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Sunday, June 29, 2014
Even within the U.S. North Carolina was one of nearly three dozen states that practiced eugenics.
Saturday, June 28, 2014
FREE. Take the Worlds Best Courses Online for Free. COURSERA
https://www.coursera.org/
University of California, San Diego
Begins July 1, 2014 |
University of Pittsburgh
Begins July 14, 2014 |
Stanford University
Begins June 30, 2014 |
The University of Melbourne
Begins July 7, 2014 |
Johns Hopkins University
Begins July 7, 2014 |
Vanderbilt University
Begins July 1, 2014 |
The Pennsylvania State University
Begins July 14, 2014 |
University of Michigan
Begins July 7, 2014 |
University of Kentucky
Begins July 15, 2014 |
Johns Hopkins University
Begins July 7, 2014 |
American Museum of Natural History
Begins July 7, 2014 |
Berklee College of Music
Begins July 19, 2014 |
Friday, June 27, 2014
National Peace Corps Association. Endless Experience and Opportunities
HBCU Emergency Management Consortium members:
Opportunities abound outside of the U.S.
BEMA.
National Peace Corps Association
http://www.peacecorpsconnect.org/2014/05/minorities-in-the-peace-corps-panel-coming-to-nashville/=
Opportunities abound outside of the U.S.
BEMA.
National Peace Corps Association
http://www.peacecorpsconnect.org/2014/05/minorities-in-the-peace-corps-panel-coming-to-nashville/=
Minorities in the
Peace Corps Panel Coming to Nashville
By Teniola Ayoola on Wednesday, May 21st, 2014
Ever wondered about the diversity of Americans
who have served in the Peace Corps over the past 53 years?
If you asked today,
only a very rough estimate would be available. Herman DeBose and J. Henry
“Hank” Ambrose are two Returned Peace Corps Volunteers (RPCVs) who are out to
change that. During the upcoming Peace
Corps Connect conference in Nashville this June 19 -21, they
will host the session Minorities in the Peace Corps.
The goal of the panel is first, to bring
together a spectrum of minority RPCVs and discuss their experiences after
completing their Peace Corps service and returning to the United States.
Secondly, because of the very low historic data on minority service in the
Peace Corps, DeBose and Ambrose are more specifically seeking ideas on how to
expand and build the database of African American RPCVs. For Ambrose, “it
seemed like a good idea to involve the broader minority community in the
discussion while kicking off the research project on African American RPCVs.”
Friendship Forged in Kenya
Ambrose served over 40 years ago as a lecturer
in the mathematics department at Kenyatta College from January 1971 through
June 1973. His personal experience sheds some insight into the service
distribution among different racial groups in the past. “I was the only
African American in Group III, for the Peace Corps/College degree program. I
thought for sure I would have other African-Americans in the training program
for Kenya, but again I was the only one.”
According to the Peace
Corps, as of February 2014 over 215, 000 Americans have served in the Peace Corps. Of
that number, it is estimated that approximately 3% (6,300) to 5% (10,500) have
been African Americans. A search of the existing literature on the subject
matter shows that at this time there has not been a comprehensive study of the
overall experiences of African Americans who have served in the Peace Corps.
Herman DeBose, who
served as an education Volunteer in Kenya 1969 to 1972 for a total of 33
months, and as an Associate Peace Corps Director in Kenya from 1985 to
1987, is currently the chair of the sociology department at California
State University, Northridge (read his bio here).
He provides an answer as to why it is important and beneficial to have knowledge
on the experience of African Americans in the Peace Corps:
“As the American population becomes more
diverse, it is important for an organization such as the Peace Corps to have
its Volunteers represent and reflect the population of the United States. If
the estimates cited above are correct, more African Americans need to be
encouraged to serve as Peace Corps Volunteers. The project will provide
information from African American RPCVs to Peace Corps on how to more
effectively recruit them to the service of Peace Corps and maintain and support
them while serving as Peace Corps Volunteers.”
Continued service to Peace Corps ideals
Both men have strong
ties to the National Peace Corps Association. Ambrose, now retired from a
long career in the telecommunications industry, currently serves on the NPCA
board of directors (read his bio here). DeBose was anNPCA
founder (pictured right, second from the right).
“My experiences in Peace Corps changed my
life…” says DeBose. “The educational and employment opportunities presented to
me after my Volunteer services were things that I could not imagine. I would
like to have the opportunity to share my Peace Corps Volunteer experiences and
the different opportunities it presented to me with other minorities.”
The discussion around
this panel is sure to be fascinating, and it will serve as the kick-off for
this long overdue research topic. Don’t miss the opportunity to be a
part of change-in-the-making at thePeace Corps Connect conference this June 19th -21st in Nashville,
TN!
Tuesday, June 24, 2014
SBA......What Are the Top Five Disaster Risks to Small Businesses?
Check with your local SBA office
for similar awareness and tips for businesses in your community.
