Flight Plan ~ V Formations Bird Dynamics!

CSMonitor's Sudeshna Chowdhury shares Why do birds fly in V? highlighting research by Royal Veterinary College, University of London biologists Steven Portugal and James Usherwood on bird flight dynamics! Check out Nature video...

Troubled Waters ~ Future H2O Stress Worldmap

CSMonitor cover story Troubled Waters by William Wheeler asks Global water crisis: too little, too much, or lack of a plan?

"The global water crisis -- caused by drought, flood, and climate change -- is less about supply than it is about recognizing water's true value, using it efficiently, and planning for a different future, say experts. [...] Water is a part of everything we do: It feeds crops, powers cities, cools computer servers, and is key to the manufacturing of everything from clothes to cars. The billion more people expected on the planet by 2025 will increase water demand for all of those functions. And just to feed those people, water withdrawals for agriculture are expected to increase by about half. But it's not only about the additional mouths to feed; it's also the growth of new appetites. Much of the growth in demand will emerge from the swelling sprawl of bustling, slum-pocked metropolises across the developing world. For the first time in history, the share of the global population living in cities recently surpassed 50 percent -- on its way to 75 percent expected by 2050."

See here worldmap of today's and projected water stresses...

Reckless Development? ~ Train Wreck China...

Tom Lasseter writes in the CSMonitor that After China train crash, it's not just rail safety that worries Chinese...

"China's bullet train was supposed to signal its arrival as a high-tech leader. Instead, a crash that killed at least 40 people has made it a lightning rod for anger at the human cost of recklessly fast development. [...] More than anything, the aftermath of the high-speed train wreck last month in Zhejiang province has come to underline the fact that for all of China's enormous economic growth, the nation is still overseen by an opaque, authoritarian regime frequently plagued by corruption. It's a system that relies in large part on the promise of material progress for its people, with the threat of heavy-handed tactics for those who step out of line. During the past nine days, that approach has seemed especially off-balance. In trying to explain, or not explain, the events that caused one train to rear-end another on July 23, officials ordered the media to censor reports on the accident, made announcements that strained credulity and then blamed a confusing jumble of factors including lightning, badly designed equipment and poorly trained workers. Interviews with passengers on the trip between Beijing and Shanghai over the weekend suggested that in addition to worries about rail safety, the incident has for some reinforced a sense of unease with the pace of the nation's development. No one spoke about a seismic shift that would threaten the government's hold on power, but most obviously had spent time thinking about the implications of the wreck. "I think it's an issue of national credibility..."

Images of Chinese high-speed train wreck from the Guardian articles... P.S. Read also Yasheng Huang's piece on China's Growth.

Rising Middle ~ BRICs+Plus Emerging Affluence

Christa Case Bryant writes in a CSMonitor FutureFocus piece about the Surging BRIC middle classes are eclipsing global poverty...

"The world will, for the first time in history, move from being mostly poor to mostly middle-class by 2022, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development projects. Asians, by some predictions, could constitute as much as two-thirds of the global middle class, shifting the balance of economic power from West to East. [...] "I would expect that as the global middle class gets transformed by the entrance of hundreds of millions of Indian, Brazilian, and Chinese families, the concept of what we see as the middle-class values may change," says Sonalde Desai, a sociologist with the National Council of Applied Economic Research in Delhi (NCAER). "Historically, sociologists have defined 'middle class' as those with salaries…. I think 'middle class' is very much a state of mind." [...] That presents opportunities both for local entrepreneurs and multinationals -- and could change the products available to the West. [...] "As companies have begun to sell into emerging markets, they've had to innovate – both multinationals and local companies. They've learned to do things at a much better value-to-price ratio," says Ms. Stephenson, coauthor of a 2010 McKinsey report on emerging-market growth. "Now, what you're starting to see is a lot of that innovation flow back. These new low-cost innovations are beginning to disrupt Western markets. The emerging market story is really a global story."

Many compelling lessons to be learned here!