Piper Thurston

For the nightly "iftar" meal, festive meals traditionally bring families together and there is intense social activity Mosques and market streets teem with evening crowds tempted by the scent of syrupy sweets and hefty rice plates, as more than half a billion Muslims across southern Asia break the day's Ramadan fast. The Islamic holy month began over the weekend and during that time believers abstain from eating, drinking, smoking, and sexual relations between sunrise and sunset. The fast is conceived as a spiritual struggle against the seduction of earthly pleasures -- but for the nightly "iftar" meal, festive meals traditionally bring families together and there is intense social activity. The centuries-old Chawkbazar market in Bangladesh is a traditional centre for evening meet-ups during Ramadan, with hundreds of makeshift food stalls selling traditional grilled meats and delicacies. Huge crowds returned to the neighbourhood on Sunday for the first time since the coronavirus pandemic put a pin in large public gatherings. Traditional dishes are on sale as crowds break the daily fast "I am so happy to see people here," said Ramzan Ali, who has sold barbequed quail at the market for around four decades. "The last two years were painful." Traditional dishes of pakoras and lentil soup were on offer alongside more esoteric fare, like kebabs made from the meat of bull genitalia and the ever-popular fried goat brain served to accompany roast meats and vegetables. "It felt so good to come here again," said businessman Mohammad Ashrafuddin. "Without Chawkabazar's iftar items, I feel like my Ramadan isn't complete." Pakistan's Muslims are also basking in the opportunity to again break fast in company and out from under a Covid crowd, with the government lifting restrictions on public gatherings weeks earlier. Mosques have been lit up with lanterns and nearby markets are bustling as crowds stop for fried sweet pastries and stock up on meals to distribute to the poor. In India, crowds flock to stalls which line a street in the shadow of New Delhi's resplendent Jama Masjid, one of the country's largest houses of worship, snacking on wrinkled dates and seasonal sweet buns baked with infusions of coconut or cherries In India, crowds flock to stalls which line a street in the shadow of New Delhi's resplendent Jama Masjid, one of the country's largest houses of worship, snacking on wrinkled dates and seasonal sweet buns baked with infusions of coconut or cherries. - Subdued celebrations - More subdued evening gatherings are underway in Afghanistan, where people are still reckoning with an acute humanitarian crisis in the wake of last year's US withdrawal and the Taliban's return to power. Cooks prepare food at a shop in a market on the first day of the holy fasting month of Ramadan in Peshawar The most popular fast-breaking local dish is Kabuli pulao -- rice sprinkled with saffron and mixed with dry fruits, especially black raisins. Special spicy pickles and jalebis -- a calorific sphere of deep-fried batter soaked in sugary syrup -- are also relished by families during their evening meals after breaking the dawn-to-dusk fast. But many have been forced to keep their purchases to a bare minimum this year on account of the country's food shortage. "For the first time I'm seeing that food prices have risen so much in Ramadan," Kabul resident Shahbuddin told AFP on the weekend. "People were expecting that in an Islamic country prices would drop during Ramadan, but that has not happened." Ramadan is sacred to Muslims because tradition says the Koran was revealed to the Prophet Mohammed during that month Islam is the second-largest religion in South Asia after Hinduism, and the region is home to around a third of the faith's adherents. Ramadan is sacred to Muslims because tradition says the Koran was revealed to the Prophet Mohammed during that month. The global observance draws to a close with the Eid al-Fitr festival, a celebration marked with prayers and feasts. If you beloved this post and you would like to acquire much more info relating to Esoteric Science kindly pay a visit to our own website.

