Water may seem to be the most abundant resource available on Earth. But the reality is that 97 percent of all water is saltwater, 2 percent is held in snow and icebergs and only 1 percent is freshwater. More and more demands are being placed on this 1 percent of the world’s water that is available for human use. The world’s population is growing at such a rate that by 2025, the United Nations predicts that more than 2.7 billion people will face severe shortages of fresh water.

An estimated one-third of the world’s population already lives in areas with water shortages. In developing countries, this translates into 1.1 billion people lacking access to safe drinking water. In developed countries shortages are being felt through restrictions on water use.

Tooling Up for Hydroponics

The water shortage is becoming an increasingly worrying crisis. As the situation grows ever more acute, it is feared that water will once again become a cause of disputes and that there could even be wars over water resources.

Even before the State of Israel was founded, its leaders realized that in order to ensure the existence of a developed country on the border of a desert region, it had to have a developed and state-of-the art water infrastructure. It was with this in mind that Mekorot, Israel’s national water carrier, was established 70 years ago.

Over the years, a nation-wide water carrying system evolved, using every water resource available: surface water, ground water, brackish water, and sea water. The skill in treating and upgrading different types of water made Mekorot a key factor in Israel’s water industry and, more recently, also in water conservation worldwide.

But treating fresh water is not enough. Mekorot has developed a method for treating and upgrading waste water that has helped establish agriculture, and today 70% of the water for agricultural purposes is recycled from effluent.

The outlying Arava region is not connected to the national water carrier pipeline, nor to the waste waster delivery system. Consequently, Mekorot carried out a deep-water drill at a site in the Arava region down to a depth of 1 to 1.5 kilometers, which produced ground water that was unfit for drinking or agricultural purposes. Using local desalination and water treatment facilities, this water was upgraded to the highest quality, making it suitable for household use and agriculture. The fact that agriculture in the Arava is now thriving, with most of its produce earmarked for export, is proof of this.

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Tooling Up for Hydroponics

As the global economy continues to evolve, scientific discovery, technological invention and commercial innovation are fast becoming the hallmarks of our socioeconomic well-being. Although, transforming science into technology can be fraught with intimidating doses of hard work and hard thinking, the hard truth of the matter is that bringing technology to the marketplace is just as essential to wringing out social benefits from science and technology as the discoveries and inventions were in the first place. However, in contrast to the advanced knowledge it takes to develop new products, it takes age-old personality traits such as vision, leadership, self-confidence and intestinal fortitude to bring bright ideas to the light of day. Those among us who do the things that bring the benefits of technology to people are that separate breed of individuals we call entrepreneurs.

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A wholesale open-access license for a major chunk of the 700 MHz band would dramatically expand the number of competitors offering mobile voice and Internet access. This would be a huge public policy breakthrough for American broadband. Like the Internet, wireless would have a sandbox for innovation. Small entrepreneurs with novel ideas could bring products to market and get direct consumer feedback. No more groveling to the marketing departments of the cellular carriers for an opening. If you have a good idea, build it. “Let the market decide” would mean let consumers, not some telco executive, decide.
Four Principles

To achieve this vision of a healthy, competitive wireless industry, open access must include four basic principles: open devices, open services, open applications, and—crucially—open networks. We must open a portion of the 700 MHz band to a wholesale operator with the incentive to sell affordable access to this valuable spectrum to all third-party service providers.

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They’d rather strike out on their own. In fact, nearly 71 percent of the 1,474 youth who participated in a 2006 Junior Achievement survey said they wanted to be self-employed sometime in their lives—up by 6.9 percentage points since 2004. Credit the opportunities that come from growing up in a technological society, experts said. That’s not to say there haven’t been downtrends throughout the years.

Reasons for the trend: About 3.9 percent of adults ages 20-34 started a business in 2005 and 2006, according to the Missouri-based Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation’s 2006 Index of Entrepreneurial Activity, up slightly from the 3.7 percent who took the plunge in 2000-2001—but down from 4.3 percent in 1996-1997.

