The downside to “gorilla tourism” in Uganda is the fact, that local communities do not profit from “their” forest. In fact, the Batwa and Pygmy communitites were chased out of the forest more than 20 years back.

NkuringoCulturalCentre is a new approach to develop eco-tourism with a high involvement of the local communities in the business. Through dancing classes, cooking classes, nature and community walks, and a medicinal herbs excursion, visitors get to know not only Uganda’s wildlife. They also get the chance to meet and interact with people from the area. They learn about african culture! These activities are also good for the local people. They learn to conserve their culture and traditions in a time of transition in the whole country. They get the chance to understand why tourism can be a good thing, especially for them.

Nkuringo Cultural Centre is a community based organization trying to enhance the quality of life in the area through eco-tourism. If you want to find out more about NCC, please visit NkuringoCulturalCentre.org and read about the organization’s goals and actual projects!

“In the developed world, the small farmer may be going extinct. But among some amoebas, small farming—really small farming—is still a viable survival strategy, a new study says.”

When Dictyostelium discoideum amoebas run short of bacteria to eat in a patch of soil—presumably because the bacteria themselves are starving—the single-celled life-forms “start ‘talking’ to each other, and they gather together,” said lead study author Debra Brock.

“When there’re about a hundred thousand amoebas gathered together, then they form a fruiting body.”

By forming this fruiting body, they offer a perfect place for bacteria to grow in the area. Even when leaving the area, they keep spores to “plant” and to grow new food.

 

Read more on: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2011/110119-amoebas-smallest-farmers-discodeum-science-nature-bacteria/

Hope you like the photo! It was taken on the way from Kabale to Rubuguri (the middle of nowhere).

View of Virunga Range from Kabale/Rubuguri route.

Organic solar cells are too ineffective, today.

Solar cells transform energy of sun rays into electricity. New organic concepts based on semiconductors offer many advantages In difference to silicon (Si)-based products. Today, though, their effectiveness is not good enough to introduce them on the big markets.

Since 2007, Scientists from more than 40 different institutes and different disciplines try to raise the effectiveness and improve the life range of those organic solar cells!

This is one of the first photos I took in the rain forest. Ever.

I am working for the German government in a project to enhance eco-aware tourism around the Bwindi Impenetrable Forest. This is the biggest Mountain Gorilla habitat in existence.

To catch up with what I have missed, and to report to the world about my work, I will be posting more often, again!!

What You Need:

- A roll of toilet paper or equivalent, as long as possible
- a calculator
- a pen to take notes
- a piece of paper

Time to start!

First of all, it is interesting to know what kind of problems we run into when we start folding; and when we have to stop folding because it seems to be impossible to fold another time.
A folded piece of paper is made up by its complete length “B”. Also we notice, that . A is the length of the straight parts of the piece of paper, , ( ), is the half circle, the folded part. can easily be described as for a reason: if folded correctly, the folded part of the paper will be very tight and, ideally, there will not be space for a single molecule of O2 between the two A’s.

Half Way There, Already!

Now, that we have got an equation for the folded part, we need to set everything up for a number k, the amount of times we want to fold the piece of paper. For instance, if we plug in 6 into the final equation, we want to get some length in centimeters the piece of paper has to be long so that it is possible to fold 6 times.

If the curve/radius(d) needed for the fold is greater than half of the straight part (A) left, we are done. Therefore, we have a limit for each k, depending on the thickness of the material we use (d), and also the length of the piece of paper (B).

B(min) =  *X.

describes the appropriate amount of curves in the stack of folded layers of paper. We also have the A’s, though. The more folds we want, the bigger they have to be to begin with. If we wanted 0 folds, we would need a piece of paper that is 1/[infinity], to say: we only need a piece of paper,an object with a length that is irrelevant, but has to be there. If we wanted to fold it once, we would need a paper that is long enough to fold the thickness of the piece of paper once (). If we wanted to do the same over and over, we would finally need this: *()/6. If we plug in 1, we get . And that is exactly what we would need.

Putting It Together – Final Equation

We now have an equation for the half circles and for the straight parts. Putting it together brings us here:

B is the minimum length for a piece of paper, that is d thick, folded k times.

Examples

How long would a piece of paper need to be to be able to be folded 9 times?

d = 0.1 mm, k = 9:

= 13.87m

How many times could you fold a piece of paper that is as long as the distance from Hamburg to New York?

B would be the distance(Hamburg, New York) = 6,145km, d = 0.1mm

6,145,000,000 mm =

If we solve this equation for k, we get k = 18.38

We would be able to fold it 18 times, if we don’t destroy it when trying!!