Ultra Compact Camera

Scientific ingenuity means cameras keep on getting smaller and smaller, and the latest to appear is not only incredibly tiny – the same size as a grain of salt – it's also able to produce images of much better quality than a lot of other ultra-compact cameras.

Using a technology known as a metasurface, which is covered with 1.6 million cylindrical posts, the camera is able to capture full-color photos that are as good as images snapped by conventional lenses some half a million times bigger than this particular camera.

And the super-small contraption has the potential to be helpful in a whole range of scenarios, from helping miniature soft robots explore the world, to giving experts a better idea of what's going on deep inside the human body.

Existing micro-sized camera (left) versus the new model (right). (Princeton University)

"It's been a challenge to design and configure these little microstructures to do what you want," says computer scientist Ethan Tseng from Princeton University in New Jersey.

"For this specific task of capturing large field of view RGB images, it was previously unclear how to co-design the millions of nano-structures together with post-processing algorithms."

One of the camera's special tricks is the way it combines hardware with computational processing to improve the captured image: Signal processing algorithms use machine learning techniques to reduce blur and other distortions that otherwise occur with cameras this size. The camera effectively uses software to improve its vision.  READ MORE...

Cow

 

Draining the World's Oceans

Although many maps of our planet go into great topographical detail on land, almost two-thirds of the Earth’s surface is covered by the world’s oceans.

Hidden from sight lie aquatic mountain ranges, continental shelves, and trenches that dive deep into the Earth’s crust. We might be familiar with a few of the well-known formations on the ocean floor, but there’s a whole detailed “world” that’s as rich as the surface, just waiting to be explored.

This animation (above) from planetary researcher James O’Donoghue of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) and NASA simulates the draining the world’s oceans to quickly reveal the full extent of the Earth’s surface.

How Deep Does the Ocean Go?
Above sea level, Earth’s topography reaches all the way up to 8,849 meters (29,032 ft) to the top of Mt. Everest. But going below sea level, it actually goes deeper than the height of Everest.

Open ocean is called the pelagic zone, which can be broken down into five regions by depth:

• 0m–200m: Epipelagic (sunlight zone). Illuminated shallower waters that contain most of the ocean’s plants and animals.
• 200m–1,000m: Mesopelagic (twilight zone). Stretches from where 1% of surface light reaches to where surface light ends. Contains mainly bacteria, as well as some large organisms like the swordfish and the squid.
• 1,000m–4,000m: Bathypelagic (midnight zone). Pitch black outside of a few bioluminescent organisms, with no living plants. Smaller anglerfish, squid, and sharks live here, as well as a few large organisms like giant squid.
• 4,000m–6,000m: Abyssopelagic (abyssal zone). Long thought to be the bottomless end of the sea, the abyssal zone reaches to just above the ocean floor and contains little life due to extremely cold temperatures, high pressures, and complete darkness.
• 6,000m–11,000m: Hadopelagic (hadal zone). Named after Hades, the Greek god of the underworld, the hadal zone is the deepest part of the ocean. It can be found primarily in trenches below the ocean floor.

To put ocean depths into context, the bottom of the ocean is more than 2,000m greater than the peak of Mount Everest.

What “Draining” the World’s Oceans Reveals
For a long time, the ocean floor was believed to be less understood than the Moon.

The sheer depth of water made it difficult to map without newer technology, and the tremendous pressure and extreme temperatures make navigation grueling. A manned vehicle reached the deepest known point of the Mariana Trench—the Challenger Deep—in 1960, almost 90 years after it was first charted in 1872.  READ MORE...

A Mom's Shoe

 

Tutorial on Batteries

An educational read that will enable you to understand where our existing battery technology really is and the folly of this insane rush to cancel fossil fuels.

Do not let the long read deter you. This is really an eye-openeer.

When I saw the title of this lecture, especially with the picture of the scantily clad model, I couldn’t resist attending. The packed auditorium was abuzz with questions about the address; nobody seemed to know what to expect. The only hint was a large aluminum block sitting on a sturdy table on the stage.

When the crowd settled down, a scholarly-looking man walked out and put his hand on the shiny block, “Good evening,” he said, “I am here to introduce NMC532-X,” and he patted the block, “we call him NM for short,” and the man smiled proudly. “NM is a typical electric vehicle (EV) car battery in every way except one; we programmed him to send signals of the internal movements of his electrons when charging, discharging, and in several other conditions. We wanted to know what it feels like to be a battery. We don’t know how it happened, but NM began to talk after we downloaded the program.

