Researchers at Nottingham University have managed to make banana peels into usable fuel, ridding the need to gather firewood for cooking, boiling water and heating.

Since there is an estimated 10 tons of waste (made up of skins, leaves and stems) for every 1 ton of bananas eaten, this new low-tech briquette can be extremely beneficial not just economically but also for the environment.

According to the BBC report, it was on a visit to Rwanda that Joel Chaney, a PhD student from the University of Nottingham came up with the idea of turning banana waste into an efficient fuel source.

He first mashes a pile of rotting skins and leaves. This pulp is then mixed with saw dust, compressed and dried to create briquettes that ignite readily and throw out a steady heat, ideal for cooking.
“The banana skins bind other materials together really well, they act like glue,” says Mr Chaney.

Best of all, no machines are needed to make these banana briquettes which means that the locals can easily make them.
This could be a great boon indeed for third world countries, especially the so called “banana republics”.

To learn more about the report, click here.

Being avid golfers, it’s impossible to keep our minds off of this year’s US Open held at Bethpage Black, even as the players are kept from the green due to heavy rain.
Photo by Andrew Redington

People who don’t play golf always ask us why anyone would bother picking up the sport. Is it a status thing? Is it just for business networking? Perhaps for some people these are the reasons, for us they are entirely different.

Golf, to us, is an incredible sport because it has a built in equalizer called the “handicap” which allows people of differing abilities to play against one another evenly. No other sport has such a thing. Secondly, the game is always different, no matter how good you get at it. While a seasoned player can expect to play a decent game every time he or she picks up a tennis, badminton, squash racket or kick a soccer ball, with golf, the terrain, the weather, and especially your mental state, determine how well or how badly you’re going to do that day. You can be very terrible and you can be very good, it’s never a sure thing, just like business.

While other sports strive for predictability (well oiled lanes, same ball, no wind, etc.), golf is always better when it is new and you have to strategize every hole in your mind when you can’t see the pin or what lies beyond the initial turn. Which club do you use? Just because you can hit 180 meters doesn’t mean you should given the strong winds that day, or rain, or even just how you’re feeling. Conversely, you could be doing well, better than ever before, so maybe there’s no better time to take the risk. Again, a lot like business.

And don’t just take it from us either, as BT Frontline’s CEO, Lim Chin Hu, so eloquently put it, “In both golf and business, you need to have the right vision, strategy and the ability to execute. In golf, you envision where your ball is going to end up, and develop a course strategy. But just like in business, the execution phase - where the clubhead strikes the ball- counts the most. In golf, you can get into difficult situations- in the rough and having to take a 200 meter shot across the water. Do you take the risk and hit it with a wood or do you use an iron and lay up? There are similar decisions in business, you have to take risks, but only calculated ones where you have a fair chance of winning.”

Standing majestically in the heart of Manila is the National Museum of the Philippines (old Congress building) designed by renowned American architect Daniel Burnham in 1918.

Inside you will find a vast array of historic and cultural artefacts that predate the arrival of the Spanish on Philippine shores. Interestingly, the Chinese and Muslim influences are distinct and can be seen clearly in the primitive tools and designs used by the local Malayan tribes.

The most renowned collection however still remains that of the Spanish era when galleons plied the Manila-Acapulco, Mexico route. This sits in the “sister museum” National Museum of the Filipino People. Given the fact that the Philippines lies along a typhoon belt, many galleons were sunk and entire cargoes of Chinese porcelain, gold, jewelry and weapons remain hidden in the depths of the ocean. Another problem was the fact the route was well known to pirates and the riches of the Pacific attracted raiders intent on plundering Spanish ships and settlement.

One of these ships, the “San Diego”, was hastily made into a warship when the Dutch launched their attack against the Spanish in 1600. The galleon, too heavy to fight with its full cargo load, sank approximately 900 meters northwest of Fortune Island (Nasugbu, Batangas) and disappeared for nearly 400 years until French archaeologist Franck Goddio found it in 1992.

To Europeans and Americans, the goods from the “San Diego” clearly show the links that had once prevailed between the Orient, the Old World and the New and thus the exhibit has travelled extensively overseas.

In this photograph by Emory Kristof, a diver measures the sunken remains of the San Diego. It was shot on assignment for, but not published in, “San Diego: An Account of Adventure, Deceit, and Intrigue,” July 1994, National Geographic magazine.

Make sure to pay the museums a visit if you happen to be in Manila.