By Andy Home LONDON, July 26 (Reuters) - Scandium sits in the shadows of the periodic table. Even by the esoteric standards of other critical minerals, the soft, silvery metal with the atomic number 21 is something of an enigma. The global market is thought to be somewhere between 15 and 25 tonnes in size, but no one is very sure. Production is potentially a lot higher. It's difficult to say, however, since much of it is in China and production is always as a by-product of other metals. Russia used scandium-aluminium alloys in its MIG fighter jets as early as the 1980s. It, too, has scandium production. The United States, by contrast, has been wholly reliant on imports in recent years. It is typical of scandium's opacity that the United States Geological Survey (USGS) says there is "no definitive data" on suppliers. Imports are "thought to be mostly from Europe, China, Japan and Russia", the USGS says. It's not hard to see why scandium is on the U.S. critical minerals list. It turns out, though, that Rio Tinto has been producing scandium all along at its titanium operations over the Canadian border. But the metal now deemed critical was going with other waste into a tailings pond. The company has now worked out how to extract scandium oxide from the titanium processing stream, making it North America's sole producer. Rio Tinto has just performed the same trick for another critical mineral - tellurium - at its copper smelter in Utah. Mine and processing waste is fast emerging as a new frontier for critical metals supply. THE 'IF' METAL Scandium, according to the Minor Metals Trade Association (MMTA), has long been considered an "if" metal. ("Scandium emerges from the shadows" website April 5, 2022) If only there were enough supply, particularly Western supply, manufacturers would have exploited its qualities as an alloying agent with aluminium. Throw a tiny amount of scandium into the aluminium melt and you get 10-15% weight reduction, higher strength, greater flexibility and resistance to thermal shock. All characteristics that make it perfect for high-performance aircraft or aerospace applications. However, for want of accessible supply, scandium-aluminium alloys have been confined to niche Western products such as baseball bats and lacrosse sticks. Rio Tinto Fer et Titane will change that by ramping up its commercial-scale demonstration plant in Quebec to nameplate capacity of three tonnes a year, which may not sound much but is equivalent to about a fifth of global supply. The project took less than two years from drawing board to commercial demonstration, needs no extra mining and comes with a low carbon footprint. TURNING SLIME INTO SOLAR PANELS Tellurium is another critical mineral headache for the United States. Import reliance is more than 95%, the USGS says. China is the world's dominant producer, extracting tellurium from metallic waste streams. Global production was only 580 tonnes in 2021, according to Rio Tinto. Lying on what the MMTA describes as "the boundary of metals and non-metals", tellurium demand is spread across a broad spectrum of specialist applications. However, its use via cadmium telluride in solar panels makes it an important and fast-growing energy transition metal. First Solar, the largest U.S. photovoltaic panel producer, will be a customer of Rio Tinto's Kennecott copper smelter-refinery in Utah. The tellurium was previously part of Kennecott's anode slime waste stream, destined for treatment and long-term storage. Now it will be converted into copper-tellurium at a rate of 20 tonnes a year before being sent to Canada's 5N Plus for refining and onward supply to First Solar. 5N Plus will also use some of the material for ultra-high purity semiconductor materials at its Utah facility. Kennecott's new tellurium circuit cost only $2.9 million and took less than three years to build after the local team started measuring sufficiently high concentrations in the copper ore in 2019. TOTAL MINING Both these projects are transformative, de-risking two of the United States' critical mineral supply chains. Neither requires an extra tonne of mined rock, obviating the need to engage in what is often a tortuous planning and authorisation process. They are examples of a new industry trend towards so called whole-concept mining, also known as total mining, broadening a historical focus on one or two primary products to potentially everything of metallic value in the ore being mined and processed. "Kennecott's tellurium plant is the latest example of work we're doing globally to minimise waste by finding a use for every material we dig from the ground or creating new products from the waste itself," Rio Tinto says. Producers the world over are going back to their processing sheets to understand better what they have previously been throwing in the waste pond. Russian aluminium producer Rusal, for instance, has found its own way of making scandium from the "red mud" waste generated in the alumina refining process. It launched its ScAlution range of scandium alloys last year, aspiring to capture a share of a market that could grow to 300,000 tonnes a year by 2035 thanks to improved supply. The next big waste-to-minerals challenge is lithium, the metal that sits at the very heart of the green energy transition. Rio Tinto is working on a project to produce lithium from 90 years of waste accumulated at its Boron mine site in California and others are following the same path, targeting old coal-mining districts as a potential source of lithium and other energy transition metals such as cobalt and manganese. The USGS has been tasked with mapping and collecting data for areas containing mine waste "to increase understanding of above-ground critical mineral resources in previously disturbed areas". It's not only a highly cost-effective way of closing the country's critical minerals gaps, but also a way of closing the green-on-green divisions that cause every new energy transition metals mine to run into fierce environmental opposition. The green future, it turns out, can be achieved at least in part by cleaning up the mining legacy of the past. Andy Home is a Reuters market analyst. The views expressed are his own. (Editing by David Goodman) If you loved this write-up and you would like to get far more information concerning Esoteric Science kindly visit our own web site.