Despite this ability, we put him in a car for a year and then asked him if he’d like to do presentations about batteries. He readily agreed on the condition he could say whatever he wanted. We thought that was fine, and so, without further ado, I’ll turn the floor over to NM,” the man turned and walked off the stage.

“Good evening,” NM said. He had a slightly affected accent, and when he spoke, he lit up in different colors. “That cheeky woman on the marquee was my idea,” he said. “Were she not there, along with ‘naked’ in the title, I’d likely be speaking to an empty auditorium! I also had them add ‘shocking’ because it’s a favorite word amongst us batteries.” He flashed a light blue color as he laughed.

“Sorry,” NM giggled then continued, “three days ago, at the start of my last lecture, three people walked out. I suppose they were disappointed there would be no dancing girls. But here is what I noticed about them. One was wearing a battery-powered hearing aid, one tapped on his battery-powered cell phone as he left, and a third got into his car, which would not start without a battery. So I’d like you to think about your day for a moment; how many batteries do you rely on?”

He paused for a full minute which gave us time to count our batteries. Then he went on, “Now, it is not elementary to ask, ‘what is a battery?’ I think Tesla said it best when they called us Energy Storage Systems. That’s important. We do not make electricity – we store electricity produced elsewhere, primarily by coal, uranium, natural gas-powered plants, or diesel-fueled generators. So to say an EV is a zero-emission vehicle is not at all valid. Also, since forty percent of the electricity generated in the U.S. is from coal-fired plants, it follows that forty percent of the EVs on the road are coal-powered, n’est-ce pas?”

He flashed blue again. “Einstein’s formula, E=MC2, tells us it takes the same amount of energy to move a five thousand pound gasoline-driven automobile a mile as it does an electric one. The only question again is what produces the power? To reiterate, it does not come from the battery; the battery is only the storage device, like a gas tank in a car.”

He lit up red when he said that, and I sensed he was smiling. Then he continued in blue and orange. “Mr. Elkay introduced me as NMC532. If I were the battery from your computer mouse, Elkay would introduce me as double-A, if from your cell phone as CR2032, and so on. We batteries all have the same name depending on our design. By the way, the ‘X’ in my name stands for ‘experimental.’

There are two orders of batteries, rechargeable, and single-use. The most common single-use batteries are A, AA, AAA, C, D. 9V, and lantern types. Those dry-cell species use zinc, manganese, lithium, silver oxide, or zinc and carbon to store electricity chemically. Please note they all contain toxic, heavy metals.

Rechargeable batteries only differ in their internal materials, usually lithium-ion, nickel-metal oxide, and nickel-cadmium.

The United States uses three billion of these two battery types a year, and most are not recycled; they end up in landfills. California is the only state which requires all batteries be recycled. If you throw your small, used batteries in the trash, here is what happens to them.

All batteries are self-discharging. That means even when not in use, they leak tiny amounts of energy. You have likely ruined a flashlight or two from an old ruptured battery. When a battery runs down and can no longer power a toy or light, you think of it as dead; well, it is not. It continues to leak small amounts of electricity. As the chemicals inside it run out, pressure builds inside the battery’s metal casing, and eventually, it cracks. The metals left inside then ooze out. The ooze in your ruined flashlight is toxic, and so is the ooze that will inevitably leak from every battery in a landfill. All batteries eventually rupture; it just takes rechargeable batteries longer to end up in the landfill.

In addition to dry cell batteries, there are also wet cell ones used in automobiles, boats, and motorcycles. The good thing about those is, ninety percent of them are recycled. Unfortunately, we do not yet know how to recycle batteries like me or care to dispose of single-use ones properly.

But that is not half of it. For those of you excited about electric cars and a green revolution, I want you to take a closer look at batteries and also windmills and solar panels. These three technologies share what we call environmentally destructive embedded costs.”

NM got redder as he spoke. “Everything manufactured has two costs associated with it, embedded costs and operating costs. I will explain embedded costs using a can of baked beans as my subject.

In this scenario, baked beans are on sale, so you jump in your car and head for the grocery store. Sure enough, there they are on the shelf for $1.75 a can. As you head to the checkout, you begin to think about the embedded costs in the can of beans.

