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In southern Bolivia, there is a mountain called Cerro Rico—"the hill of wealth." It is a pale, bald rock, crisscrossed with dirt roads that climb the slope like shoelaces. More than four thousand mining tunnels have so thoroughly riddled its interior that the mountain is in danger of collapse. Its base is ringed with slums that spill into the old city of Potosí, a World Heritage site. Evo Morales, the President of Bolivia, recently told me that he and his countrymen see Potosí as "a symbol of plunder, of exploitation, of humiliation." The city represents a might-have-been Bolivia: a country that had capitalized on its astounding mineral wealth to become a major industrial power. Such a Bolivia could easily have been imagined in 1611, when Potosí was one of the biggest cities in the world, with a hundred and eighty thousand inhabitants—roughly the size of London at the time. Although Potosí began as a mining town, with the saloons and gaming houses that accompany men on the frontier, it soon had magnificent churches and theatres, and more than a dozen dance academies. From the middle of the sixteenth century until the middle of the seventeenth, half the silver produced in the New World came from Cerro Rico. Carlos Mesa, a historian who served as Bolivia's President from 2003 to 2005, told me, "It was said throughout the Spanish empire, 'This is worth a Potosí,' when speaking of luck or riches." Potosí is now one of the poorest places in what has long been one of the poorest countries in South America.
Across the divide of the industrial revolution, there is another city whose promise of greatness now lies in ruins: Detroit. Even before the Curved Dash Oldsmobile rolled off the assembly line, in 1901, becoming the first mass-produced American car, Detroit was a showplace of labor, its huge factories producing iron, copper, freight cars, ships, pharmaceuticals, and beer. Following Oldsmobile's lead, carmakers such as Ford, Packard, and Cadillac transformed the American economy. But Detroit's triumph was remarkably short-lived. The city is half the size it was fifty years ago. Two of the Big Three carmakers, General Motors and Chrysler, went bankrupt in 2009, and all of them have cut their workforces drastically. Unemployment in Detroit is at fifteen per cent; the murder rate is the fourth highest in the country; and about a third of its citizens live in poverty. An estimated seventy thousand structures—houses, churches, factories, even skyscrapers—stand empty, many of them vandalized or burned. Parts of town are being farmed. Like Bolivia, Detroit is hoping for a second chance. And both of them are looking to a treasure that could revive their fortunes, and, incidentally, lead the world to a cleaner environment. That treasure is lithium.
The lightest of any solid element, lithium has, until now, played a modest role in industry. Silvery in color, and softer than lead, it has been used mainly as an alloy of aluminum, a base for automobile grease, and in the production of glass and ceramics. It is so unstable that it is never found in its pure form in nature. Lithium floats on water—or, rather, it skitters wildly about, trailing a vapor cloud of hydrogen, until it dissolves. Oddly, given its frantically reactive nature, lithium has powerful tranquillizing effects; it has long been used as a drug to treat mood disorders, especially mania. In the nineteen-fifties, the U.S. government created a market for lithium when an isotope of the metal turned out to be useful in building thermonuclear weapons. But demand for lithium, which has corrosive qualities, along with a tendency to spontaneously ignite, otherwise languished. That suddenly changed with the proliferation of cell phones and laptop computers; lithium is ideal for making lightweight batteries. Now, with the emergence of electric cars, lithium could challenge petroleum as the dominant fuel of the future. And nearly half the world's known resources are buried beneath vast salt flats in southwestern Bolivia, the largest of which is called the Salar de Uyuni. Bolivians have begun to speak of their country becoming "the Saudi Arabia of lithium."
Yet it's not clear that Bolivia is capable of making money off its trove. Morales, who is closely aligned with the populist socialism of Hugo Chávez, the President of Venezuela, is prone to revolutionary declarations: "Either capitalism dies or else Planet Earth dies." Such rhetoric tends to scare away the kind of foreign investment that would facilitate the development of the Salar. Then there is Bolivia's lack of infrastructure: electricity, water, and gas are sparsely distributed, and few of the country's roads are paved. Before Bolivia can hope to exploit a twenty-first-century fuel, it must first develop the rudiments of a twentieth-century economy.
The Salar is approached from a single-lane dirt road that winds down from the Andes, twisting through bright canyons and dry plains where llamas and vicuñas graze. Flamingos high-step through shallow ponds. Until recently, glaciers covered Bolivia's mountaintops, but global warming has caused much of the ice to recede, diminishing the country's water supply. Just outside Uyuni, a mud-brick town perched on the perimeter of the salt flat, the scrubby landscape fills with litter, and colorful plastic shopping bags flutter in the branches of queñua trees.
Entering the town, you encounter a welcoming committee of baying dogs. The local airport has been closed for years. Uyuni, which has a population of ten thousand, is only two hundred miles from the Pacific Ocean, but for more than a century Bolivia's access to the sea has been blocked by its historic enemy, Chile. The country is landlocked and isolated—"an island surrounded by land," as Fernando Molina, a journalist and one of Bolivia's best-known intellectuals, described it to me. "A third of the country is above three thousand metres, and the rest lies below, at a really strong pitch. Our capacity to transport things is terrible. The geography makes it hard to produce anything, because we can't move it."
The Salar looks like a frozen sea. Blindingly white and covering four thousand square miles—twice the size of Delaware—the Salar is visible from the moon. (Neil Armstrong mistook it for a giant glacier.) One legend among local Indians is that the Salar was created when the goddess of a nearby volcano angrily pulled her baby from her breast, and her milk, mixed with her tears, spilled forth. The Indians, who are mostly Quechua or Aymara, use the salt to make bricks and to feed their animals. Occasionally, a llama caravan carries salt to cattle herds in the Bolivian lowlands. In the brief rainy season, a motionless sheet of water covers the salt flat, forming an endless mirror of the sky. Each winter, interlocking polygonal crystals, resembling oversized bathroom tiles, form on the salt flat's surface. Underneath the thick crust is a layer of brine, where dissolved lithium is found.
For years, the Salar has been a destination for adventure travellers, but there has been little else to support the region's economy. "We've known since 1985 about the lithium," Francisco Quisbert, the head of the campesino federation in Uyuni, told me. The campesinos in the area repeatedly petitioned the government to mine the Salar, and in 1990 President Jaime Paz Zamora agreed, in principle, to a multiyear contract with the Lithium Corporation of America (now F.M.C. Corporation), which would have allowed the company to take all the lithium it could, giving Bolivia only eight per cent of the profits. Many Bolivians were outraged over the deal. When campesinos launched a campaign against it, the Lithium Corporation announced that it was setting up its operations in Argentina, a country that also has lithium reserves. "Everyone blamed us, saying we lost an opportunity and it was the only one," Quisbert recalled, then cited a Spanish proverb: "They said we were 'the gardener's dog'—we can't eat, so we won't let others eat, either."
Eric Norris, an executive at the mining company, told me that Bolivia was initially considered because of the vastness of its lithium deposits, but that the initiative soon "became undoable." He explained that, in addition to concerns about the lack of infrastructure and the difficulty of extracting products from the Salar, "the political environment was not favorable."
In 2005, Morales became the President of Bolivia. Once again, the campesinos came forward with a proposal for mining the Salar. Morales agreed to set up a pilot project for extracting and processing the metal. This time, he promised, Bolivians would remain in charge. As he has put it, "The state will never lose sovereignty when it comes to lithium."
Marcelo Castro, the head engineer of the pilot project, drove me to see one of the test sites in the Salar. He wore wraparound sunglasses to block the glare; the whiteness of the landscape was interrupted only by jagged Andean peaks, on the horizon. "The lithium can be processed economically, because we use the evaporative process," Castro told me as we walked across the Salar in hiking boots, the salt crunching underfoot. There was a pickup truck and a steamroller; they looked like children's toys left on a sprawling beach. Nearby was a kind of Toonerville Trolley, where the workers at this remote research station were living. A shallow square pool had been cut into the salt crust and flooded with milky blue brine. Left exposed to the wind and the sun, the brine would turn into a pile of manganese, potassium, borax, and lithium salts, which would then be filtered and placed into another pool, then another. After about a year and a half, it would be possible for lithium carbonate to be chemically separated from the remaining elements. The process was overseen by a ministry of "evaporative resources." Castro, an expansive and passionate man with wild flowing hair, who repeatedly stopped to marvel at the progress that had been made, said that the project would eventually involve about thirty acres of such pools. "Before, the pilot plant was a dream," he said. "Now it is being lived."
