Every year, the frozen Arctic Ocean emerges from winter and thaws under the 24-hour light of the summer sun. Each year is different: sometimes ice retreats from the shores in dramatic fashion and other years have a more gradual melt. 2011 proved to be a year of extreme melt. By early September, the area covered by sea ice in the Arctic Ocean was approaching a record low.
This animation shows the melt during the summer of 2011. (Click the link below the image to download.) The animation was made with measurements taken by the Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer–EOS (AMSR-E) on NASA’s Aquasatellite between March 7 and September 9. The final image in the series, shown above, shows the sea ice at it lowest point so far this season. Most notably, the Northwest Passage, the sea route that threads through the islands of northern Canada to link the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, is entirely ice free. Twice-daily images provide glimpses of the open water in the Northwest Passage throughout September.
The Tabula Rogeriana, drawn by al-Idrisi for Roger II of Sicily in 1154, one of the most advanced ancient world maps. Modern consolidation, created from the 70 double-page spreads of the original atlas. (Note that the north is at the bottom, and so the map appears "upside down")
Abu Abd Allah Muhammad al-Idrisi al-Qurtubi al-Hasani al-Sabti or simply Al Idrisi (Arabic: أبو عبد الله محمد الإدريسي; Latin: Dreses) (1099–1165 or 1166) was a Muslim geographer, cartographer, Egyptologist and traveller who lived in Sicily, at the court of King Roger II. Muhammed al-Idrisi was born in Ceuta then belonging to the Almoravid Empire and died in Sicily. Al Idrisi was a descendent of the Idrisids, who in turn were descendants of Hasan bin Ali, the son of Ali and the grandson of the Islamic prophet Muhammad.[1]
Contents
1 Early life
2 Tabula Rogeriana
3 Nuzhatul Mushtaq
3.1 Publication and translation
3.2 Andalusian-American contact
4 In popular culture
5 See also
6 Notes
7 References
8 Further reading
9 External links
Early life
Al-Idrisi traced his descent through long line of Princes, Caliphs and Sufi leaders, to The Prophet Muhammad. His immediate forebears, the Hammudids (1016–1058), were an offshoot of the Idrisids (789-985).
Al-Idrisi's was born in Ceuta, where his great-grandfather had fled after the fall of Málaga in Al-Andalus (1057). He spent much of his early life travelling through North Africa, and Spain and seems to have acquired a detail information on both regions. He visited Anatolia when he was barely 16. He is known to have studied in Córdoba, and later taught in Constantine, Algeria.
Apparently his travels took him to many parts of Europe including Portugal, the Pyrenees, the French Atlantic coast, Hungary, and Jórvík also known as York, in England.
The World Congress of the OWHC is a unique forum - held every two years, it brings together politicians and professionals who are committed to the preservation of historic cities, particularly those inscribed on UNESCO’s World Heritage List. Since the first meeting in 1991, this event has enabled participants to discuss topics of common interest, to share experiences, and to learn about new strategies for meeting the challenges associated with the conservation and management of World Heritage Cities.
The theme of the XIth World Congress is World Heritage Cities and Climate Change.
World Heritage Cities are vibrant living environments with cultural heritage of outstanding universal value. In the face of climate change, however, World Heritage Cities are among the most vulnerable places on Earth to experience rapidly occurring changes.The site-specific nature of climate change impacts make World Heritage Cities ideal laboratories for monitoring changes and testing adaptation and mitigation measures to enhance their socio-economic well-being while ensuring the conservation of their heritage.
City governments are at the heart of the action. Having conserved their rich heritage over time, World Heritage Cities hold the keys to understanding long-term evolution of a place from the past and on to the future.As guardians of the world’s heritage, World Heritage Cities face an additional challenge - any action taken at these iconic places can attract considerable attention and influence the adoption of good management practices elsewhere. This XIthWorld Congress aims to create a platform for dialogue and exchange of state-of-the-art knowledge on the issue of World Heritage Cities and Climate Change and its transfer into policy and action.
Sufficient clean power can be generated in the world's sunny deserts to supply mankind with enough electricity on a sustainable basis. DESERTEC is an integrated concept which includes energy security and climate protection as well as drinking water production, socio-economic development, security policy and international cooperation.
The DESERTEC Concept "Clean Power from Deserts" was originally developed by a network of politicians, academics and economists around the Mediterranean, from which the DESERTEC Foundation has evolved. The non-profit DESERTEC Foundation promotes the fast implementation of its concept in all suitable regions of the world. In 2009 the DESERTEC Concept gained a lot of attention when the DESERTEC Foundation founded the industrial initiative Dii GmbH together with partners from the industrial and finance sectors. The mission of Dii is to accelerate the implementation of the DESERTEC Concept in the Mediterranean region.