The first cost is the diesel fuel the farmer used to plow the field, till the ground, harvest the beans, and transport them to the food processor. Not only is his diesel fuel an embedded cost, so are the costs to build the tractors, combines, and trucks. In addition, the farmer might use a nitrogen fertilizer made from natural gas.

Next is the energy costs of cooking the beans, heating the building, transporting the workers, and paying for the vast amounts of electricity used to run the plant. The steel can holding the beans is also an embedded cost. Making the steel can requires mining taconite, shipping it by boat, extracting the iron, placing it in a coal-fired blast furnace, and adding carbon. Then it’s back on another truck to take the beans to the grocery store. Finally, add in the cost of the gasoline for your car.

But wait - can you guess one of the highest but rarely acknowledged embedded costs?” NM said, then gave us about thirty seconds to make our guesses. Then he flashed his lights and said, “It’s the depreciation on the 5000 pound car you used to transport one pound of canned beans!”

NM took on a golden glow, and I thought he might have winked. He said, “But that can of beans is nothing compared to me! I am hundreds of times more complicated. My embedded costs not only come in the form of energy use; they come as environmental destruction, pollution, disease, child labor, and the inability to be recycled.”

He paused, “I weigh one thousand pounds, and as you see, I am about the size of a travel trunk.” NM’s lights showed he was serious. “I contain twenty-five pounds of lithium, sixty pounds of nickel, 44 pounds of manganese, 30 pounds cobalt, 200 pounds of copper, and 400 pounds of aluminum, steel, and plastic. Inside me are 6,831 individual lithium-ion cells.

It should concern you that all those toxic components come from mining. For instance, to manufacture each auto battery like me, you must process 25,000 pounds of brine for the lithium, 30,000 pounds of ore for the cobalt, 5,000 pounds of ore for the nickel, and 25,000 pounds of ore for copper. All told, you dig up 500,000 pounds of the earth’s crust for just - one - battery.”

He let that one sink in, then added, “I mentioned disease and child labor a moment ago. Here’s why. Sixty-eight percent of the world’s cobalt, a significant part of a battery, comes from the Congo. Their mines have no pollution controls and they employ children who die from handling this toxic material. Should we factor in these diseased kids as part of the cost of driving an electric car?”

NM’s red and orange light made it look like he was on fire. “Finally,” he said, “I’d like to leave you with these thoughts. California is building the largest battery in the world near San Francisco, and they intend to power it from solar panels and windmills. They claim this is the ultimate in being ‘green,’ but it is not! This construction project is creating an environmental disaster. Let me tell you why.

The main problem with solar arrays is the chemicals needed to process silicate into the silicon used in the panels. To make pure enough silicon requires processing it with hydrochloric acid, sulfuric acid, nitric acid, hydrogen fluoride, trichloroethane, and acetone. In addition, they also need gallium, arsenide, copper-indium-gallium- diselenide, and cadmium-telluride, which also are highly toxic. Silicon dust is a hazard to the workers, and the panels cannot be recycled.

Windmills are the ultimate in embedded costs and environmental destruction. Each weighs 1688 tons (the equivalent of 23 houses) and contains 1300 tons of concrete, 295 tons of steel, 48 tons of iron, 24 tons of fiberglass, and the hard to extract rare earths neodymium, praseodymium, and dysprosium. Each blade weighs 81,000 pounds and will last 15 to 20 years, at which time it must be replaced. We cannot recycle used blades. Sadly, both solar arrays and windmills kill birds, bats, sea life, and migratory insects.

NM lights dimmed, and he quietly said, “There may be a place for these technologies, but you must look beyond the myth of zero emissions. I predict EVs and windmills will be abandoned once the embedded environmental costs of making and replacing them become apparent. I’m trying to do my part with these lectures.

Thank you for your attention, good night, and good luck.” NM’s lights went out, and he was quiet, like a regular battery.

Muscle Man

 

Wake Up America!

The United States of America is currently experiencing:

Waves of Illegal Immigration

Rampent Inflation

Supply Chain Shortages

Vaccination Mandates

Uncontrollable Government Spending

Critical Race Theory Taught in Public Schools

Cancel Culture Censoring Freedom of Speech

Mainstream Media Censoring the News

Increase of Crime and Violence

Defunding of Police Movements

Afghanistan Withdrawal Debacle

Loss of Trust of European Allies

Who You Were Meant To Be

 Are you too FAT?