The pilot project is a crucial test for the government, but it is only a portion of what Morales has promised. Early one morning last November, I joined the President on the campaign trail; he was running for reëlection. (On December 6th, he won, by an overwhelming margin.) Morales was headed to the northeastern province of Beni, in the Amazon basin. He normally flies in a twenty-year-old Fokker passenger plane, but today he was taking the Vice-Presidential craft, a six-seater that could land on the short dirt strips where we would be alighting. The little plane rose over La Paz, the capital, which nestles high on an Andean slope. The mountains quickly fell away as we flew over the largely trackless interior. Morales, looking out the window, vowed that the Salar "cannot be another Cerro Rico." Bolivia, he said, would no longer export its raw materials without benefitting from the additional value that the industrialized world gained from them. Not only would the country mine and process lithium on its own; it would also make batteries—and, eventually, cars. "From this brine, there will be lithium cars coming out of Bolivia," Morales told me. "This is the dream. Without dreams, what's anything worth? Dreams become reality."
The battery, which was invented in 1800 by Alessandro Volta, is a seemingly simple device. It is typically composed of two differently charged electrodes—an anode and a cathode—immersed in an electrolyte, a material that allows a current to flow between them. When you switch on a battery, you complete a circuit that allows negatively charged electrons to flow from the anode toward the cathode, generating energy.
For decades, cars have contained lead-acid batteries, which power the ignition and the electrical systems. Such batteries can also propel an electric car, but they are bulky and, compared with gasoline, pack less punch. A decade ago, G.M. produced an electric car, the EV1, which used twenty-six linked lead-acid batteries; the car had to recharge every seventy miles. A second version, using a nickel-based battery, extended the range to a hundred and ten miles, but the battery was extremely heavy.
Another option was lithium, which is eight times lighter than nickel. In the nineteen-seventies, scientists at Exxon had developed a battery that had an anode of lithium aluminum oxide and a cathode of titanium disulfide. The battery was relatively weak, and there were some mishaps in the lab. "They had a few explosions, and decided to get out of the alternative-energy business," John Goodenough, a material scientist at the University of Texas, recalls. Goodenough decided to give the lithium-ion battery a try. He built a prototype, using lithium cobalt oxide as the cathode, and it provided double the energy of any other similar-sized battery.
In 1991, Sony used Goodenough's insights to produce the first commercial lithium-ion battery, provoking a revolution in the consumer-electronics industry. An early cell phone, the Motorola DynaTAC, weighed twenty-eight ounces when it appeared, in 1983, and allowed only thirty minutes of talk time per charge. In 1996, using lithium-ion technology, Motorola introduced the StarTAC, weighing three ounces and lasting an hour. Lithium-ion batteries soon became standard in laptops and P.D.A.s.
In the past decade, lithium technology has migrated to the auto industry. In 2006, a group of California entrepreneurs unveiled the Tesla Roadster, a sports car fuelled by a battery consisting, essentially, of sixty-eight hundred lithium-ion laptop batteries. The Roadster can travel two hundred and fifty miles on a single charge, and accelerate from zero to sixty in under four seconds. More recently, G.M. has staked its future on the Chevrolet Volt, a hybrid with a lithium-ion battery, which goes on sale later this year.
Although lithium-ion batteries are certainly lighter than their lead-acid and nickel-based competitors, they are still large and heavy. The Volt battery pack, for example, is six feet nine inches long, and weighs nearly four hundred pounds. "It's the size of an interior lineman!" Larry Burns, a former vice-president of research and development at G.M., said.
The reactivity of lithium poses another challenge for carmakers. Since 2003, the Consumer Product Safety Commission has recorded hundreds of cases of lithium-ion batteries in portable electronics catching fire, although nobody seems to have been seriously injured in such an incident. (In 2004, a plane carrying John Edwards, who was running for President, made an emergency stop after a television camera blew up onboard.) Joe LoGrasso, who oversees the development of batteries for G.M.'s hybrid and electric vehicles, acknowledges that "safety is an issue." He recently led me through G.M.'s battery-testing lab. Precise manufacturing is critical, he said, because impurities can cause the battery to short-circuit: "Any moisture inside the cell poses a danger—also particles of dust." He says he is confident that the Volt battery is safe, having subjected it to more than a hundred and fifty different stresses. "We've taken cells and crushed them, shot them, set them on fire," LoGrasso said.
Although electric cars are cheap to operate—about two cents a mile, compared with about twelve cents for gasoline-powered vehicles—the batteries are expensive. G.M. won't reveal how much it costs to make its battery, but various sources calculate the cost at roughly a thousand dollars per kilowatt hour; that adds up to sixteen thousand dollars for the Volt pack. "We're trying to get down to three hundred dollars per kilowatt hour," Britta Gross, another G.M. executive, told me. The Volt will likely go on sale for forty thousand dollars, but government tax incentives for alternative-energy vehicles could cut the price by seventy-five hundred dollars.
Toyota recently announced that a "plug-in" Prius, employing a lithium-ion battery, will be available this fall. Nissan and Mitsubishi have announced plans for plug-in vehicles, as have Mercedes-Benz, BMW, and Hyundai. In 2011, Ford plans to sell an all-electric version of the Focus. China, meanwhile, has said that by the end of next year it will have the capacity to build half a million hybrid and plug-in vehicles annually. "All these vehicles use lithium ion," Ted Miller, a Ford senior manager, told me. "We don't think about electric vehicles using anything else."
In January, G.M. opened a new plant in Detroit devoted to assembling lithium-ion batteries. Although the facility will employ only about a hundred workers, it was greeted as a harbinger of salvation. John Dingell, the Michigan congressman, declared, "The United States, Michigan, General Motors, and the American auto industry are back."
Despite the auto industry's excitement about electric cars, the prospects of such vehicles remain uncertain. Last year, the Energy Department reported that lithium-ion batteries remained too expensive, and too heavy for the amount of energy they produced. The massive Volt battery pack, for instance, is designed to propel the car forty miles before an internal-combustion engine kicks in—that's about as far as a Honda Civic can travel on a single gallon of gas. Until electric cars can match the range and the power of gasoline-powered vehicles, they will probably remain a niche market for affluent urbanites.
Still, scientists are already pushing lithium technology in new directions. Researchers at I.B.M. are working on a "lithium-air" battery. Instead of being sealed in a container, the lithium remains open to the air, enlisting oxygen as a cathode, much as zinc hearing-aid batteries do. Such a scheme makes the battery significantly lighter.
I recently visited an I.B.M. lab, outside San Jose, California, where a team of scientists were conducting tests on experimental versions of the battery that they hope will change the world. Sally Swanson, a chemist, showed me a lithium-air battery that had been constructed inside what looked like plastic garden-hose couplings. She held up a dime-size black disk. "This is the cathode—I paint the carbon on, it's real high-tech," she said, with a laugh. "Then I cook it on a hot plate." Because the carbon is porous, air passes into it. "Then we put a little piece of glass filter paper on top of the cathode, and on top of that we put the lithium"—a silvery disk. All of this was assembled while argon, an inert gas, streamed through the assembly. "Then we close it up and switch the gas to oxygen," she said, turning a switch on top.
Swanson had six prototypes running on pure oxygen, and one on air. The air version had less capacity. "Today is foggy, with high humidity, so we don't expect it to last as long," Swanson said. "The moisture reacts with the lithium and kills it." One possible solution to this problem is to create a membrane that can separate oxygen from other constituents in the air.
The battery team is using supercomputers to model countless combinations of electrolytes, catalysts, and electrodes, in order to optimize chemical reactions. The scientists are also using nanotechnology to make the surface area of the cathode denser, which will increase the number of reactions, theoretically making the battery much more powerful.