Ecology Courses that are applied in Doğa Schools also enhance the awareness of nature. Ecological production not only requires receiving the crop while working on the soil but also the richness of the soil takes us to other agricultural productions. On one hand students could be watering the fields and on the other hand they would be picking up the products to make a tomato paste, fruit jam or cut some noodles. Our students also learn to make yoghurt, buttermilk with the milk that they have milked from the cows and sheep which live in our barns. Doğa students can eat and also take home their own made products while we usually consume already produced products from supermarkets in school.
History of Doğa Schools
Founded by Fethi Şimşek, Doğa Schools started its educational journey in 2002 with Beykoz Campus, Doğa Schools currently have 12 campuses from kindergarten to high school and 6 exclusive kindergartens in Istanbul and 12 campuses located throughout Turkey; namely Bursa, Ankara, Denizli, Sakarya, Diyarbakır, Batman, Aydın, Antalya, Sanlıurfa, Malatya, Çorlu and Mersin. The number of students has increased to 15000 since 2002 with 1500 staf.
Centre for Ecology Development and Research"Sustaining livelihoods through ecosystems management"
Centre for Ecology Development and Research (CEDAR) is a non-profit organization registered under the Societies Act 1860. CEDAR comprises of a group of academics and development professionals, brought together by shared interest in the Himalayas and issues concerning its ecology and sustainable development.
CEDAR aims to bridge the gap between policy makers and development practitioners by bringing rigor of applied research to the wealth of grassroots understanding of development, environment, livelihoods, and rural communities. CEDAR has a registered office in Delhi and the head office is located in Dehradun.
An Ecology of Mind is an intimate and personal portrait of Gregory Bateson, celebrated anthropologist, philosopher, author, naturalist, and filmmaker. Directed by his daughter Nora Bateson, who will lead a discussion after the screening, this film includes footage from Bateson’s own films shot in the 1930s in Bali with Margaret Mead and in New Guinea along with photographs, filmed lectures, and interviews. Through contemporary interviews, and his words, Bateson reveals her father's practical approaches to the enormous challenges confronting the human race and the natural world.
presented by the Findhorn Foundation in partnership with Global Ecovillage Network and Gaia Education
Based on the Ecovillage Design Curriculum - an official contribution to the United Nations Decade of Education for Sustainable Development.
Facilitated by: Pracha Hutanuwatr - Director, Wongsanit Ashram, Thailand May East - Director, Gaia Education Michael Shaw - Director, Ecovillage International Iain Davidson - Lecturer, Findhorn Foundation and Findhorn Ecovillage experts
You are invited to join this five-week comprehensive training of trainers based on the four core pillars of the Ecovillage Design Curriculum: the social, worldview, ecological and economic dimensions of sustainability.
INTERNATIONAL 100% RENEWABLE ENERGY CONFERENCE AND EXHIBITION
Türkan Saylan Culture Center
6-8 October 2011, Maltepe - ISTANBUL
The dream for an energy supply based on 100% renewable energies is coming true.
The evolutionary developments in technology as well as in legal frameworks together with an increasing public awareness make it possible for the rational use of secure, sustainable and competitively priced renewable energy sources.
Organized by EUROSOLAR Turkey, The Turkish Division of European Association for Renewable Energies annualy to pursue the improvements in the energy end use efficiency and renewable energies, IRENEC, International 100% Renewable Energy Conferences and Exhibitions aim to promote this monumental transformation from fossil fuels to renewable energy sources and to contribute to the 100 percent goal to be reached without nuclear energy or carbon-capture technology.
'That is how they do it, so we cannot criticise it'.
Even out of context, these words from the 10-volume Book of Travels of the great Ottoman Turkish scholar and traveller Evliya Çelebi seem like a useful motto for out times. They sum up the values embodied in the British Council's Our Shared Europe project, which proposes that we, people of many cultural identities who live side-by-side, regard one another with tolerance. The OSE project seeks to show us that we share much in the present, as we have in the past, and that we must re-capture this common ground if we are to have a enjoy a stable future. But first we need to understand one another and the cultures we inhabit. The OSE project has chosen Evliya Çelebi to symbolise this learning process. His is a name familiar to every Turk, for his insatiable curiosity, his spirit of adventure, his openness to whatever came his way, his originality as a recorder of his times—and much more. These qualities are timeless and will serve us well today, as they did Evliya Çelebi as he roamed the world.