Are you too THIN?

Are you too BLACK?

Are you too WHITE?

Are you too STUPID?

Are you too SMART?

Are you too TALL?

Are you too SHORT?

Are you too RICH?

Are you too POOR?

Are you too AGGRESSIVE?

Are you too WITHDRAWN?

Are you too OUTSPOKEN?

Are you too SHY?

Are you too LIBERAL?

Are you too CONSERVATIVE?

Are you too Northern?

Are you too SOUTHERN?

Are you too EASTERN?

Are you too WESTERN?

Why are you trying to be something that you are not?

YOU ARE WHO YOU ARE SUPPOSED TO BE...  nothing more...  and, certainly nothing less...

BUT ABOVE ALL ELSE...  you are an AMERICAN...  a citizen of the U.S.A.

• Not an European
• Not a Russian
• Not a Chinese
• Not a North Korean
• Not a Japanese
• Not an African
• Not a Mexican
• Not a Brazilian
• Not an Egyptian
• Not a Middle eastern

You are protected by all the FREEDOMS that Americans have...

You are protected by the RIGHTS all Americans have...

You are protected by the JUSTICE all Americans have...

You are protected with:

• Life
• Liberty
• Pursuit of happiness

no other country in the entire world has what americans have...  you should never forget that...

Nowhere But Here

 

I was born in Raleigh, NC but shortly afterwards moved to just outside of Alexandria, VA, then high school in Cairo, Egypt and back to Elon College, NC for college and to live until 1989.  However, there was a brief stint of 2 years in Norfolk, VA when I served in the US Navy.  In 1990, I moved to East TN where I lived in Greeneville, Morristown, Chattanooga, Dandridge, and Jefferson City...  I have been in Jefferson City, TN since 2001 and will more than likely remain here for the rest of my life...

Every morning, I watch FOX NEWS and every morning I am not just thankful but grateful for having the motivation and the good sense to move to East TN and have no desire to live anywhere else.

FOX NEWS shares with me about all the violence and crime that is taking place in California, Oregon, and Washington including Chicago, New York City, Washington DC, Baltimore, and Atlanta just to name a few states and cities.

FOX NEWS shares with me about all the LOCKDOWNS that are going on around the country and the fact that many states and cities are mandating not just facemasks but requiring people to show PROOF of VACCINATION...  now, while I have had both my Moderna vaccinations including a Moderna booster, I resent and reject the idea that I should have to show PROOF of what I have done.

 FOX NEWS shares with me about all the ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS that are coming across our southern borders, none of these immigrants are being tested for COVID nor are they being required to show proof of vaccination...  WHY NOT?  But...  I am still very much thankful that very few of these illegal immigrants  are being shipped to East TN.

As a Vietnam Veteran, I am embarrassed by the way we left Afghanistan, not just the lack of leadership that was on display but because all of our allies now question our ability and desire to protect them and stand with them against their enemies...

East TN State University

Not only is the weather in East TN very mild during the winter months, but there is no state income tax...  and, on average, East TN is 10-12% cheaper to live than anywhere else in the US...  for example, a couple can live very comfortable on $3,000 to $3,500 per month without debt, but this includes an apartment rent or mortgage of $1,200/month.

Why in the hell would I want to live somewhere else?

HOWEVER...  I do not have...

• the broadway plays of NYC
• the expensive restaurants of NYC
• the subways of NYC
• the expansive public transportation
• the volume of people of large cities
• the smog of large cities
• the crime and violence of large cities
• the cold winters of the north
• the high constant humidity of the south
• the problem that illegal immigrants bring with them

Of course...  I am retired...  so, there may not be the needs that I would have were I still working...  but, I worked here in East TN for 25 years, and while my salary was less that what I might have earned in other places, I still live a comfortable middle class existence and had very little in terms of wants and desires...

One of the key things that I encountered when I moved from NC to TN in 1990 was the fact that in NC my skills and abilities were a dime a dozen but in TN, I was in very high demand because of my skills and abilities...  that is a good feeling to have professionally.

I am glad that I want to live NOWHERE BUT HERE...

Turning Boeing Airplane Into Home

Bruce Campbell and his Boeing 727. REUTERS/Steve Dipaola


Most people might dread spending their entire lives on an airplane, but not Bruce Campbell. That's because his airplane, which stays on the ground, is his home.

