Current weather
Forecast for the next days
Source: MeteoSwiss
Current weather
Forecast for the next days
Source: MeteoSwiss
To our readers: Due to exceptional circumstances, GenevaLunch will not be posting news until late afternoon Friday. Our apologies for any inconvenience.
Solar energy's latest hope? Sea-urchin shaped nanostructures from minute balls of polystyrene beads, Empa Labs, Switzerland
Bern, Switzerland (GenevaLunch.com) - Researchers at at the Empa laboratories in Thun, Switzerland have developed a new nanostructured surface for use in photovoltaic applications that could significantly change the world of solar energy, in part because they have produced “outstanding results”, according to Empa, “despite the fact that they use economically priced starting materials [that] also do not need expensive instrumentation.”
Empa is a research laboratory that is part of ETH, Zurich’s federal polytechnic institute. The results of the work by Jamil Elias and Laetitia Philippe were published in the journal Advanced Materials: the paper was published in January 2010 in the online edition and in the same month it became the most frequently downloaded article, says Empa. In April it was selected to appear on the inside front cover of the journal.
The researchers have succeeded in growing sea-urchin shaped nanostructures from minute balls of polystyrene beads using a simple electrochemical process. The spines of the sea urchin consist of zinc oxide nanowires. “The structured surface should help increasing the efficiency of photovoltaic devices,” Empa reports.
The researchers expect the surface will have excellent light scattering properties. This means it will be able to absorb significantly more sunlight and therefore be able to convert radiated energy into electricity more efficiently.
In a project supported by the Swiss Federal Office of Energy, Philippe and her research team are developing extremely thin absorbers (ETAs) for solar cells, based on these zinc oxide nanostructures.
Zurich, Switzerland (GenevaLunch.com) – Swiss is flying high again, with CHF61 million in profits for the first six months of 2010, after a dismal start to the year thanks to the Icelandic volcano that forced planes to stay on the ground. Profits were down compared to the first six months of 2009 (CHF65m), but the company’s total income, CHF2.25 billion, was up 6 percent compared to a year earlier.
The outlook for 2010 remains bright, according to Swiss chief exective CEO Harry Hohmeister. “The developments of the past few months enable us to look ahead with greater confidence than we could have mustered just a few months ago. Business has picked up, and the trend is particularly encouraging on our intercontinental routes. We’ll be investing well over half a billion francs in renewing our fleet and further developing our product this year, and will also be recruiting 500 new staff.”
Hohmeister credited Switzerland’s economic recovery, stronger than its neighbours’ in Europe, with contributing to the good results. The company noted, however, that Swiss “is suffering the effects of both a weakened euro and (above all) a substantial increase in fuel costs.”
Update 20:00 Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch.com) – Monday, a retired woman in Excenevex, near Yvoire on Lake Geneva in Haute Savoie, France, found the mummified body of a newborn in a backpack that had been left on the property of her second home, under stairs protected by a balcony.
The Lyon resident found the backpack in mid-July, reports Le Dauphine Libéré, but assumed it belonged to someone in her family and she didn’t immediately check the contents. When she and her daughter looked 26 July, they found a newborn wrapped in a towel, several days old and mummified by the heat. Police have opened an investigation.
The discovery of the newborn was eclipsed somewhat by the spectacular unearthing of newborns’ bones in northern France.
©2010 Chappatte, distributed by Globe Cartoon. More cartoons on Chappatte’s web site. Geneva-based Patrick Chappatte works for the International Herald Tribune, for Geneva newspaper Le Temps, and for NZZ am Sonntag. All cartoons reproduced with permission.
Weather forecast for holiday weekend: little rain, relatively cool
Dawn 28 July, Swiss Alps
Lausanne, Switzerland (GenevaLunch.com) - The best place to watch firework 1 August 2010 might be Lake Geneva, about the only place in the region not suffering from dryness and fireworks bans.
Canton Vaud announced Wednesday 28 July that fireworks are banned, effective immediately, although communes will be allowed to go ahead with their national day explosive festivities, under the close supervision of fire departments.
Fireworks on the lake are allowed, the canton notes.
Weekend weather for the holiday: western Switzerland should have temperatures of 12-25C through Sunday, with only small amounts of rain on Thursday and Sunday, otherwise dry and sunny to slightly overcast. For current and local weather, be sure to check GenevaLunch’s weather page, provided by the Swiss national weather bureau, MeteoSwiss.
Click on images to view larger
The only cloud in the sky at dawn Wednesday - not much rain there!
