[Stoves] Berkeley improved stove featured on Voice of America Broadcast

[David Whitfield]

TEXT from VOA News pertaining to Berkeley improved stove.
http://www.voanews.com/specialenglish/2006-11-06-voa2.cfm

VOICE TWO:

Scientists have designed a cookstove that could make life a little 
easier for refugees in the Darfur area of Sudan. It might also help 
reduce the loss of forests in poor countries where trees are cut down as 
fuel for cooking fires. The scientists are from the Lawrence Berkeley 
National Laboratory and the University of California, Berkeley.

Two of them, Ashok Gadgil [ah-SHOKE GAD-gil] and Christina Galitsky, 
went to Darfur late last year. They found that many refugee families 
were missing meals for lack of fuel.

The light metal stove uses only about one-fourth as much wood as the 
cooking method currently used in the camps. That method is known as the 
three-stone fire. Less need for fuel would mean less need for women to 
leave the camps to search for wood and risk being attacked in 
violence-torn Darfur.

VOICE ONE:

Since that visit, the researchers have improved the stove. Now they are 
trying to set up production. They estimate that the stoves could be 
built locally in Darfur for about fifteen dollars each. They say about 
three hundred thousand are needed. The hope is to begin producing five 
thousand stoves by the end of the year.

Ashok Gadgil says his team agrees with aid organizations that the stoves 
should not be given away free of charge. If they are free, he says, they 
will be undervalued. People might then try to sell them for the value of 
the metal. The scientists say microlending programs could help people 
buy the stoves with loans if they do not have enough money. And people 
could use borrowed money to start their own stove-building business.

VOICE TWO:

San Francisco area members of Engineers Without Borders-USA are 
providing engineering support for the project. The groups working on the 
Darfur Cookstoves Project are also seeking donations to support their work.

The project has a Web site. The address is darfurstoves.lbl.gov.

VOICE ONE:

During the nineteen nineties, Ashok Gadgil invented a water-purifying 
system that won awards for its design. The system is called UV 
Waterworks. It uses ultraviolet light to disinfect water of viruses and 
bacteria. And it can be powered by a car battery or energy from the sun.

Now there is another award-winning water-purifying device on the market. 
The Vestergaard Frandsen Group, a Danish company with headquarters in 
Switzerland, invented the LifeStraw last year. The LifeStraw won an 
award from a nonprofit organization in Denmark that honors designs to 
improve life.

VOICE TWO:

The LifeStraw is a thick plastic tube twenty-five centimeters long. You 
place one end into water and drink from the other. The water passes 
through a series of filters to catch extremely small particles. Iodine 
and active carbon are also used in the cleaning process. It takes about 
eight minutes to filter one liter.

Vestergaard Frandsen says the LifeStraw kills organisms that spread 
diarrhea, dysentery, typhoid and cholera. The device filters most 
bacteria and parasites. But it has limits, including against viruses. 
Also, it does not remove arsenic or other heavy metals from water.

VOICE ONE:

The LifeStraw costs about three dollars. It can be worn on a string 
around the neck. It has a lifetime of up to seven hundred liters, or 
about one year.

The company notes that each day, worldwide, more than six thousand 
children and adults die from unsafe drinking water.

(MUSIC)

VOICE TWO:

SCIENCE IN THE NEWS was written by Jerilyn Watson and Jill Moss. I’m 
Faith Lapidus.

VOICE ONE:

And I’m Doug Johnson. Learn more about science, and download transcripts 
and MP3 files of our programs, at voaspecialenglish.com And join us 
again next week for more news about science in Special English on the 
Voice of America.


-- 
"We make a living by what we get... we make a life by what we give." - unknown author

David Whitfield V.
Executive Director
CEDESOL Foundation

Alternative Education, Renewable Energy, Social Equality 

http://www.cedesol.org

SKYPE - solar1bol