Winfried Wilcke, the battery team's chief, estimates that it will take at least a decade to make a lithium battery that could conceivably supplant the gas station. "We will spend three years looking for showstoppers," he said. "By the middle of the decade, we should have a pretty spectacular demo." If such efforts succeed, the world will eventually be running on lithium.
One of the famous paradoxes of economics is the curse of natural resources. Countries that are abundantly supplied with great mineral wealth tend to be poorly developed, impoverished, and politically oppressed. The members of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), for instance, include some of the most troubled states in the world, such as Iran, Iraq, Libya, Nigeria, Angola, Saudi Arabia, and Venezuela. Bolivia has its own chaotic political history, and a long tradition of failing to use its wealth to develop its infrastructure or to provide decent training and education for its citizens. "This dependence on natural resources has always brought us poverty," Fernando Molina, the Bolivian journalist, lamented. "When we sell our raw materials, we have a wave of money and a conflict over who controls it. We create cycles of élites." Bolivia has extreme income disparity and virtually no industrial base. As Pablo Salón, the Bolivian Ambassador to the United Nations, put it, "We even have to import nails." Evo Morales promised to change all that.
On the plane flight, I asked him how lithium would be different from the other natural resources that Bolivia had failed to profit from. "Those resources were taken over, they were owned," he said, meaning that they were in private hands. "Now the state is the owner, and we are starting to industrialize in order to gain the benefits." Morales said that since he nationalized the Bolivian hydrocarbon industry, in 2006, the state had gained more than two billion dollars in annual revenue. The approach, though popular with Morales's base, is seen by many economists as shortsighted: the foreign gas companies that developed the Bolivian natural-gas fields, after their discovery, in 2000, have experienced dramatic declines in their profit margins, leaving in doubt their future investment in the country. Bolivia's neighbors, meanwhile, have turned to more reliable sources of natural gas. In the past year, the price of Bolivia's gas has dropped substantially. Carlos Mesa, the former Bolivian President, says that gas production has fallen to the point that the country is now importing it. "We produce less and less," he said, calling the situation "a disaster."
Morales defended his actions by pointing out that the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, alarmed by Bolivia's budget deficit, had hectored the previous Administration to raise taxes. "And there were public uprisings, just to reduce the deficit!" he said. "Now there aren't high taxes or special gasoline taxes. Salaries have increased like never before for health-care workers and teachers." (The average teacher's salary has risen by forty per cent.) "Now we have a fiscal surplus—and that's since the first year of our government. All we did was nationalize petroleum and gas to produce results." He failed to mention that Bolivia's deficit reduction derives in part from international lenders forgiving debts. Some of the money from gas revenues has gone to subsidize school lunches, to create a form of social security for the elderly, and to provide incentives for mothers to keep their children in school; but much of it has stayed in government coffers, which pleases international lenders. The government reports that poverty rates have fallen substantially and that worker productivity has increased.
Morales said that nationalization will also work with the lithium industry. "After petroleum and natural gas, lithium is very important to the economy," he said. "But the moment we begin to develop the industrialization of lithium it will become the most important."
When Morales's pilot project in the Salar began, many companies involved in the development of lithium technology expressed interest in mining the salt flat. Bolivian officials held preliminary talks with representatives of L.G., the Korean conglomerate, which is building the Volt battery for G.M. And in 2006 Morales visited France, where the billionaire industrialist Vincent Bolloré took him for a ride in a BlueCar—a small, bubble-shaped electric vehicle that Bolloré plans to produce in partnership with France's electrical utility. Morales wanted to see how such cars are made. According to Morales, Bolloré told him, "It's you who controls the raw materials for the twenty-first and twenty-second centuries. You're like Saudi Arabia"—a familiar refrain. But Morales doesn't want his country to become Saudi Arabia; he wants it to become France, an industrial power.
I asked Morales how, given the miserable state of Bolivia's infrastructure, such a transformation could be accomplished. "We have organized a scientific committee in the Ministry of Mining to carry out research," he said. The committee will bring together "foreigners and Bolivians" to determine how best to recover the natural resources and begin the process of industrialization. He told me that he expected Bolivia to be making lithium-ion batteries later this year. Automobile production, he added confidently, would come in another "five or six years."
Morales, who is fifty, is a creature of his biography. His nationalist approach to developing the Salar, and his politics in general, are representative of many poor, indigenous Bolivians, who for centuries have lived on the margins of their society, and are determined to end the pattern of exploitation. Morales was born in an Aymara village, in the Altiplano. He grew up in an adobe hut with a thatched roof, where he lived with his parents and the two siblings out of seven who survived beyond the age of two. He began selling popsicles on the street before he was five, and at nine he joined his father in the cane fields of Argentina. As a young teen-ager, he herded llamas on the plains outside the city of Cochabamba, and taught himself to play soccer with a ball made from rags. Along the roadside, he used to collect orange and banana peels that people had thrown from passing buses. "I gathered them to eat," he says, in a campaign leaflet. "Since then, it was one of my major aspirations to ride in some of these buses."
Like many poorly educated Bolivians of his generation, Morales had few opportunities for employment. Being an Indian was also a barrier. "My mother, for instance, she couldn't walk in the plaza," Morales said. "She didn't have the right to walk on the sidewalks." To have become President, he says, is "historic, incredible."
Before entering politics, Morales made his reputation as a fearless and canny leader of the coca growers' union, an office that he still holds. Like many of his countrymen, he has a mystical attachment to coca, which Bolivians have traditionally chewed as a mild stimulant. In his Presidential office, there are two portraits—one of himself, the other of Che Guevara—that are fashioned out of coca leaves. On the plane trip, Juan Ramón Quintana, Morales's chief of staff at the time, explained to me, "Coca is a link between human beings and nature. It helps the community relate to itself."
As a coca grower, Morales was an aggressive opponent of the U.S. drug-eradication policy in the Andes and, particularly, of the Drug Enforcement Agency. Before the agency began a forceful intervention in Bolivia, in the eighties, the country was verging on becoming a narco state. Corrupt military leaders ran the country and openly reaped profits from the drug trade. The D.E.A. gained a reputation for supporting brutal reprisals, however. In 1988, police trained by the D.E.A. and the U.S. military raided a village and were accused of wounding more than a hundred coca growers and killing twelve of them. The following year, Morales delivered an address commemorating the killings. Afterward, the cops beat him up and threw him down a mountain, leaving him for dead.
"One of his greatest fears was the presence of the D.E.A.," Fernando Molina told me. "Sometimes he dreams that the D.E.A. is out to get him." Morales doesn't carry luggage when he travels outside the country, fearing that the drug agency will plant incriminating narcotics in his suitcase. (An aide takes his clothes on a separate flight.) "The D.E.A. doesn't understand the Bolivian people," Morales told me.
In 2008, after President George W. Bush placed Bolivia and Venezuela on a blacklist, saying that neither country was doing enough to combat drug trafficking, Morales and Chávez expelled their respective American Ambassadors. Morales then expelled the D.E.A. Talks are now being held to restore diplomatic relations between Bolivia and the U.S. "There will be rules that will set a new standard for bilateral relations with the United States," Morales told me. "You're not going to see a relationship of subjugation."
I asked Morales how he planned to insure that the drug trade didn't once again corrupt Bolivian society. "Social control," he said, vaguely. He said that new government regulations, such as restricting the size of the plot that coca growers can claim, and the modernization of law enforcement would keep narcotraffickers at bay. Morales told me that when he retires—a prospect he clearly saw as quite remote—he hopes to return to his own coca plot, which is in the tropical Chapare region of Bolivia, and resume tending his crop.
In the meantime, Morales has allied himself with the most conspicuously anti-American leaders in the world. In addition to his alliance with Hugo Chávez, he is friendly with Fidel Castro, of Cuba, and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the Iranian President. Ahmadinejad visited La Paz in November to announce a joint project to study lithium technology. "I'm a big admirer of you and your people," Morales told him. "Our people have the mandate to liberate ourselves from the empires."