The sun rose and the moon set at nearly the same time in the Alps 28 July
WHO says over 50% population obese in 10 Pacific islands, causing host of health problems
Adolescents learn good eating habits at a youth centre in Port Vila, Vanuatu (photo: Unicef /Giacomo Pirozzi)
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch.com) – Three Pacific Island regions, Melanesia, Micronesia and Polynesia are home to 10 islands whose populations are suffering from growing health problems, with obesity at the root of the problem. Imported foods are the main culprit, says the World Health Organization (WHO) in Geneva.
WHO surveys show that in at least 10 Pacific island countries, more than 50 percent of the population is overweight. Obesity prevalence ranges from more than 30% in Fiji to a “staggering 80 percent among women in American Samoa”, a territory of the USA, says the organization.
Overweight is defined as having a body mass index (BMI) equal to or more than 25, and obesity as a BMI equal to or more than 30.
“Promotion of traditional foods has fallen by the wayside. They are unable to compete with the glamour and flashiness of imported foods,” says Dr Temo K Waqanivalu, the WHO’s technical officer for nutrition and physical activity for the South Pacific. Fewer imports and more fresh, local food, including fish and vegetables, are needed in people’s diets, he says.
Imported food in the past came mainly from Australia and New Zealand, but much of it now comes from China, Malaysia and the Philippines. These foods are often energy-dense and nutritionally poor, such as highly refined cereals and fatty meat, according to the Pacific Food Summit. Lack of food safety regulations is a problem, with old, damaged and contaminated products arriving in the market as well as products with low mineral content that are high in sugar and fat.
Sion, Switzerland (GenevaLunch.com) - A 20-year-old German who was hiking near Saas Fee Monday 26 July fell 100 metres to his death, say Valais police. He and a companion were walking on the Britannia-Plattjen path when, for reasons not yet clear, they left the path to climb higher and the youth slipped. He died at the scene. Police have opened an investigation to determine the cause of the accident.
Swiss military jets leaving streams over the Alps during maneuvers for the World Economic Forum, January 2010
Sion, Switzerland (GenevaLunch.com) – An F-18 fighter jet 7,000 metres high and performing aerial combat maneuvers startled vacationers in the Swiss Alps and residents of the Sion region Monday 26 July when it passed the speed of sound. Military authorities at the Sion air base told ats wire service that although it is uncommon for pilots to do this in the region, there is nothing special or worrisome about it, and the pilot, concentrating on maneuvers, may not even have been aware of crossing that line.
The skies in Valais were noisy with military jets in training Monday but at around 10:20 a large boom that sounded like an explosion occurred, rattling windows.
Zurich, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - Switzerland’s UBS bank reported second quarter net profits of CHF2.01 billion Tuesday 27 July, higher than forecast and widely seen as a sign of the bank’s recovering health. Earnings were CHF9.19b.
UBS was bailed out by the Swiss federal government in late 2008, at the start of the global economic crisis. It was given, along with the country’s other large bank, Credit Suisse, a good report by federal financial regulators Friday 25 July when they published Swiss bank stress test results. Client outflows, which began to increase in 2008, were at their lowest level, CHF5 billion, in nearly two years. Chairman Otto Gruebel, brought in to turn the bank around after its bailout, says he is confident the client outflows can be stopped this year.
Shares in the bank rose strongly, by more than 8 percent, on the news Tuesday morning.
Links to other sites: Financial Times, Reuters, UBS
International sports, tennis: Swiss star takes Annacone for trial period
Basel, Switzerland (GenevaLunch.com) – Swiss tennis star Roger Federer will work with US coach Paul Annacone on a trial basis, Federer announced Tuesday 27 July. Annacone, who has coached Pete Sampras and Tim Henman in the past, is currently head coach of Britain’s Lawn Tennis Association and Britain’s Davis Cup team, but in May he announced he would be leaving both in November 2010.
Federer is now in third place in the ATP rankings, behind Rafael Nadal and Novak Djokovic, the first time since 2003 that the Swiss has not been one of the world’s top two tennis players, officially.
Annacone is a former ATP tour player who made the Wimbledon semi-finals in 1984, but whose winning record was stronger for doubles than singles.
Links to other sites: ATP rankings, Swissinfo, Times, UK, Wikipedia
Dry weather: Jura bans fireworks except official ones, other cantons to review
Swiss national day (1 August) official fireworks will still go on
Jura, Switzerland (GenevaLunch.com) – Canton Jura is the latest Swiss state to ban forest fires because of continuing dry weather, but it has banned private fireworks for the national day, 1 August, it announced Monday 26 July.
