his adherence to the value investing philosophy and for his personal frugality despite his immense wealth. His 2006 annual salary was about $100,000, which is small compared to senior executive remuneration in other comparable companies, and when he spent $9.7 million of Berkshire’s funds on a business jet in 1989, he jokingly named it “The Indefensible” because of his past criticisms of such purchases by other CEOs. He lives in the same house in the central Dundee neighborhood of Omaha that he bought in 1958 for $31,500, today valued at around $700,000.

Buffett is also a noted philanthropist. In 2006, he announced a plan to give away his fortune to charity, with 83% of it going to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. In 2007, he was listed among Time’s 100 Most Influential People in The World. He also serves as a member of the board of trustees at Grinnell College.
Warren Buffett was born in Omaha, Nebraska in August of 1930 to Howard and Leila (Stahl). As the son of a local stock broker, he was likely exposed to markets at a young age. As he got older, Buffett had a few successful entrepreneurial ventures, making him consider proceeding straight into business rather than going to college. His father, however, overruled him on this.[citations needed]

One of his mentors, arguably the most influential, was Benjamin Graham. Graham’s philosophy had such an impact on Buffett that he enrolled in Columbia Business School to study directly under him. In Buffett’s own words: “I’m 15 percent Fisher and 85 percent Benjamin Graham.”

As Buffett would often say about Graham’s teachings: “The basic ideas of investing are to look at stocks as business, use the market’s fluctuations to your advantage, and seek a margin of safety. That’s what Ben Graham taught us. A hundred years from now they will still be the cornerstones of investing.”
In June 2006, Buffett gave approximately 10 million Berkshire Hathaway Class B shares to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (worth approximately USD 30.7 billion as of June 23 2006) making it the largest charitable donation in history. The foundation will receive 5% of the total donation on an annualized basis each July, beginning in 2006. Buffett will also join the board of directors of the Gates Foundation, although he does not plan to be actively involved in the foundation’s investments.

Both Warren Buffet and Bill Gates have been ardent supporters of planned parenthood, a non-profit organization that receives financial support from the Buffet and Bill and Melinda Gates foundations. Planned parenthood performs approximately 20% of all abortions in the United States. Planned Parenthood receives almost a third of its money in government grants and contracts ($336.7 million in FY 2007) with the rest coming from clinic income and donations from wealthy individuals such as Warren Buffet.

He also announced plans to contribute additional Berkshire stock valued at approximately $6.7 billion to the Susan Thompson Buffett Foundation and to other foundations headed by his three children. This is a significant shift from previous statements Buffett has made, having stated that most of his fortune would pass to his Buffett Foundation. The bulk of the estate of his wife, valued at $2.6 billion, went to that foundation when she died in 2004.

His children will not inherit a significant proportion of his wealth. These actions are consistent with statements he has made in the past indicating his opposition to the transfer of great fortunes from one generation to the next. Buffett once commented, “I want to give my kids just enough so that they would feel that they could do anything, but not so much that they would feel like doing nothing.”

The following quotation from 1988, respectively, highlights Warren Buffett’s thoughts on his wealth and why he long planned to reallocate it:

“I don’t have a problem with guilt about money. The way I see it is that my money represents an enormous number of claim checks on society. It’s like I have these little pieces of paper that I can turn into consumption. If I wanted to, I could hire 10,000 people to do nothing but paint my picture every day for the rest of my life. And the GNP would go up. But the utility of the product would be zilch, and I would be keeping those 10,000 people from doing AIDS research, or teaching, or nursing. I don’t do that though. I don’t use very many of those claim checks. There’s nothing material I want very much. And I’m going to give virtually all of those claim checks to charity when my wife and I die. (Lowe 1997:165–166)

On June 27, 2008, Zhao Danyang, a general manager at Pure Heart China Growth Investment Fund, won the 2008 5-day online “Power Lunch with Warren Buffett” charity auction on eBay with high bid of $ 2,110,100. Zhao had the right to dine with 76-year-old Buffett, at New York’s Smith & Wollensky Steakhouse, may invite up to 7 companions for the private lunch and can ask Buffett anything at all, except what he’s buying or selling. Auction proceeds benefit the San Francisco Glide Foundation. In 2007 Mohnish Pabrai dined with Buffett.

Buffett donated 512,169 Class B shares of Berkshire Hathaway Inc. stock to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (451,250 shares) and 2 charitable foundations. At $ 3,999 each, the shares are worth $ 2.05 billion.

Buffett also helped Dow Chemical to help pay for its $ 18.8bn takeover of Rohm & Haas. He thus became the single largest shareholder in the enlarged group with his Berkshire Hathaway, which provided $ 3bn, underlining his instrumental role during the current crisis in debt and equity markets.

...

References:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warren_Buffett

...

Suggestions:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_billionaires_(2008)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_billionaires_(2007)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_billionaires_(2006)

...

...

Engineer: We can use food waste to generate electricity

…

…

Dr. Joseph Adelegan has pioneered new energy sources,
including using cow waste to create cooking gas.

…

LONDON, England (CNN) — The apocalyptic tales of nature’s impending demise are as well worn as they are numerous.