Panarchy is a conceptual framework to account for the dual, and seemingly contradictory, characteristics of all complex systems – stability and change. It is the study of how economic growth and human development depend on ecosystems and institutions, and how they interact. It is an integrative framework, bringing together ecological, economic and social models of change and stability, to account for the complex interactions among both these different areas, and different scale levels.
Panarchy’s focus is on management of regional ecosystems, defined in terms of catchments, but it deals with the impact of lower, smaller, faster changing scale levels, as well as the larger, slower supra-regional and global levels. Its goal is to develop the simplest conceptual framework necessary to describe the twin dynamics of change and stability across both disciplines and scale levels.
Systems theory studies the structure and properties of systems in terms of relationships, from which new properties of wholes emerge. It was established as a science by Ludwig von Bertalanffy, Anatol Rapoport, Kenneth E. Boulding, William Ross Ashby, Margaret Mead, Gregory Bateson and others in the 1950's. Systems theory, in its transdisciplinary role, brings together theoretical principles and concepts from ontology, philosophy of science, physics, biology and engineering. Applications are found in numerous fields including geography, sociology, political science, organizational theory, management, psychotherapy and economics amongst others.
The concept of system, though it seems to be intrinsic to human thinking, has been extensively employed and developed over the last few decades, due in a large measure to contributions made by Karl Ludwig von Bertalanffy (1901-1972), a Viennese professor of biology. He worked to identify structural, behavioral and developmental features common to particular classes of living organisms. One approach was to look over the empirical universe and pick out certain general phenomena which are found in many different disciplines, and to seek to build up general theoretical models relevant to these phenomena, e.g., growth, homeostasis, evolution. Another approach was to arrange the empirical fields in a hierarchy of complexity of organization of their basic 'individuality' or units of behavior, and to try to develop a level of abstraction appropriate to each. Examples are generalizations on the levels of cells, simple organs, open self-maintaining organisms, small groups of organisms, society and the universe. The latter approach implies a hierarchical "systems of systems" view of the world.
Dr. Fikret Berkes was the keynote speaker at the recent EALAT seminar on traditional knowledge held in Guovdageaidnu/ Kautokeino, March 2-3, 2008. More info www.ealat.org
Every year, the frozen Arctic Ocean emerges from winter and thaws under the 24-hour light of the summer sun. Each year is different: sometimes ice retreats from the shores in dramatic fashion and other years have a more gradual melt. 2011 proved to be a year of extreme melt. By early September, the area covered by sea ice in the Arctic Ocean was approaching a record low.
City governments are at the heart of the action. Having conserved their rich heritage over time, World Heritage Cities hold the keys to understanding long-term evolution of a place from the past and on to the future.As guardians of the world’s heritage, World Heritage Cities face an additional challenge - any action taken at these iconic places can attract considerable attention and influence the adoption of good management practices elsewhere. This XIthWorld Congress aims to create a platform for dialogue and exchange of state-of-the-art knowledge on the issue of World Heritage Cities and Climate Change and its transfer into policy and action.
presented by the Findhorn Foundation in partnership with Global Ecovillage Network and Gaia Education 
Even out of context, these words from the 10-volume Book of Travels of the great Ottoman Turkish scholar and traveller Evliya Çelebi seem like a useful motto for out times. They sum up the values embodied in the British Council's Our Shared Europe project, which proposes that we, people of many cultural identities who live side-by-side, regard one another with tolerance. The OSE project seeks to show us that we share much in the present, as we have in the past, and that we must re-capture this common ground if we are to have a enjoy a stable future. But first we need to understand one another and the cultures we inhabit. The OSE project has chosen Evliya Çelebi to symbolise this learning process. His is a name familiar to every Turk, for his insatiable curiosity, his spirit of adventure, his openness to whatever came his way, his originality as a recorder of his times—and much more. These qualities are timeless and will serve us well today, as they did Evliya Çelebi as he roamed the world.
Systems theory studies the structure and properties of systems in terms of relationships, from which new properties of wholes emerge. It was established as a science by Ludwig von Bertalanffy, Anatol Rapoport, Kenneth E. Boulding, William Ross Ashby, Margaret Mead, Gregory Bateson and others in the 1950's. Systems theory, in its transdisciplinary role, brings together theoretical principles and concepts from ontology, philosophy of science, physics, biology and engineering. Applications are found in numerous fields including geography, sociology, political science, organizational theory, management, psychotherapy and economics amongst others.