The former electrical engineer turned a Boeing 727 he bought in 1999 into a home in Portland, Oregon. Reuters has photos of the space. After modifications, 65-year-old Campbell's aircraft dream home cost him $220,000. He spends six months out of the year living there, alternating between Portland and Japan.

In addition to his current home, Campbell is hoping to buy a bigger Boeing 747-400 to convert into his home in Miyazaki, Japan.

"I don't mean to offend, but wood is in my view a terrible building material," Campbell wrote on his website. "But retired airliners can withstand 575 mph winds ... are highly fire-resistant, and provide superior security. They're among the finest structures that mankind has ever built."

Keep scrolling to see more pictures of Campbell's Boeing 727 home.  READ MORE...

Flying

 

Islamophobia

Our analysis shows that almost two-thirds of articles paint Muslims in a negative light.

Miqdaad Versi is the founder of the Muslim Council of Britain’s Centre for Media Monitoring

‘Muslims have been compelled to take libel action against newspapers and have won.’ Photograph: Terry Harris/Alamy

Last week, the Labour MP Naz Shah observed that “Islamophobia has now passed the ‘mainstream media test’”. The report published this week by the Muslim Council of Britain’s Centre for Media Monitoring shows that she’s right.

Consider some of the most egregious cases cited in the report. There was the Times, Telegraph, MailOnline and Express libelling a Scout group leader, Ahammed Hussain, in 2019, using a laundry list of anti-Muslim tropes; these included “allegations about using the Scout group to promote extremism, segregation of children, extensive links to antisemitic groups, and inviting banned preachers to the Mosque”. 

Or take the Mail on Sunday, which called council worker Waj Iqbal “a fixer” for paedophile taxi drivers in Rochdale. As he put it, his whole world crumbled, he lost his job, his “marriage ended and [he] couldn’t see [his] kids”. The impact of this kind of reporting cannot be overstated. While nothing can repair the harm caused, in both cases, the publishers had to pay very substantial libel damages and print apologies.

Many other similar examples published in the report show how Muslims have been compelled to take libel action against newspapers, and have won. If one considers the hundreds of thousands of pounds paid to settle these claims, what does this tell us about the price they are willing to pay to misrepresent Muslims?  READ MORE...

Opening Gate

 

Mushroom Leather Gamechanger

Vegan leather alternative isn’t just the hot fashion must-have – it could teach us about consumption and waste

Grown in trays, mycelium is engineered to look and feel like calfskin or sheepskin Photograph: carla tramullas

Vegan alternatives to leather could save more than just animals. The scientists behind fashion’s new latest must-have – the “mushroom leather” handbag – believe that mycelium, a material grown from fungi which can be engineered to look and feel like calfskin or sheepskin, could help save the planet.

Speaking to the Guardian before a talk at the Business of Fashion Voices conference in Oxfordshire, Dr Matt Scullin, CEO of biomaterials company MycoWorks, forecast that mushroom leather could be a sustainability gamechanger, “unlocking a future of design which begins with the material, not with the object”.

Fine Mycelium, a patented material which can be grown from fungi in trays in a matter of weeks, replicates the appearance and feel of leather while outperforming it in strength and durability. The material recently made its high fashion debut as an exclusive Hermès handbag.  READ MORE...

Drone Pong

 

China Warns US Businesses

Vice-foreign minister Xie Feng tells industry figures to push US government toward a ‘rational’ China policy and end ‘ideological’ conflicts

Comments to American businesses with interests in China come amid simmering tensions between the world’s two largest economies. Photograph: VCG/Getty Images

Beijing has urged US business groups with interests in China to “speak out” and lobby the US government in its defence, warning that as bilateral relations deteriorate they cannot make money “in silence”.

The vice-foreign minister Xie Feng, in charge of managing China’s relationship with the US, also urged against political boycotts of the upcoming Beijing Winter Olympics, saying it harms the interests of athletes and was “unpopular”.

Key business groups including the American Chamber of Commerce in Shanghai and the US-China Business Council, met Xie at a virtual forum on Tuesday, according to a transcript of his address.

In his address, published by the ministry of foreign affairs, Xie urged the US business representatives to “speak up and speak out, and push the US government to pursue a rational and pragmatic policy towards China, stop conducting wars in trade, industry and technology, and stop creating … ideological and geopolitical confrontations and conflicts”.

