Conversations on Vietnam Development
The English language’s most successful export is a joke
Here’s a quiz: let’s say you’re setting off to see the world and aside from please and thank you in a smattering of languages you pretty much only know English. What is the one word that most of the people you encounter will also know?
That’s right. It’s OK.
Cool cool cool.
Yep. It’s very probably the most widely recognized word in the world. And its origin story is literally a joke.
Australian smarts and Chinese industrial might made solar power the cheapest power humanity has seen – and no one saw it coming
Royce Kurmelovs@RoyceRk2Sat 24 Apr 2021 21.00 BST
Tiếp tục đọc “‘Insanely cheap energy’: how solar power continues to shock the world”
The United States Trade Representative (USTR) office has blacklisted Vietnam’s well-known markets in its 2020 review, for reasons of counterfeiting goods. Dong Xuan Market in Hanoi and Ben Thanh Market in Ho Chi Minh City have been named on the USTR blacklist.
Markets blacklisted for selling counterfeit goods
Blatant counterfeiting
Ben Thanh Market, Dong Xuan Market and the e-commerce platform Shopee are on the USTR blacklist for selling counterfeited goods of unknown origin. For many years now, e-commerce platforms and online shops in Vietnam have long been criticized for selling counterfeited goods and pirated brand names. An online shopper looking to buy a Rolex watch on e-commerce platform Shopee can choose from many suppliers of the world-famous Swiss brand. Prices could range from just VND 250,000 to about VND 2 mn for a watch. It has never been so simple and easy to buy products of famous brands.
Tiếp tục đọc “Vietnam – Markets blacklisted for selling counterfeit goods”
Counterfeit and poor-quality goods are the biggest obstacle that customers face on online shopping platforms.
Mr. Bao, a customer in Ho Chi Minh City, wanted to buy 2XU brand jogging pants. He ordered the pants on a popular e-commerce site for VND350,000 and after receiving the product, he found out that it was fake.
This sports pants advertised on an e-commerce site is cheaper than similar products sold at official stores. (Photo: H.D)
Tiếp tục đọc “Fake and low-quality goods: the biggest problem for e-commerce platforms”
America invented silicon solar cells in the 1950s. It spent more on solar R&D than any other country in the 1980s. It lost its technological advantage anyway.
American researchers experimented with unconventional solar-energy designs, such as this thermoelectric panel. (Universal History Archive / Universal Images Group / Getty)
You wouldn’t know it today, but the silicon photovoltaic solar cell—the standard, black-and-copper solar panel you can find on suburban rooftops and solar farms—was born and raised in America.
The technology was invented here. In 1954, three American engineers at Bell Labs discovered that electrons flow freely through silicon wafers when they are exposed to sunlight.
It was deployed here. In 1958, the U.S. Navy bolted solar panels to Vanguard 1, the second American satellite in space.
And for a time, it was even made here. In the 1960s and ’70s, American companies dominated the global solar market and registered most solar patents. As late as 1978, American firms commanded 95 percent of the global solar market, Tiếp tục đọc “Why the U.S. Doesn’t Dominate the Solar-Panel Industry Anymore”
By Laura H. Kahn | June 8, 2021
Researchers wearing positive pressure personnel suits at a US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases biosafety level 4 lab. Credit: National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.
Our luck has run out. The worst pandemic in a century has killed over 3.7 million people globally. In the United States, almost 600,000 have lost their lives to COVID-19. Societies around the world have been, and many are continuing to be, devastated.
The debate regarding the origins of the virus continues with growing circumstantial evidence that the virus leaked from a laboratory. Knowing the origins of SARS-CoV-2 is important if we want to prevent this catastrophe from happening again.
edutopia.org
After a challenging year of pandemic schooling, these activities help students reflect on what they’ve learned and look forward to what’s coming next.By Hoa P. NguyenJune 4, 2021
Was this school year “The Bestest, Most Funnest and Absolutely Wonderfulest School Year Ever” or “The Baddest, Most Awfulest, Absolutely Worstest School Year Ever?” Fourth graders at Nebo Elementary School in North Carolina are still deciding, says their reading teacher, Lori Brenneise.
Tasked with writing a five-paragraph, humorous essay about the epic last year, Brenneise’s students have come up with different reasons why they picked one answer over the other. For some, “every day is pajamas day” or “noisily slurping cereal through the first block, sleeping through second, and noisily slurping ramen through third” were the highlights of their year. For others, the year brought challenges like messing up a class recording by unmuting and shouting “CHICKEN WINGS!” or getting kicked out of Google Meet and having unsupervised time. The whole class may never forget when they all unmuted at once, screaming and scaring a student who was sleeping through a lesson.