Molina said of Morales, "Evo is Aymara, and the Aymara see the world as a fight between the forces of good and the forces of evil, like in 'Star Wars.' For him, the forces of good are coca growers and the coca leaf. The evil is the D.E.A. and the U.S."
Morales told me, "It's not that I don't like North Americans. I like everybody. But the North American government would involve itself in internal affairs, conspire, and offend. The American Ambassador would treat me like a bin Laden, a terrorist, an assassin, a narco-trafficker. Who's going to like that?" As for President Barack Obama, Morales said, "He's trapped by the capitalist system, and by the structure of imperialism." The only difference between Obama and his predecessor, he said, is that "one is gringo, the other is black."
Morales embodies two powerful social forces in Bolivia: the unions and the indigenous movement. His election brought a degree of stability to a country that has seen frequent coups, assassinations, and sudden changes in government since gaining independence, in 1825. "Previously, politics in Bolivia was done on three pillars: the business community, the Church, and the U.S. Embassy," Walter Chávez, a former Peruvian insurgent who ran one of Morales's Presidential campaigns, told me. (Chávez, who faces terrorism charges in Peru, has been granted political asylum by Bolivia.) "These were the de-facto powers. No politician could hope to secure the Presidency without the support of these three groups."
Morales's success was directly connected to the arrogance of his opponents. During his first run for the Presidency, in 2002, the American Ambassador at the time, Manuel Rocha, threatened to cut off aid to Bolivia if Morales was elected. Until then, Morales had been a marginal factor in Bolivian politics; afterward, running as "America's worst nightmare," he received 20.9 per cent of the vote. The winner, Gonzales Sánchez de Lozada, known as Goni, took the office with a mere 22.5 per cent.
Goni, a mine owner who, by some accounts, was the richest man in the country, had occupied the position previously, from 1993 to 1997. He returned to the Presidential palace facing a crippling shortfall in revenue, which he proposed to solve by selling Bolivian gas to California. But that required moving the gas through a port in Chile that had once been Bolivian territory. The pain of that old trauma is still so acute in Bolivia that it set off a revolution.
Bolivia's coastal territories were lost in 1879, when Chile, spurred on by British investors, invaded the country to claim the Atacama Desert's rich deposits of guano (for fertilizer) and saltpeter (for explosives). The resulting War of the Pacific was just one of the five unfortunate wars that Bolivia has fought with its neighbors, which, cumulatively, have reduced its territory by half. The loss to Chile lingers most bitterly in the minds of Bolivia's citizens. There is still a Bolivian Navy, which patrols inland waterways. Near the naval headquarters, on Lake Titicaca, is a statue of a fallen hero from the War of the Pacific, inscribed with the hollow boast known to every Bolivian schoolchild: "Surrender? Your grandmother surrenders, Damn it!"
The idea that Chileans might benefit from the sale of Bolivian gas inflamed nationalist sentiments, and provided a political opening for Morales, who declared that the gas should be kept in the ground. The controversy soon led to a series of strikes and blockades, which paralyzed the country. Luis Ramos de Espejo, one of the organizers of the protests, repeated to me a widespread rumor at the time: "Our government wanted to sell all our gas to Chile, through Argentina. We know, because of our history, who Chileans are. They've always wanted to take our natural resources." On October 13, 2003, Ramos joined hundreds of other insurgents in the sprawling ghetto of El Alto, overlooking La Paz. Together, the protesters shoved four railroad carriages over a bridge and onto the main highway connecting La Paz to the airport. All other avenues to the city were also blocked.
Goni called out the Army to break the siege. More than sixty people were killed, in the bloodiest episode in Bolivia's turbulent democratic experience. Goni fled to the U.S., and Carlos Mesa, the Vice-President, assumed the Presidency. He had no easier time of it, however. "I could put the Army in the streets, or I could go home," he said. "I went home."
Morales came to power in a special election in 2005, gaining the first majority in Bolivian history. From the moment he took office, he made a fetish of working constantly. "He never takes off a single day," Walter Chávez told me. "Not Christmas, not New Year's, not on his birthday." Morales sometimes schedules meetings for four in the morning. Early in his Presidency, Cabinet members began dispatching their drivers to watch for his convoy leaving for the office, usually around 5 A.M.; the ministers then quickly dressed and followed him to work. I asked Morales when he slept. "I usually sleep on the plane," he grumbled. "You're getting in the way of that."
The plane touched down on a dirt strip in Baures, near the border with Brazil. Morales was the first elected President to visit the town. Although his reëlection was never in doubt—he won with sixty-three per cent of the vote, securing the Presidency until 2015—he was also campaigning for a two-thirds majority in parliament for his party, Movement Toward Socialism, or MAS, which would allow it to continue his program of nationalization without obstruction. MAS won more seats than it needed.
Morales surveyed the crowd gathered beside the landing strip—several hundred people wearing blue MAS hats, carrying party flags, crying "Viva Evo!" and waiting in the withering heat to escort him into town.
"Mr. President, you need to go in by foot," Quintana told him. "It's really informal here. They like personal contact."
As soon as Morales disembarked, wearing a striped short-sleeved shirt, black jeans, and jogging shoes, he was greeted with garlands of clamshells and bright-red bird-of-paradise blossoms. Then the exuberant crowd, along with one of Bolivia's ubiquitous brass bands, marched him toward their village. Morales himself used to play the trumpet in such a band.
Most residents of Baures cultivate cacao, and when the delegation arrived at the steps of the city hall the mayor welcomed Morales to "the capital of chocolate." The band played the national anthem. Morales genially remarked that the last time he visited the region, in 1995, as a union leader, he had been thrown in jail. "I never would have thought that I'd be President of a place I visited in confinement," he said.
Morales can be disarming in acknowledging his shortcomings. "Brothers and sisters, I'm like you," he told the crowd, which pressed together in the shade under the porch of the city hall. "I never studied to be President. It was hard for me to understand how the state operated, how Bolivia functioned. It has cost a lot for me to understand how the economy works." He thanked his Vice-President, Alvaro García Linares, "an intellectual who is very committed to the poorest people, the most abandoned." García, who comes from an élite mestizo family, is a Marxist and a former guerrilla; Carlos Mesa calls him "a militant in a terrorist organization." Ricardo Calla, an anthropologist who is a former Minister of Indigenous Affairs, claims that García is the "other President" of Bolivia, and runs the country with "a neo-Austrian-Marxist outlook." García spent five years in prison during the nineties, and it is said that since this experience he can never get warm; indeed, when we met, in the Presidential palace, he was bundled up in a long wool coat. As for his influence in the Administration, García coyly told me, "We made the effort to Indianize Marxism and Marxize the Indian movement."
Morales, who has two children from former relationships, lives alone in the Presidential palace, in La Paz. At first, he thought that the arrangement was unseemly, so he encouraged García and members of his Cabinet to move in with him. His security detail pointed out the danger of concentrating the government in one place, and soon "the pajama party was over," a former government adviser recalled. Morales loves sports, and continues to play racquetball and soccer, although he carries himself in a slack, shoulders-forward posture that gives no hint of physicality. He has never owned a suit, but when he was elected President he worked with a tailor, Manuel Sillerico, who fashioned for him sweaters and jackets interwoven with Indian braids. (Morales claims to have designed them himself.) When Morales travels abroad, he maintains the same proletarian informality that he displays at home, meeting the King of Spain in a pullover sweater and dining at an Olive Garden when visiting New York.
Last fall, when Morales was in Manhattan for the annual U.N. meeting, Harry Belafonte had planned a benefit for him, in Harlem. But Morales was sidelined by an earache. According to another former member of Morales's staff, the President doesn't trust American medicine, so he called a doctor in Bolivia, who prescribed flushing the ear with warm water. "The hotel said they would charge forty dollars for a pot of steaming water," the former staffer recalled. "When I left, his aides were rolling up newspapers, setting them on fire, then sticking them in his ear."