Location, Location,
Location! Small, medium, large, and multi-national companies are part of
our ‘WHOLE COMMUNITY’ and are not only needed during non-emergency or crisis
situations.
Business continuity plans (BCP)
should be a standard practice for all organizations.
How will your local service
station provide service in a major power outage in the distribution of
gasoline\fuel?
One question, just a start.
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Black Emergency Managers Association
1231 Good Hope Road S.E.
Washington, D.C. 20020
Office: 202-618-9097
bEMA
Leaders don’t create followers, they create
more leaders. Tom Peters
…….The search is on.
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Monday, June 23, 2014
Teens Create A Way To Use Urine As Fuel
Keep in mind the aircraft industry and the achievements from the flight of the Wright Brothers to today.
The knowledge the innovation is there waiting to be harnessed.
BEMA
http://www.forbes.com/sites/matthewdepaula/2012/11/08/teens-create-a-way-to-use-urine-as-fuel/
Teens Create A Way To Use Urine As Fuel
Here’s some news from Africa that will be of interest to all of the people waiting in line for gas to use in their generators after Hurricane Sandy.
Four teenage girls figured out a way to use a liter of urine as fuel to get six hours of electricity from their generator. Fourteen-year-olds Duro-Aina Adebola, Akindele Abiola, and Faleke Oluwatoyin, and 15-year-old Bello Eniola displayed their invention this week at Maker Faire Africa in Lagos, Nigeria, an annual event meant to showcase ingenuity.
Here’s how the urine-powered generator works, as explained by the blog on the makerfaireafrica.comwebsite:
• Urine is put into an electrolytic cell, which separates out the hydrogen.
• The hydrogen goes into a water filter for purification, and then into a gas cylinder, which looks similar to the kind used for outdoor barbecue grills.
• The gas cylinder pushes the filtered hydrogen into another cylinder that contains liquid borax, in order to remove moisture from the gas. Borax is a natural mineral, commonly used in laundry detergent.
• The hydrogen is pushed into a power generator in the final step of the process.
A big drawback is that hydrogen poses an explosion risk. But the girls used one-way valves throughout the device as a safety measure.
The idea of using urine as fuel is not new. The girls have come up with a practical way to put the idea into action, though. Their method for using urine to power a generator is one the average household can appreciate.
Power generators are used far more often in Africa than here, where they are relegated more to emergency use, as in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy. The Maker Faire Africa blog says power outages happen multiple times a day in Lagos, so all those who can afford a backup generator have one.
Still, technology needs to evolve further before such a system is feasible, at least as far as applications like powering generators go.
Gerardine Botte, a professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering at Ohio University, is among those working on practical ways to make urine into a more useful hydrogen source, essentially by turning power into a byproduct of wastewater treatment. She says it takes more energy to extract hydrogen from urine than you end up getting in return as electricity. The energy equation gets even more skewed by the inefficiency of the generator used in the girls’ project.
“At first glance, they’re not having a net gain in energy,” Botte says. “But I think it’s important to say that these little girls, trying to do something like this, deserve a lot of credit.”
The idea behind the humble urine-powered generator is along the lines of Botte’s own thinking, and her research is all about efficient ways to break urine down into its useful components.
Botte’s approach is to use electrolysis of urea as a method of wastewater treatment. She says her process for converting urine into potable water is more cost effective and more energy efficient than current wastewater treatment methods. Pure hydrogen is produced as a byproduct and can be used in generating electricity.
“You cannot get net energy gain, but there is no more efficient way to get clean water from urine,” Botte says.
Botte founded E3 Clean Technologies in 2011 to work on scaling the process for use by municipalities and others.
The U.S. Department of Defense is trying out a portable system from E3 at military bases in remote areas, as both a way to treat wastewater and generate power. The system, which Botte calls GreenBox technology, converts a soldier’s urine into drinking water.
“At forward operating bases, the main needs are water and fuel,” Botte says. “With this project, they’re doing both: using less energy to reutilize water sources.”
So, when put in the context of wastewater treatment, the concept of using urine as a hydrogen source to produce energy has great potential.
Since wastewater treatment plants already collect the raw material needed – urine – extracting hydrogen from it makes sense, Botte says. Doing so could regain some of the vast amounts of energy already being spent all over the world to treat waste.
“You will never get more energy out than you put in,” she says. “But it is a unique and elegant way to treat urine waste, which will allow you to co-generate electricity.”
To give you a sense of how much energy it is possible to recapture from this method of treating urine, Botte offers this:
“At Ohio University, where there are about 22,000 students, if we would collect the urine and produce hydrogen, we would be able to produce enough electricity to perhaps power about 100 to 150 residential houses for a year, continuously.”
Consider that before you dismiss what the enterprising teens did with their own project.
Maybe, as the technology evolves, it could be applied to vehicles someday. Gasoline-powered internal combustion engines can be converted relatively easily to run on hydrogen, which raises the question of whether there is potential for pee-powered cars in the future.