By Daniel Trotta Sept 19 (Reuters) - Book bans accelerated across the United States during the 2021-2022 school year, largely through the efforts of organized groups that called on public schools to remove more than 1,600 titles, the writers' group PEN America said on Monday. There were 2,532 instances of individual book bans affecting 1,648 titles at 5,000 schools with 4 million students, according to the report. The research found 1,000 more book bans than were documented in the group's initial report released in April. PEN America said the rapid rise came as a growing number of groups have targeted books dealing with race or LGBTQ issues. The report identified at least 50 groups active in pushing for book bans, the vast majority of which have formed since 2021. "This rapidly accelerating movement has resulted in more and more students losing access to literature that equips them to meet the challenges and complexities of democratic citizenship," said Jonathan Friedman, lead author of the report. While proponents of book bans emphasize the importance of parental control, PEN America said the movement has gone beyond the normal give-and-take between parents and educators and morphed into a sophisticated and well-resourced campaign. One group identified by PEN America mobilized against a school district that taught about transgender identities, the report said. Another emphasizes the dangers of critical race theory, an esoteric field of study in law school or graduate school. Opponents have leveraged concerns over CRT to suppress works about the history of slavery, desegregation and the civil rights movement. More than 40% of the banned titles address lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer themes or have prominent queer characters. The most frequently banned book was "Gender Queer: A Memoir" by Maia Kobabe, which was banned by 41 school districts. Race also drew the attention of censors, with 40% of the banned titles featuring prominent character of color. The most banned authors include the late Nobel laureate Toni Morrison, whose works largely deal with race, and other winners of prestigious literary awards. Other banned books touched on sexual content, rights and activism, or stories with religious minorities. Texas accounted for the most bans, with 801 in 22 districts, followed by Florida and Pennsylvania. (Reporting by Daniel Trotta; editing by Diane Craft) Here's more info regarding Outline of Esoteric review our web-site.

By Andy Home LONDON, July 26 (Reuters) - Scandium sits in the shadows of the periodic table. Even by the esoteric standards of other critical minerals, the soft, silvery metal with the atomic number 21 is something of an enigma. The global market is thought to be somewhere between 15 and 25 tonnes in size, but no one is very sure. Production is potentially a lot higher. It's difficult to say, however, since much of it is in China and production is always as a by-product of other metals. Russia used scandium-aluminium alloys in its MIG fighter jets as early as the 1980s. It, too, has scandium production. The United States, by contrast, has been wholly reliant on imports in recent years. It is typical of scandium's opacity that the United States Geological Survey (USGS) says there is "no definitive data" on suppliers. Imports are "thought to be mostly from Europe, China, Japan and Russia", the USGS says. It's not hard to see why scandium is on the U.S. critical minerals list. It turns out, though, that Rio Tinto has been producing scandium all along at its titanium operations over the Canadian border. But the metal now deemed critical was going with other waste into a tailings pond. The company has now worked out how to extract scandium oxide from the titanium processing stream, making it North America's sole producer. Rio Tinto has just performed the same trick for another critical mineral - tellurium - at its copper smelter in Utah. Mine and processing waste is fast emerging as a new frontier for critical metals supply. THE 'IF' METAL Scandium, according to the Minor Metals Trade Association (MMTA), has long been considered an "if" metal. ("Scandium emerges from the shadows" website April 5, 2022) If only there were enough supply, particularly Western supply, manufacturers would have exploited its qualities as an alloying agent with aluminium. Throw a tiny amount of scandium into the aluminium melt and you get 