When Morales came into office, he made a point of selecting nontraditional appointees; Casimira Rodríguez, an indigenous woman who headed the housemaids' union, was named Minister of Justice. A year later, Morales had to fire her. "She didn't seem to be learning anything," Walter Chávez told me. Chávez recounted another incident, which took place shortly before the 2005 election: "Evo went to Chapare for a meeting of the union of coca growers. The m.c. didn't know how to read, except really slowly, and everyone began to whistle. 'Put somebody up there who knows what he's doing!' they cried. Me, too, I was also whistling. Then Evo stepped up and grabbed the mike and said, 'I'm about to be President because I'm like this guy. When I didn't know how to read, they gave me a chance. If we take out this guy who doesn't know how to read and put in someone who does, then the revolution I thought I was part of has suddenly become something different. Those who don't have the patience to stick it out can leave.' " No one left. "It was clear he was going to give opportunities to people who had never had them," Chávez said. "The dream he has, walking around or asleep, is to show that an Indian can govern, and govern well."
The overwhelming mandate that voters have given Morales has left his opponents worrying about the future of the party system in Bolivia. "Morales mixes the Latin-American caudillo tradition with leftist authoritarianism," Ricardo Calla observed. The supermajority that Morales's party gained in the December election meant that there would be few remaining political obstacles to his revolutionary goals. "The President has four fixed ideas that form the heart of his discourse," Mesa told me. "The state is sacred; the state represents all Bolivians; the state should be the boss of everything; and these things together guarantee happiness and progress."
It is a paradigm that seems very much out of date, even in Latin America. One of Morales's opponents in the recent Presidential race, René Joaquino, told me, "Evo has a fanaticism for the state model in terms of the economy, and he doesn't have an accurate read on the big changes in the world." Joaquino is a popular former mayor of Potosí, and, like Morales, he is an Indian; but he was crushed by Morales's formidable political machine, receiving less than three per cent of the vote. "In Bolivia, state business is always inefficient, corrupt, and uncompetitive," Joaquino said. "We've already lived the state model. It hasn't resolved the big problems in Bolivia."
But even some of Morales's critics concede that there's little alternative to the path he has chosen, given the dialectic of exploitation and instability that has always defined the Bolivian state. "For most Bolivians, the best model is the welfare state," Fernando Molina said. He pointed out that Chile also has abundant natural resources, but it is a strong, homogeneous nation with a varied economy. "Bolivia, on the other hand, is a very diverse nation, and has never been able to integrate itself," Molina said. "For us, natural resources have been a curse." He added, "I'd prefer to see money go directly to people than to the corrupt builder of a smelter or of a highway that ends up costing ten times what it actually should." But, until those smelters and highways are in place, Bolivia will remain in its pre-industrial cocoon. "In the end, Bolivians are going to have to change their mind-set, and stop thinking about what the state is going to give them," Molina said. "We have to discover new ways to produce things and pray we don't keep on finding more natural resources."
After Morales finished speaking in Baures, the mayor thanked him for the new roads and other projects that Morales had promised. "They will fill the empty feeling we've had in these communities," the mayor said. Morales then led the crowd back to the dirt-strip airport. Before boarding the plane, he reached into his shirt pocket, where he had a wad of hundred-dollar bills, and paid the band.
Nearly thirty years ago, Guillermo Roelants du Vivier, a young Belgian nuclear engineer with a yearning to promote social change, cobbled together some grant money and made his way to southwestern Bolivia. He had fallen in love with Andean culture, he told me not long ago, in a café in La Paz. He helped to develop a market for quinoa, a local grain that is now found on many menus around the world, and he also set up a boric-acid factory, using geothermal steam as a power source. "You didn't have any services," he recalled. "Uyuni was very, very small. Now we have some doctors and drinkable water. Things have changed a lot."
Roelants is the head of the scientific committee that Morales has charged with developing the resources of the Salar. "The U.S. Geological Survey has published that there are five and a half million tons of metallic lithium" in the Salar, Roelants told me. "They are completely wrong!" After conducting extensive surveys, he estimates that the figure is about a hundred million tons—an amount that would quadruple the size of the world's known lithium supply. "We also have very important reserves of potassium, magnesium, and boron in the same Salar," he said. "Not the biggest in the world, but very important."
The high amount of magnesium mixed into the brine drives up the cost of extracting the lithium. Then there are the formidable expenses in getting the lithium to market—Roelants estimates that completing the industrial plant and the infrastructure required to ship it abroad will cost more than six hundred million dollars. At present, the entire world market for lithium is only about six or seven hundred million dollars a year. Many industry analysts expect that the demand for lithium will shoot up as soon as electric cars come off the production line. Byron Capital Markets, an investment adviser, predicts a forty-per-cent increase in demand over the next four years.
Roelants said that the financing for developing the Salar would come from the Bolivian government, or from loans. "Everybody wants to give us credit," he said, "with a very good interest rate." An alternative is to seek financing from "international companies working with cars," based on projected sales. "It'll be no problem to get the money," he assured me. What is certain, Roelants says, is that the government will retain control. "The Bolivian people don't want another war like the War of the Pacific . . . or something like Potosí," he said. "The Salar is not for sale."
Despite the fact that Bolivia is sitting on an ocean of lithium, there is a substantial amount of it already available elsewhere. In addition to large brine deposits in the Andes and in the Chinese interior, lithium is also available in a hard rock called pegmatite, which is already mined in Australia. New lithium-mining companies are springing up around the world. The Bolivian government has suggested that the sheer quantity of lithium in the country will eventually tip the scales in its favor, but that isn't necessarily so. The amount of lithium required to make a car battery is surprisingly small: less than four pounds of it is used in the making of the immense Volt battery, for instance. And some of that lithium can be recycled.
"Two countries—Argentina and Chile—could supply the whole world with cheap lithium past 2060," Lucie Bednarova Duesterhoeft, a researcher for G.M.'s Global Energy Systems group, told me. Because of Bolivia's shoddy infrastructure and remote location, and the impurities in the Salar, the cost of extracting the lithium there will be significantly greater than in some other countries—about five thousand dollars per metric ton, Duesterhoeft estimates, versus less than two thousand in Chile. Currently, the world's two largest lithium-mining operations are in the Atacama Desert of Chile—on land that was taken from Bolivia during the War of the Pacific.
Although Morales's grudging stance toward multinational corporations remains popular at home, his obsession with preventing the Salar from becoming another Cerro Rico may also keep it from ever becoming a source of Bolivian wealth. Unless his regime can come to an agreement with a multinational corporation—or figure out, on its own, how to mine the treasure in the Salar de Uyuni at a competitive global price—its lithium will remain forever stuck in the brine, as will Morales's dreams of Bolivian batteries and electric cars.
In January, Toyota Tsusho, a supplier for the Toyota Motor Corporation, announced a hundred-million-dollar deal with Orocobre, an Australian mining company, to supply Argentine lithium for future hybrid and electric cars. Orocobre is conducting a feasibility study for mining the Salar de Olaroz—a salt flat, just across the border from Bolivia, that is much smaller than the Salar de Uyuni but has fewer impurities, according to James Calaway, Orocobre's chairman. Calaway told me that Bolivia's salt flat is "like a seductress. But, when you really look at it, it doesn't work." Moreover, he said, "You can't ignore the Morales factor." Orocobre intends to start production in Argentina by 2012, and it has already secured the rights to more than a dozen other salt flats there. Only about eight per cent of the profits will end up in Argentine hands, but over the years the payoff should be significant. (Orocobre will have to pay income tax.) A press release stated that Toyota Tsusho's interest in the Salar de Olaroz "stems from the desire to increase its exposure to reliable and diversified lithium supplies . . . in a time frame closely aligned with worldwide lithium requirements for hybrid and electric vehicles."
Many Bolivians were dismayed at the news: once again, one of the country's neighbors was profiting at its expense. (An op-ed for the Bolivian daily El Deber fumed that Argentina, with its "small salt flats," had "secured the best contracts for its lithium while Bolivians dillydallied.") But a spokesman for the Bolivian government said that Toyota's news had been expected, and was received "with calm and caution, but without despair." Toyota seems never to have considered working in Bolivia; Bill Reinert, who helped develop the Prius, recently told me, "You have to look at the geopolitics and the logistics."