Tiếp tục đọc “Class Reflection Activities to Close Out a Tough Year”
This Working Paper is part of the Clean Energy within our Energy Program. Reach out to Norma Hutchinson for more information.AuthorsNorma Hutchinson, Maggie Dennis, Emil Damgaard Grann, Tyler Clevenger, Michelle Manion, Johannes Bøggild and Jennifer LaykePrimary Contacts
LicenseCreative Commons
A renewable energy future is within our grasp: the technology is now widely available and cost-effective in most places around the world. But the current rates of deployment remain well below what is required to avert the worst impacts of climate change. The private sector is poised to invest billions of dollars to massively speed up, scale and support the energy transition. However, many investors, particularly in the private sector, are deterred by some of the risks related to renewable energy investments. As the energy transition is likely to be financed largely by the private sector, governments must work with the private sector to remove barriers and incentivize investment in renewable energy.
This working paper, produced in partnership with Ørsted, focuses on the challenges and solutions to scaling investment in renewable energy generation and provides actionable policy solutions to unlock the private sector investment needed to support the energy transition.
by Edwina Kwan, Amanda Lees, Patric McGonigal and Nick Horton
The global energy transition to counteract the impacts of climate change has seen an enormous growth of investments into renewable energy projects around the world. With China pledging to be carbon neutral by 2060 and other countries following suit, there are extensive opportunities for investment in renewables. However, the changing regulatory, political, and technological environment of the renewable energy sector poses real risks for investors. These risks are likely to lead to an increase in disputes between investors, host countries and commercial contracting parties.
Below, we highlight some recent international disputes in the renewable energy sector and consider the impact of these cases, in particular the first case against Japan, for foreign investors in renewable projects.
The business model is doing irreparable harm to society. But there is an alternative, and we don’t need to destroy the tech giants to get there.
technologyreview – January 10, 2021
MS TECH | GETTY
This week a violent mob mounted the biggest attack on the Capitol, the seat of American democracy, in more than 200 years, driven by the false belief that the presidential election had been stolen. The chief author of that claim was President Donald Trump, but the mob’s readiness to believe it was in large part a product of the attention economy that modern technology has created.
News feeds on Facebook or Twitter operate on a business model of commodifying the attention of billions of people per day, sorting tweets, posts, and groups to determine which get the most engagement (clicks, views, and shares)—what gets the strongest emotional reactions. These commodifying attention platforms have warped the collective psyche. They have led to narrower and crazier views of the world.
Tiếp tục đọc “Big Tech’s attention economy can be reformed. Here’s how.”
Predictions of peak oil and the impending demise of fossil fuels will hit Asian oil refiners especially hard. The region is home to three of the top four oil-guzzling nations, and more than a third of global crude processing capacity. Yet, Asian refiners are expanding at a breakneck pace, even building massive new plants designed to run for at least half a century.
What is going on?
After a century of powering the world’s vehicles, oil refiners are having to plan for an oil-free future in mobility as cars begin switching to batteries, ships burn natural gas, and innovation brings on other energy sources such as hydrogen. Goldman Sachs Group Inc. predicts oil demand for transportation will peak as early as 2026.
Yet, even as a slew of headlines announce oil major BP Plc selling its prized Alaskan fields or Royal Dutch Shell Plc pulling the plug on refineries from Louisiana to the Philippines, Asia’s big refineries are planning for a much longer transition. Chinese refining capacity has nearly tripled since the turn of the millennium, and the nation will end more than a century of U.S. dominancethis year. And China’s capacity will continue climbing – to about 20 million barrels a day by 2025, from 17.4 million barrels at the end of 2020. India’s processing is also rising rapidly and could jump by more than half to 8 million barrels a day in the same time.
May 19, 2021DOWNLOAD THE REPORT
Clean energy technologies are now big business. Vast sums of money in clean energy supply chains promise to rearrange the geopolitics of industrial competition and energy security. Further, to achieve their increasingly ambitious climate goals, countries are likely to do far more to reshape industrial sectors, compressing in a few years a process that normally takes decades.
Tiếp tục đọc “Reshore, Reroute, Rebalance: A U.S. Strategy for Clean Energy Supply Chains”
With recently announced federal emissions-reduction targets, a push for national power-sector decarbonization, and plummeting wind and solar costs, the United States is poised to deploy major amounts of renewables, and fast.
At smaller scales, hundreds of U.S. cities, states, and corporations have already taken bold action in setting their own local targets for 100% renewable energy—and with recent analyses like the Los Angeles 100% Renewable Energy Study (LA100), we have growing confidence that reliable, 100% renewable power grids are feasible.
by Marlowe Hood
Of the 100 cities worldwide most vulnerable to environmental hazards all but one are in Asia, and most are in India or China, according to a risk assessment published Thursday.
Tiếp tục đọc “Asian cities face perfect storm of environmental hazards”