But while our leaders wrangle over quotas for greenhouse emissions over banquets at lavish summits, there are remarkable individuals who are doing their small bit to prevent our planet from peril.

Take Nigerian civil engineer, Dr Joseph Adelegan for instance.

He firmly believes that the world’s future fuel demands can be met through renewable energy.

And he is using increasingly innovative methods to achieve these results.

Three years ago Adelegan won plaudits for his “Cows to Kilowatts” project, which used effluents and waste products from abattoirs to produce cooking gas.

The project was a winner of the prestigious 2005 Supporting Entrepreneurs for Environment and Development (SEED) International Awards.

It is still going strong and being used to provide cooking fuel for nearly 6000 homes in Ibadan, southern Nigeria. Adelegan tells CNN there are now plans to roll it out across most of Africa, including Zimbabwe, Kenya and Egypt.

This time he’s back with another groundbreaking idea to use waste from the cassava plant, a staple food of Nigeria, to generate electricity.

His project “Power to the Poor: Off-Grid Lighting from Cassava Waste in Nigeria,” was awarded a $250,000 grant in May from the World Bank after being named one of the best projects in Africa.

According to Adelegan, Nigeria produces over 20 percent of the world’s output of cassava, it is a $5 billion industry and provides the third largest source of carbohydrates for human food.

However, waste from cassava refining is a major public health problem in Nigeria, causing water pollution and emitting noxious greenhouse gases.

Through innovative biogas technology, zero emission bioreactors at specially constructed plants treat the cassava waste and produce biogas which drives microturbines for low cost, safe and reliable off-grid efficient lighting to thousands of rural homes.

Using this method, Adelegan says he hopes to generate 200kw daily, which will provide basic electricity for more than 2000 households initially.

He told CNN: “There will be four lighting points in their homes. We’re thinking in terms of basic lighting, they will be able to use their TV, cassette player, that sort of thing, but it will not be able to power a refrigerator.

“These people currently rely on kerosene lamps that are very bad for emissions and pollution. We also plan to provide them with low wattage lamps that use just 5kw to bring down usage.”

Through his not-for-profit organization– Global Network for Environment and Economic Development Research)– Adelegan has achieved the impressive feat of galvanizing the notoriously bureaucratic Nigerian government into action.

He told CNN that the governor of Kwara State, in northern Nigeria has donated a plot of land for the launch of the project, scheduled to start next month.

The scheme will cost $310,000 and will become profitable in little over three years, Adelegan says.

“This can never replace fossil fuels because of the huge demand we have for them, but we can help to reduce greenhouse emissions by creating alternative sources of energy,” he said.

The Ice Man Cometh

In the furthest reaches of northern India, glaciers once stretched far down the mountains, now they are all but gone as global warming takes its devastating toll.

Hardworking but impoverished farmers in the Ladakh region have watched as their sole source of fresh water slowly melts away.

But one man is taking matters into his own hands. Enter Chewang Norphel, a softly-spoken but sprightly 72-year-old has created artificial glaciers and managed to generate water and greenery in this barren landscape.

Perched high up in the remote cold deserts of the Himalayas, Norphel has mastered the art of harvesting water by using just a few hundred meters of iron pipes and stone embankments.

“Fifty to sixty years ago, we used to have huge glaciers here, the retired civil engineer, told CNN. “They have been reduced now because of global warming and now they are on high peaks.”

The idea of the ‘artificial glacier’ was born after he noticed that taps were left running in winter to stop the water from freezing in the pipes. The water then flowed into the drains surrounding the taps and froze.

“And it then occurred to me: ‘why not try and make artificial glaciers in the winter?’ So that local farmers get a real headstart when they need it most,” Norphel says.

The result was a device which traps the waters which melt down the high mountains by turning them into chunks of ice.

The largest artificial glacier Norphel has built so far is near the village of Phuktsey. About 1,000 feet (300 meters) long, 150 feet (45 meters) wide, and four feet (1 meter) deep, it supplies irrigation water to the entire village of around 700 people.

For Norphel, there are several advantages of an artificial glacier over a natural one.

Firstly, it is closer to the village and at a comparatively lower altitude. Natural glaciers, on the other hand, are located way up in the mountains and they melt slowly in summer, releasing water to the villages quite late.

Now engineers from other mountainous regions in India and Afghanistan have visited to learn his methods. One artificial glacier costs just $7,000, compared to $34,000 for a dam. Only local materials are needed, and the villagers themselves can build and maintain them.

For his efforts, Norphel has been awarded the Far Eastern Economic Review’s 1999 Gold Asian Innovation Award, twelve years after he created the first one.

However, he is frustrated at the lack of investment and funding to help modernize the design.

“The funding is not sufficient,” he said. “We are getting very little amounts and we need a lot more. I hope to get more as this year I want to make two or three more glaciers, with a new design to improve the efficiency.”

In 1996, one year after he had retired, Norphel joined the Leh Nutrition Project, a non-governmental organization, as project manager for watershed development.

“Watershed development is the only solution for Ladakh’s rural economy. Otherwise, you will have rural folk flocking the city in search of jobs. And there are not many to go around,” he says.

…

…

Reference:

http://edition.cnn.com/2008/TECH/science/07/11/biogas.nature/index.html

…