Fribourg, Geneva, Vaud and Valais also have forest fire bans but will be reviewing this week whether conditions will allow private fireworks.
Recent rains have eased the dryness problem somewhat, but several days of rain are needed to bring conditions back to a more secure level.
A large part of southern and western Switzerland remains on yellow alert, for a high level of danger from forest fires (map, Meteo Swiss).
Particle tracks fly out from the heart of Cern's Alice experiment from one the first LHC collisions at a total energy of 7 TeV
Update 27 July Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch.com) – Cern’s LHC (Large Hadron Collider) is starring at ICHEP, the world’s largest international conference on particle physics, which opens in Paris Monday 26 July. More than 1,00o scientists are attending.
Four spokespersons for the LHC’s four main experiments, Alice, Atlas, CMS and LHCb, are presenting data at the conference today. The data is measurements from the first three months of successful LHC operation at 3.5 TeV per beam, an energy three and a half times higher than previously achieved at a particle accelerator.
The measurements to date are for “the particles that lie at the heart of the Standard Model, the package that contains current understanding of the particles of matter and the forces that act between them,” Cern notes in a press release. “This is an essential step before moving on to make discoveries. Among the billions of collisions already recorded are some that contain ‘candidates’ for the top quark, for the first time at a European laboratory.”
RSR public radio and Couleur 3 provide podcasts and downloads of several of the concerts
Crosby Stills & Nash were among the big hits at Paleo (photo: © 2010 Paléo / Boris Soula)
Nyon, Switzerland (GenevaLunch.com) – And the bands played on! The Paleo Festival closed Sunday, yet again, on a happy note for its organizers, a sold-out event, no major crises, and generally happy concert-goers. The only damp notes were problems with parking lot closures when heavy rains fell at the end of last week, just as the five-day event reached its peak, but given the encouragement the green festival gives to using trains and buses to reach it, this might have a positive result, prompting more people to reconsider driving in 2011.
Many of the concerts are available online from RSR and Couleur 3, depending on rights negotiations with the performing artists.
Big hits for 2010 were old favourites, starting with Crosby Stills & Nash, Johnny Clegg and Iggy Pop, but the Tribune de Geneve argues that hip-hop was the real star this year, performing in every corner of the festival.
The mix of music pulled in 230,000 fans, according to Paleo.
Paleo in 2011: mark your calendars now, 19-24 July.
(video) Phnom Penh, Cambodia (GenevaLunch.com, agencies) – Kaing Guek Eav, alias Duch, was sentenced Monday 26 July to 35 years in prison with five years off for time served. Duch, age 67, was the man who ran Cambodia’s notorious S-21 prison where some 15,000 people died under the Khmer Rouge regime that saw one-quarter of the country’s population killed. He was found guilty by a United Nations-backed war crimes tribunal for crimes against humanity and grave breaches of the Geneva Convention.
“During the course of his 77-day trial [in 2009], he admitted to heading Toul Sleng, a top secret detention center for the worst “enemies” of the state,” reports the New Zealand Herald. CNN cites the court spokesperson as saying more than 10 million Cambodians were expected to watch the court’s decision on television Monday.
Comrade Duch, as he was known under the Communist Khmer Rouge regime, was a mathematics teacher before he became active in the Communist party. He is the only former Khmer Rouge leader who has pleaded guilty to serious charges, and he is the first to have stood trial. He has angered many Cambodians, however, by asking for an early release from prison, saying that although he was responsible for his actions, he was only following orders.
The Geneva Conventions signed before 1949 are a series of treaties that protect military personnel and prisoners of war. The fourth convention, signed in 1949, protects the civilian population. The Geneva Conventions as a whole “contain the most important rules limiting the barbarity of war”, according to Geneva-based International Red Cross (ICRC), and they are at the core of international humanitarian law.
Links to other sites: Case information sheet from the courts of Cambodia, Guardian on French scholar François Bizot’s imprisonment by Khmer Rouge, ICRC (International Committee of the Red Cross) on the Geneva Conventions
International sports, Tour de France cycling
Paris, France (GenevaLunch) - Spanish rider Alberto Contador won his third Tour de France, 25 July, despite not taking a single stage win in the 2010 race. Andy Schleck, from Luxemburg, was 39 seconds back in second place.
Mark Cavendish confirmed his status as the fastest man on a bike with a devastating sprint finish but it was not enough to take the green jersey.
The Swiss Fabien Cancellara, won the prologue and kept the yellow shirt until the 7th stage. Canellara also won the 19th stage between Bordeux and Pauillac.
Video: How the Tour went down
Links to other sites: Le Tour de France, Telegraph