The meeting’s warning added to letters sent by China’s embassy in Washington directly to US businesses last month, making similar threats and urging them to lobby against US bills that would affect Chinese interests.

Xie praised the recent meeting between the US president, Joe Biden, and China’s leader, Xi Jinping, in seeking to restore the relationship, and said that when bilateral relations were good, economic and trade cooperation was smoother.  READ MORE...

Doris Day

 

Fossil Fuels

24 November 2021
Fossil Fuels: Stranded Assets and Fire Sales
By Gwynne Dyer


An article with the innocuous title ‘Reframing Incentives for Climate Policy Action’ slipped out in the scientific journal ‘Nature Energy’ three weeks ago and got very little attention, presumably because of the hopeless title. But it’s not innocuous at all. It’s explosive.


It explains why about half of the world’s oil and gas industry will die in the next 15 years, while the other half enjoys one last frenzied round of growth. Listen carefully, and you can already hear the smart money starting to move.


As the lead author of the article, Jean-François Mercure of Exeter University, told The Guardian: “People will keep investing in fossil fuels until suddenly the demand they expected does not materialise and they realise what they own is worthless.” Stranded assets, in other words. But that won’t happen everywhere in fifteen years’ time; just in some places.


The authors of the article took the national pledges of ‘Net Zero by 2050’ that have proliferated across the planet recently, worked out what that implies in terms of declining demand for oil and gas, and identified which oil- and gas-exporting countries will still be in the game by the mid-2030s.


Not all the Net Zero pledges will be kept in full, of course, but there will be still enough cuts in fossil fuel use, soon enough, to create a nightmare of falling global demand for all the fossil-fuel producers of the world. Anybody can see that. It takes a little more work to calculate who goes under and who doesn’t – or at least not right away.


What they foresee is that the lowest-cost producers, Saudi Arabia and the other Gulf states, will go for broke. Nobody can compete with them on price (they can make a profit even when oil costs only $20 a barrel), so they will flood the world market with cheap oil.


They haven’t done that in the past because they could make much more per barrel if the supply stayed tight. But that’s a long-term perspective, and there is no long term for fossil fuels any more.


If it is clear that a lot of oil and gas assets are going to stay in the ground forever, then it is your patriotic duty to make sure that the stranded assets belong to other countries, not to yours.


So drop your price to $20 a barrel, drive all the higher cost competitors out of the market, and sell as much you can before demand collapses entirely.


The authors of the paper calculate that Saudi Arabia, for example, could earn $1.7 trillion before demand completely dries up if it goes the ‘fire sale’ route, compared to only $1.3 trillion if it cooperates with all the non-Arab members of OPEC and tries to hold oil and gas prices up. $400 billion is a big difference, so which way do you think they’ll jump?


Who goes to the wall first in this scenario? High-cost producers working in tar sands, oil shales, deep water and Arctic areas, so Canada, the United States, Latin America (mostly Mexico and Brazil), and Russia. But even the lowest-cost producers go broke by 2050, if all those ‘Net Zero by 2050' pledges come true.


Maybe all these changes can happen without grave impacts on other parts of the global economy, but history suggests otherwise. If too many players realise their assets are stranded at the same time, we could get the mother of all market crashes out of this.


Gwynne Dyer’s new book is ‘The Shortest History of War’.

Skull Mountain

A Medieval Solution

In a world of more frequent and more intense flooding, one way to protect against the worst can trace its roots back to the Netherlands, nearly 1,000 years ago.

This July, gorged by days of rain, the Meuse River broke its banks, and the Belgian town of Liège was its victim. Waters the colour of old gravy raced through town, leaving residents floating in canoes as their homes vanished about them. In the city and its province, over 20 died, one man drowning in his basement.

Nor was this corner of Eastern Belgium alone. In nearby Germany, around 200 perished, with journalists describing the flooding as a once-in-a-century event. The financial impact of the disaster was shocking too. Near Liège, a single chocolate factory sustained damages worth around €12m (£10m/$13.5m).

Yet as the mayhem unfolded, one corner of Northern Europe suffered far less. In the Netherlands, the summer flooding was also described as the worst in a century and property damage was severe, but the country survived the floods without a single fatality. There are many reasons for this: quick evacuations, strong dikes and robust communication among them. But what underpins these varied forms of flood defence is an institution: the so-called "water boards" that have protected this waterlogged land for nearly a millennium.  READ MORE...