A month after the Toyota deal was announced, word began trickling out that the scientific committee headed by Roelants was entertaining proposals from a few foreign companies still interested in the Salar de Uyuni, including Mitsubishi, the car and electronics manufacturer; Kores, the mining concern owned by the South Korean government; and Bouygues, a French conglomerate. A Japanese delegation arrived in La Paz, and participated in a government-sponsored conference dedicated to "the future of Bolivian industry." The meetings were cordial, but a deal did not seem imminent. At the conference, Saúl Villegas, the director of evaporative resources in the Bolivian Ministry of Mining, reiterated that any lithium-mining project must be "a hundred per cent state-controlled." Afterward, he told me that Bolivia "would not repeat the history of Potosí." Bolivia, he went on, had an obligation to guarantee to the world a steady and reliable supply of lithium "for the next hundred or two hundred years." He said nothing about making batteries or cars in Bolivia, however.
A more sober perspective on Bolivia's economy appears to have settled in among some members of the government. A few weeks after the Toyota Tsusho deal with Argentina was announced, Roelants said that the big "future industry" of Bolivia would not be lithium after all. Instead, the country would focus on the other valuable substances buried in the Salar: in particular, on potassium chloride, a common ingredient in fertilizers. It could be extracted far more easily than lithium, Roelants said, and in far greater quantities. Roelants said that the Salar was expected to yield eight hundred thousand metric tons of potassium salts a year. "Potassium is more important," he said, adding that lithium was just a by-product.
Bolivia's President, however, does not quite seem to have accepted the idea that the Salar's lithium treasure may amount to little. On March 10th, José Pimentel, the Minister of Mining, announced the founding of a new state-owned corporation, the Bolivian Evaporative Resources Enterprise, which will devote particular attention to lithium, exploring "every alternative" for exploiting "gray gold." The government's initial investment will be five million dollars. The company's chief will be handpicked by Evo Morales. ♦


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Rapper DMX was flown back to Phoenix and booked into the Maricopa County Jail following his brief escapade as a fugitive in Florida.
Seen here in his latest booking photo, DMX -- who's real name is Earl Simmons -- looks downright unhappy to be back in the filthy jail run by Sheriff Joe Arpaio. According to a Channel 15 (KNXV) news report, Simmons told a deputy on the flight back to Phoenix on Friday that he didn't like Arpaio one bit.
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The rapper faces a charge of animal cruelty relating to several dead, apparently abused pit bulls that were found last year on his Cave Creek property. Simmons has said he wasn't home at the time of the alleged abuse. He's also been charged with possession of marijuana and identity theft stemming from an unpaid medical bill. -- Ray Stern

subset: commoncrawl


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Remember those slightly creepy baby dolls with the blinking eyes? Well now you can be even creepier by wearing around just ONE of those eyes in this handmade ring by New Zealand based Ginga Squid Studios. Each ring is made to order and comes with with a circa 1940s doll eye, set in resin, that opens and closes as you move your hand. This could be wonderfully distracting during a meeting.
Put your order in, I imagine these take a while to make.
$131 at Ginga Squid Studios
[via GEARFUSE]


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Port Stanley | Birthday Getaway
Last weekend was my 24th Birthday. Man, i am getting old haha. I went to this beautiful small town in Port Stanley located on the north shore of Lake Erie at the mouth of Kettle Creek. Not many great beaches here in Canada but this one for sure is the best one i have been and seen so far.
I went with my family there to celebrate and get away from the city for a change. We rented a cottage by the beach for four days. It was quite relaxing and loved the soothing sounds of the water. I never really been a party guy, not as much i used to. I'm more you can say, down to earth guy that likes to take a walk on the beach. To be honest i really want to live by the water and be a beach bum forever.
what i am wearing | shades by raybans, snapback by obey,
shirt from hm, t-shirt from hm and white shoes by converse.


text: As we all know, things got a little crazy last month during the celebrated release of the Foamposite One "Galaxy." Well, we now get a look at some enthusiasts overseas, Berlin's KICKZ will be dropping the coveted makeup tomorrow. See a few pics above of hopeful heads who have been camping out since earlier this week. Best of luck, fellas.


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I have been a parent now for over 13 years. Crazy! For thirteen years I have washed my families clothes either at a laundry mat or in a hand me down washer and dryer. For thirteen years I have been thankful to have clothes to wash and some way to wash them.
When we moved part of the washer was broken. We tried to fix it. No can do. There was an extra washer that was left here so we hooked it up ran it through a couple of cycles to make sure it worked and then threw a load of laundry in. It filled, it ran through the cycle, and it drained. No spin. Soaking wet clothes. Three hours in the dryer. Not gonna work.
So meet my new set of best friends........
I went to several stores and looked at many machines. I found a super good deal on these and I could not be happier. It is amazing how much easier a job can be when you have the right equipment. Washing clothes for anywhere between five to nine people can be an undertaking. Doing it with a drier that takes at least 2 hours to dry one load kept me at least 4 loads behind at all times.
These machines seriously think for themselves and the dryer even senses how wet the clothes are. I have yet to go to switch out the laundry only to find wet clothes that need to be run again! I can wash a whole day worth of clothes for nine people in one load including any blankets Makenzie may have soiled the night before.
Tonight every single piece of laundry in my house is clean and it wasn't an all day affair. In fact it has all been clean since Weds.! AMAZING! It really is such a huge relief not to have this chore constantly nagging for my attention. Oh the simple things in life!
Believe.... Prayer Works!


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Dr. Giles C. Savage
The first ophthalmologist in the Vanderbilt University School of Medicine was Dr. Giles C. Savage. Dr. Savage was born in Mississippi in 1854, and received his medical degree from Jefferson Medical College in Philadelphia in 1878. After two years of post-graduate work in ophthalmology in London and Vienna, he returned to Tennessee to practice. He was one of the founding professors of the Vanderbilt School of Medicine and delivered the first commencement address. In 1886, he was appointed Professor of Ophthalmology and held that position until retirement in 1911.
James Elliott, M.D.
Denis O'Day, M.D.
Under Dr. O'Day's leadership, the Department grew considerably to include full-time faculty in each subspecialty: retina, glaucoma, cornea and external disease, pediatric ophthalmology, oculoplastics, and neuro-ophthalmology. The residency program increased to four residents per year. Dr. O'Day supported Dr. Karla Johns as Chief of Ophthalmology at the Nashville Veteran's Administration Hospital, and oversaw the transition in leadership at the VA to Dr. Amy Chomsky. Under their leadership, Dr. Johns and Dr. Chomsky established the VA as a wonderful venue for resident education, fighting for better facilities, operating rooms and equipment. Dr. O'Day also reestablished a relationship between the Vanderbilt ophthalmology training program and Metropolitan Nashville General Hospital. As a pioneer in the Vanderbilt-Meharry Alliance, Vanderbilt ophthalmology residents returned to "the General" as they had for many years in the past when the hospital had been located downtown.
|J. Donald Gass, M.D.
From left to right: James Elliott, M.D., Paul Sternberg, Jr., M.D., Denis O'Day, M.D.
In January, 2003, Paul Sternberg, Jr., M.D. relocated from Emory University to succeed Dr. O'Day as Chairman. Since that time, the Department has expanded the clinical faculty, such that each discipline has more than one physician. In addition, the research faculty has grown considerably, with the opening of additional new vision research laboratories in Medical Research Building IV. In the fall of 2006, the department received a gift from Dr. and Mrs. William Snyder to establish an endowed chair for the Director of Research, Dr. John Penn.
In order to accommodate the sizeable increase in outpatient volume, our new facility opened in 2008 to house the clinical operations of the Vanderbilt Eye Institute. This building consolidates the adult and pediatric clinical practices, as well as increasing designated space for educational programs, the clinical trials unit, business office, and departmental administration.
For many years the department has had a strong association with the Lions Clubs of Middle Tennessee. The lions founded the Eye Bank at Vanderbilt in the 1960's and through the Middle Tennessee Lions Sight Service, supported the care of indigent patients (children and adults) treated at Vanderbilt University Hospital. In 1993, the Lions again demonstrated their commitment with their decision to fund a clinic devoted to eye care for children at Vanderbilt.