Not many other national studies track the age of entrepreneurs, but experts agree that an increasing number of startups have young people at the helm.

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Schools are adding more courses and other activities to cultivate the business ideas of budding workers who are increasingly bypassing corporate jobs for their own startups.

The move to embrace this academic discipline comes as today’s college students see the business world differently than past generations. With unprecedented access to technology, students can start a business with much less capital and manpower than ever before. And after watching their parents lose jobs, pensions and other benefits over the years, many students see going out on their own as offering better opportunities and flexibility – despite the risks.

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Media reports on boomers’ march into their senior years carry a consistent theme: “Guess what, they don’t know they’re old.” Entrepreneur Magazine cites a survey from the Boomer Project (www.boomerproject.com) that found that the average 54-year-old considered himself 41. Further testing showed a psychological age of 39. Rather than believe our years are advancing, we boomers simply redefine: 60 is the new 30.

Boomers are changing old age. It’s what we do. The baby boom generation—those born during the post–World War II years 1946 through 1964—has a track record of rebellion that has caused startling cultural and social transformations, including rock’n’roll, the peace movement, civil rights, and agendas we can be less proud of. Consider “Greed is good,” a phrase that caught hold when boomers entered their peak earning years.

A Merrill Lynch survey reveals that most boomers envision working throughout retirement. It adds a new wrinkle to retirement planning, which may be more aptly described as “Next Career Planning.” Merrill Lynch’s research identifies the new retirement as “cyclical”—a blend of work that can take boomers in and out of new careers balanced with free time, continued learning, volunteerism, and travel.

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The strategy gained prominence last year when Muhammad Yunus, a Bangladeshi economist and banker who pioneered the global microfinance movement, was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

Grameen Bank, which Yunus founded in Dhaka, Bangladesh, in the mid 1970s, offers lines of credit as low as $9 for beggars to buy bread, candy, toys and other goods to sell on the street. It has also broken social taboos by offering small-business loans to women in Muslim countries to buy cell phones, sewing machines, and weaving materials. Today, the bank provides loans to nearly 7 million people — 97 percent of whom are women — with some 2,226 local branches throughout the country. It claims a 98 percent repayment rate.

“By defining ‘entrepreneur’ in a broader way we can change the character of capitalism radically, and solve many of the unresolved social and economic problems within the scope of the free market,” Yunus said at his Nobel Prize acceptance speech in December.

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The Energy for Sustainability program supports fundamental research and education in energy production, conversion, and storage and is focused on energy sources that are environmentally friendly and renewable.

Sources of sustainable energy include sunlight, wind, and biomass. Hydrogen and alcohols are potential energy carriers that can be derived from renewable sources. Research to produce and store hydrogen for use in direct combustion or in fuel cells is supported by the program. Potential sources of hydrogen include conversion from biomass and from electrolysis, photolysis or thermolysis of water. Biomass is available from agricultural crops and residues, forest products, aquatic plants, and municipal wastes. In addition to hydrogen, biomass can be a source of liquid, solid and gaseous fuels including biofuels such as ethanol. Fuel cells have the potential to convert fuels such as hydrogen and alcohols to electricity at high efficiencies and should play an increasing role in energy conversion. Critical components of low temperature fuel cells requiring additional research include catalysts, membranes, and electrolytes.

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Too much energy is wasted by converting it. We could cut energy use by as much as 30% in 10 years by removing some links from the energy chain.

Sometimes the best solutions to the energy crisis are the simplest, and often they’re right in front of our eyes. Consider the use of solar power to light a home. Even the most advanced photovoltaic solar panels convert just 20% of the available sunlight to electricity. The resulting direct current (DC) then must undergo conversion to alternating current (AC), losing another 20%. If that AC goes on to light an incandescent bulb, which is only 5% efficient, you end up using a fraction of 1% of the original sunlight as room light. (Even switching to compact florescent bulbs, which are 15% efficient, makes little difference in overall energy efficiency.) But if you were to simply leave sunlight as light—via proper skylights, window orientation, and louvers—nearly 80% of the light ends up as illumination.

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