Malaysia Launches US$100 Million Green Fund

Malaysia has partnered with Japan-based Asian Energy Investments Pte Ltd (AIE) in a US$100 million investment mega-fund to seed promising new ideas and innovators in Southeast Asia. The fund will accelerate national and regional development and manufacture of green energy products and business by small-to-mid-size technologies and enterprises.

The fund will be managed by Malaysian Industry-Government Group for High Technology (MIGHT) represented by its wholly-owned subsidiary, MIGHT Technology Nurturing Sdn Bhd.

The fund management company will also be charged with helping revive Malaysian biodiesel plants idled by sharp increases in the price of crude palm oil, on which the plant depended for feedstock, investigating cheaper biodiesel feedstocks, including municipal waste and waste oil palm biomass.

Source: http://www.freemalaysiatoday.com/category/nation/2013/09/25/rm321mil-fund-to-seed-new-ideas/

U.S.A. Top 5 Fee-Hungry Airlines

Airfare Watchdog has published the airline fee chart for U.S.A. domestic airlines and US Airways topped the chart. Below are the top 5 fee-hungry airlines. I also included our own budget airline Air Asia and see how comparable are they. Air Asia's fees are in Ringgit Malaysia and the rest are in US$.

I guess we Malaysian are alone as American also facing the same issue of fee-hungry airlines.

Source: http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-505144_162-57603894/5-most-fee-hungry-airlines/

What Are The Meaning Of Those Dates On Food Products?

Food products selling in supermarkets always have tiny dates printed on them telling you about "sell by", "use by", or "best before" date. What do they mean? According to a study, named The Dating Game: How Confusing Food Date Labels Lead to Food Waste in America, published by Natural Resources Defense Council, together with Harvard Food Law and Policy Clinic, those dates do not indicate the safety of your food, and generally speaking, they’re not regulated.

90% of Americans at least occasionally throw food away prematurely because they mistakenly interpret the date label to mean their food is unsafe; 25% do so every time. In the UK, they've estimated about 20% of food wasted in households is due to confusion over expiration dates.

The U.S.A. food dating system is not a system at all.  It’s a mess. For example, in most U.S.A. states, there are no laws requiring that orange juice needs to have a date stamped on it.  It is then up to the manufacturer to figure the whole thing out on their own, and there is a whole series of decisions they might go through, such as:

• Should the product have a date displayed at all?  Their retail customers might demand this of them, otherwise it’s up to them.
• Which words to use?  Will it be “use by” or “best before ”or even “sell by?” Up to them.
• What does the date convey? Is it that the taste might change a little, or perhaps the color, or do they just want you to see it as a fresh product even if it will last quite a while longer?  There’s no definition, so in fact, a range of factors can feed into this decision.
• How is the date calculated? They might use lab tests, do consumer taste tests, look at literature values, or just sales data.  Anything goes here.

You might think that there is similarity in the dates at least across orange juice brands, so that when you’re looking at two containers of orange juice, the dates are comparable, right?  Nope. Not the case.

The study pointed out that the main thing to understand is that foodborne illness comes from contamination, not spoilage.  Handling your food safely is more important than its age. So as consumers, the most important thing we can do is handle our food safely.

For more information go to http://switchboard.nrdc.org/blogs/dgunders/its_not_a_food_dating_system_i.html

Solar Panels: A New Challenge For Firefighting

Since the launch of SEDA Malaysia on Dec. 2011, more and more rooftop solar arrays will be installed on Malaysia residential and commercial buildings. New challenges emerge for firefighters when a blaze erupts on these buildings.

U.S.A.'s fire departments are facing the exact problem. A massive fire erupted in early September this year at the Dietz & Watson meats and cheeses distribution center in South Jersey. The 7,000 photovoltaic panels installed on the roof of the center were blamed for the “complete destruction of the warehouse” as they prevented firefighters from opening up the roof to ventilate the structure while posing the threat of electrocution.

Risks posed by solar photovoltaic panels are:

(1) The panels can be activated by any light source so electric shock is always a possibility since the panels “can’t be shut off”.

(2) Another main hindrance is that the panels are covering large areas of roofs, firefighters are limited in where they can cut, causing the inability to ventilate the roof to release trapped flames, which would help to prevent the fire from spreading.

(3) The panels on the roof also limiting the firefighters where they can exit, as an alternative, which reduce the escape and survival chances.

(4) The panels also pose the risks of shock and trip hazards.

(5) Firefighters also need to consider the additional weight of the panels on the roof structure that may be weakened by the fire.

More information can be obtained from the report by San Jose fire engineer Matthew Paiss called Home Power.

Despite this highly-publicized incident where solar panels complicated firefighting efforts, this occurrence is actually rare. "There are hundreds of thousands of solar systems nationwide and only a handful have been linked to fires since 1996,” according to U.S.A. Solar Energy Industries Association Vice President of Communications Ken Johnson when talking to The Star-Ledger.

To address the increased risks associated with fighting structure fires on buildings with solar panels, the Fire Protection Research Foundation released a 2010 study that highlights appropriate training techniques to prepare for firefighting in the alternative energy era. With the proper training and preparation, these new hazards can be safely mitigated.

Source: http://www.solarreviews.com/blog/solar-panels-in-the-line-of-fire-091213/