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Learn about common accessibility problems in the home and solutions that will improve the safety and quality of life of you or your loved one.
This guide will help you understand the guidelines related to home medical
equipment. Most health insurance plans have similar rules to Medicare, but you should
know that they will all vary.
Information including risks, tips, explanations, prevention tips for patients and
caregivers, and some of the most common health issues.
A resource list of common terminology used regarding health issues and medical equipment.
The Internet is a great source of information for you to use in managing your healthcare
or the healthcare of a loved one. It can also be good way to locate the support
resources you need as a patient or caregiver.
El Internet es una gran fuente de información para su uso en el manejo de su salud o la de un ser querido. También puede ser buena manera de localizar los recursos de apoyo que usted necesita como paciente o cuidador.
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نوع مقاله: مقاله پژوهشی
دانشگاه محقق اردبیلی
عنوان مقاله [English]
نویسنده [English]
In this study two methods of measuring saturated hydraulic conductivity namely: Guelph permeameter and Tension Disc Infiltrometer were compared in the experimental field of Moghan Faculty of Agriculture containing Sandy-loam soil texture . Guelph experiments were performed by using Guelph penetrometer model k2800. In this regard, 15 boreholes each with 5 cm diameter and 25 cm depth were drilled in a grid of 2×2 m and discharge was measured at the hydraulic heads of 5 and 10 cm. .. Experiments were performed based on completely randomized design with 4 treatments and 15 replicates. Also in the Tension Disc Infiltrometer, determination of saturated hydraulic conductivity was performed on the same grid with 5, 10, 15 cm suction heads. The average hydraulic conductivity obtained for Tension Disc Infiltrometer, Guelph permeameter in 5,10 cm of hydraulic heads and Guelph two depths analysis was found to be 7, 3, 4, 6.2 cm per hour, respectively. Results of Fisher test revealed that all methods are classified in a group and not significantly different from each other at the 0.01 level and beyond, . Average values for the inverse of macroscopic capillary length parameter was obtained to be 0.07 cm-1 and as the value of saturated soil hydraulic conductivity increased , an increase in the value of inverse macroscopic capillary length parameter was observed.
کلیدواژهها [English]
Azar, A., Babazadeh, H. and Zinalzadeh, K. 2008. Comparison of two methods Guelph and inverse hole to measure the saturated hydraulic conductivity (Case Study: Land College of Agricalture university of Orumieh). 2th Irrigation and Drainage Network Management National Conference. Shahid Chamran University. Ahvaz, Iran. (in Persian)
Alizadeh, H. A., Nazari, B. and Liaghat, A. 2009. Evaluation of simplified falling head (SFH) method for measuring saturated hydraulic conductivity. J. Water Soil. 23(2): 55-62. (in Persian)
Angulo-Jaramillo, R., Vandervaere, J. P., Roulier, S., Thony, J. L., Gaudet, J. P. and Vauclin, M. 2000. Field measurement of soil surface hydraulic properties by disc and ring infiltrometers. A review and recent developments. Soil Till. Res. 55, 1-29.
Ankeny, M. D., Ahmed, M., Kaspar, T. C. and Horton, R. 1991. Simple field method for determining unsaturated hydraulic conductivity. Soil Sci. Soc. Am. J. 55, 467-470.
Asadollahzadeh, T., Mashal, M. and Karimzadgan, S. 2014. investigating the precision of hydraulic conductivity and sorptive number estimation in cased boreholes by reynolds analysis: the cased of Pakdasht region. J. Water Soil. 28(4): 708-716. (in Persian)
Boom, J. 1983. Use of sail survey data to select measurement techniques for hydraulic conductivity. Agr. Water manage. 6, 177-190.
Elrick. D. E. and Reynolds, W. D. 1986. An analysis of the percolation test based on three dimensional saturated-unsaturated flows from a cylindrical test hole. Soil Sci. 142(5): 308-321.
Elrick, D. E. and Reynolds, W. D. 1992. Infiltration from constant head well permeameters and infiltrometers. In: G. C. Topp., W. D. Reynolds and R. E. Green (Eds.) Advances in the Measurement of Soil Physical Properties: Bringing Theory into Practice. Chapter.1. Special Publication No. 30. Soil Science Society of America. Madison, WIS, USA.
Elrick, D. E., Reynolds, W. D. and Tan, K. A. 1989. Hydraulic conductivity measurements in the unsaturated zone using improved well analyses. Ground Water Moint. R. 9, 184-193.
Gardner, W. R. 1958. Some steady-stade solutions of the unsaturated moisture flow equation with application to evapopration form water table. Soil Sci. 85, 228-232.
Ghaffari, P., Kashkouli, H. A. and Mokhtarian, R. 2007. Comparison of measuring hydraulic conductivity using the Guelph and tension infiltrometer. 9th National Seminar on Irrigation and Evapotranspiration. Kerman University. Kerman, Iran. (in Persian)
Ghani, F., Tabatabayi, S. H., Shayannejad, M. and Ghorbani-Dashtaki, Sh. 2012. Comparison of four
field measurement methods of saturated hydraulics conductivity. J. Water Resour. Eng. 5(15): 55-66. (in Persian)
Ghobadian, R., Shekari, P., Sabe, Gh. A. and Maleki, R. 2014. Depth gradient of saturated hydraulic conductivity by Guelph permeameter method in research farm of Agricultural Faculty, Razi University, Kermanshah. J. Water Soil Conserv. 21(2): 85-107. (in Persian)
Ghorbani-Dashtaki, Sh., Dehghani-Baniani, S., Khodaverdiloo, H., Mohammadi, J. and Khalilmoghaddam, B. 2012. Estimation of saturated hydraulic conductivity and inverse of macroscopic capillary length using PTFS. J. Water Soil Sci. (J. Sci. Technol. Agr. Natur. Resour.). 16(60): 145-157. (in Persian)
Gupta, R. K., Rudra, R. P., Dickinson, W. T., Patni, N. K. and Wall, G. J. 1993. Comparison of saturated hydraulic conductivity measured by various field methods. Trans. ASAE. 36, 51-55.
Hu, W., Wang, Q., Shao, M. and Ju, Zh. 2011. Effects of infiltration time on the calculated sorptivity with white method for a sandy loam soil. Afr. J. Agr. Res. 6(19): 4601-4606.
Kashkuli, H. A. and Mokhtaran, A. 2014. Determination of soil saturated hydraulic conductivity above water table using guelph permeameter and its relationship with shallow well pumping method in five agricultural sites in Khuzestan province. J. Water Res. Agr. 28(2): 465-475. (in Persian)
Kelishadi, H., Mosaddeghi, M. R., Hajabbasi, M. A. and Ayoubi, S. 2014. Near-saturated soil hydraulic properties as influenced by land use management systems in Koohrang region of central Zagros, Iran. Geoderma. 213, 426-434.
Logsdon, S. D. and Jaynes, D. B. 1996. Spatial variability of hydraulic conductivity in a cultivated field at different times. Soil Sci. Soc. Am. J. 60, 703-709.
Mashal, M., Shaghghi, V. and Zavaremoghaddam, Z. 2007. Factors affecting the improvement of soil saturated hydraulic conductivity measurements using two depths Guelph permeameter. J. Agr. Eng. Res. 29(3): 12-20. (in Persian)
Mohanty, B. P., Kanwar, R. S. and Horton, R. 1991. A robust-resistant approach to interpret the spatial behavior of saturated hydraulic conductivity of a glacial till soil under no-tillage system. Water Resour. Res. 27, 2979-2992.
Mohanty, B. P., Kanwer, R. S. and Eversts, C. J. 1994. Comparison of saturated hydraulic conductivity measurement methods, for a glacial-till. Soil Sci. Soc. Am. J. 58, 672-677.
Moradi-Basri, H., Ghorbani-Dashtaki, Sh., Givi, J., Khodaverdiloo, H. and Khalilmoghaddam, B. 2012. Comparison of three field methods for measuring saturated hydraulic conductivity in some vertisols and entisols. J. Water Soil. 26(1):173-182. (in Persian)
Perroux, K. M. and White, I. 1988. Design for disc permeameters. Soil Sci. Soc. Am. J. 52, 1205-1215.