10-15% weight reduction, higher strength, greater flexibility and resistance to thermal shock. All characteristics that make it perfect for high-performance aircraft or aerospace applications. However, for want of accessible supply, scandium-aluminium alloys have been confined to niche Western products such as baseball bats and lacrosse sticks. Rio Tinto Fer et Titane will change that by ramping up its commercial-scale demonstration plant in Quebec to nameplate capacity of three tonnes a year, which may not sound much but is equivalent to about a fifth of global supply. The project took less than two years from drawing board to commercial demonstration, needs no extra mining and comes with a low carbon footprint. TURNING SLIME INTO SOLAR PANELS Tellurium is another critical mineral headache for the United States. Import reliance is more than 95%, the USGS says. China is the world's dominant producer, extracting tellurium from metallic waste streams. Global production was only 580 tonnes in 2021, according to Rio Tinto. Lying on what the MMTA describes as "the boundary of metals and non-metals", tellurium demand is spread across a broad spectrum of specialist applications. However, its use via cadmium telluride in solar panels makes it an important and fast-growing energy transition metal. First Solar, the largest U.S. photovoltaic panel producer, will be a customer of Rio Tinto's Kennecott copper smelter-refinery in Utah. The tellurium was previously part of Kennecott's anode slime waste stream, destined for treatment and long-term storage. Now it will be converted into copper-tellurium at a rate of 20 tonnes a year before being sent to Canada's 5N Plus for refining and onward supply to First Solar. 5N Plus will also use some of the material for ultra-high purity semiconductor materials at its Utah facility. Kennecott's new tellurium circuit cost only $2.9 million and took less than three years to build after the local team started measuring sufficiently high concentrations in the copper ore in 2019. TOTAL MINING Both these projects are transformative, de-risking two of the United States' critical mineral supply chains. Neither requires an extra tonne of mined rock, obviating the need to engage in what is often a tortuous planning and authorisation process. They are examples of a new industry trend towards so called whole-concept mining, also known as total mining, broadening a historical focus on one or two primary products to potentially everything of metallic value in the ore being mined and processed. "Kennecott's tellurium plant is the latest example of work we're doing globally to minimise waste by finding a use for every material we dig from the ground or creating new products from the waste itself," Rio Tinto says. Producers the world over are going back to their processing sheets to understand better what they have previously been throwing in the waste pond. Russian aluminium producer Rusal, for instance, has found its own way of making scandium from the "red mud" waste generated in the alumina refining process. It launched its ScAlution range of scandium alloys last year, aspiring to capture a share of a market that could grow to 300,000 tonnes a year by 2035 thanks to improved supply. The next big waste-to-minerals challenge is lithium, the metal that sits at the very heart of the green energy transition. Rio Tinto is working on a project to produce lithium from 90 years of waste accumulated at its Boron mine site in California and others are following the same path, targeting old coal-mining districts as a potential source of lithium and other energy transition metals such as cobalt and manganese. The USGS has been tasked with mapping and collecting data for areas containing mine waste "to increase understanding of above-ground critical mineral resources in previously disturbed areas". It's not only a highly cost-effective way of closing the country's critical minerals gaps, but also a way of closing the green-on-green divisions that cause every new energy transition metals mine to run into fierce environmental opposition. The green future, it turns out, can be achieved at least in part by cleaning up the mining legacy of the past. Andy Home is a Reuters market analyst. The views expressed are his own. (Editing by David Goodman) If you loved this information and you would want to receive details about Outline of Esoteric generously visit our web site.