Rauf, M., Nazemi, A. H., Sadraddini, S. A. A. and Maroofi, S. 2010. Estimating saturated and unsaturated hydraulic conductivities of sloping lands under steady and transient states. J. Water Soil. 20(4): 33-46. (in Persian)
Rauf, M., Sadraddini, S. A. A., Nazenu, A.H. and Maroofi, S. 2011. Effect of land slope on infiltration and some physical properties of soil. Water Soil Sci. 1, 57-68. (in Persian)
Reynolds, W. D. and Elrick D. E. 1985. In situ measurement of field saturated hydraulic conductivity sorpitivity a parameter using Guelph permeameter. Soil Sci. 140(4): 292-302.
Reynolds. W. D. and Zebchuk W. D. 1996. Hydraulic conductivity in a clay soil: two measurement techniques and spatial characterization. Soil. Sci. Soc. Am. J. 60, 1679-1685.
Reynolds, W. D., Elrick, D. E. and Clothier, B. E. 1985. The constant head well permeameter Effect on unsaturated flow. Soil Sci. 139(2): 172-18.
Reynolds, W. D., Vieira, S. R. and Topp, G. C. 1992. An assessment of the single-head analysis for the constant head well permeameter. Can. J. Soil Sci. 72, 489-501.
Rezaiepour, S. and Ghobadinia, M. 2012. Investigating infiltration phenomenon process using a disk permeameter check and double ring. The 3rd Conference on Agriculture and Food Science. Islamic Azad University of Fasa. Iran. (in Persian)
Smettem, K. and Clothier, B. 1989. Measuring unsaturated sorptivity and hydraulic conductivity using multi-disc permeameters, J. Soil Sci. 40, 565-568.
Stroosnijder, L, 1976. Infiltratie en Herverdeling van Water in de Grond. Versl. Land-bouwk. Onderz. No. 847.
Torabi, M. 2004. Assessment of five methods of measuring saturated hydraulic conductivity in a saline soil. 2nd Students Conference on Soil and Water Resources. Agricultural Faculty, Shiraz University. Shiraz, Iran. (in Persian)
Verbist, K., Cornelis, W., Torfs, S. and Gabriel, D. 2013. Comparing methods to determine hydraulic conductivities on stony soils. SSSAJ. 77(1): 25-42.
Wooding, R. 1968. Steady infiltration from a shallow circular pond. Water Resour. Res. 4, 1259-1273.
Yamin-Moshrefi, Gh., Marufpour, I., Bahramnezhad, B. and Faryabi, A. 2008. Assessment of infiltration process using a single & double ring. 3th Regional Conference on Research Achievements of Agricultural. Kordestan University. Iran. (in Persian)


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Seasonal indicators are always a tempting and counter-intuitive notion. Sell in May and go away?
Second in reputation only to the January effect "Sell in may and go away" is a common and well known seasonal indicator. I imagine the papers will soon fill with articles on this indicator. I think it's a good time to examine the historical evidence.
"Sell in May and go away" refers to the abnormal returns of months November-April compared to May-October. This seasonal indicator is believed to exist due to the following reasons:
1. The summer months are usually dedicated to vacationing and time off in the capital markets as well.
2. Patterns in bonuses
3. Taxes and patterns in saving vehicles
A quick research – Should we really sell in May?
I've decided to take a quick look at some historical data. I've checked the S&P500 back from 1950's up to today. The results of my research are displayed in the following charts. The bars represent the difference, in percentages, between the returns of November to April and May to October of a certain year:
The results as always are not definitive. Judge for yourselves:
1. In only 56% of the cases the months between November and April generated higher returns than the months between May and October.
2. However, on average, the months between November and April generated a return of 1.3% compared to just 0.2% for the months between May and October.
Adding a linear trend line suggests the spread is slowly disappearing but then again trend line don't work well in a variable such as this (explains only 5% of the trend in this case). This could be attributed to more perfect markets with increased capital and information flow but it's a reaching a bit.
What about 2008?
As always, the case before us is a special one. The months between November and April of 2007-2008 were the months of the sub-prime and credit crisis. Hopefully the months to come will be months of revived growth for the capital markets although skepticism is still wide spread.
One recommendation that has proved itself so far is to avoid timing the market and just hanging on if you're investing for the long term (as you should). You never know what you might miss. We would all fail trying to time ourselves back in.abnormal returns, credit crisis, indicator, intuitive notion, january effect, line, notion, October, seasonal indicators, trend


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Big Bend National Park
Intermountain » Texas
Listed in the table below are Big Bend National Park's current plans or projects. Click on the project title for more information.
For general information, use the 'Park/Unit Information' link to the left, to go to the park's main internet page to access park information not related to park planning (for example, park brochures, lodging and campground reservations, and general park information).
|Project Title
|Project Type
|NEPA Type
|Exotic Species Management Plans / Environmental Assessments
|Resource Management Plan
|Policy Change: Manage E-bike Use on the Same Basis as Traditional Bicycles
|Proposed Changes to Big Bend Camping Fees and Reservations
|Fee Collection
* Open for comment.


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Uniquely logo design template with vintage Mountains landscape path icon. Suitable for Rustic restaurant, Organic health products, Eco friendly farm etc.
- Exclusive design rights to the buyer – sole ownership
- This brand also comes with double sided business card
- We Customize your Name & Info Free of charge


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beauty bloggers brighton, Lady Loves Beauty, lipstick queen belle epoque review, lipstick quern at space nk, moisturising lip balm, the best nude lip glaze for spring
There's something sexily understated about a nude lip. Easy to wear for almost everyone and suits all skin tones. Winner. I came across Lipstick Queen's Belle Époque when they launched it last year in Space NK. A range of tinted lip glazes available in three shades. Needless to say I snapped up the nude one (along with a few other Space NK purchases) immediately. Let me tell you, this balm glaze is so moisturising and leaves the lips looking fresh with a subtle hint of colour. Perfect for daily wear.
Pictured above, you can see that it is a glaze and not a pigmented nude. Just a subtle wash of colour on the lips. It has been my absolute go to product daily for keeping my lips soft. And it's perfect for those days you don't want to wear a lipstick. I really like the packaging, it's like a dome and makes it really easy to scoop the product out of for application.
Before I purchased Lipstick Queen Belle Époque I had semi made my mind up in my head that the other shades wouldn't be for me. But after using the nude one religiously I can see myself buying the other two shades so I have an off duty change. I have recently loved applying lipstick but let's be honest it is something that needs attention throughout the day whether it be topping up or sorting the product that has bled out of the lip line. For a get up and go product I would love to have the other two shades as options. One of the other things about this product that makes it an absolute winner in my eyes is that it is not sticky. It moisturises and shines without your hair or any flying insect sticking to it like glue. Yay!
I find Belle Époque looks good over a lipstick as well if you want to add some moisture – no one likes a dry lip!
What do you think? Have you tried any of he shades? Let us know in the comment box below.
Available at Space NK for £18
Love Danielle & Natalie
This is NOT a sponsored post.


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Portulacaria afra, Jade Tree or Money Tree is relatively new to bonsai in the West. In the Orient where it is considered to be an auspicious tree, it has been growing for eons. Portulacaria are ideal plants for beginners as they are very hardy to drought and seem to tolerate over watering. The species can be grown in just about any style of Bonsai and is full of year round character with its fleshy almost round leafs, and multicoloured stems which are green when young, red-brown as it matures to a graggy slate grey. Recently, there has been much research into this plant being a significant Carbon fixer, and with a capibility of holding 4-5 times as much carbon.
Formal upright, Informal Upright, Slanting, Cascade, Semi-cascade, Twin-trunk, Clump, Group planting, Saikei
In the UK and most of Europe it needs to be grown indoors as it is not frost hard. It need a significant amount of light and a well light window sill is an ideal location. Ensure that temperature do not fall below 10C. Being tropical it would benefit from being outdoors in full sun during the summer time.
It does not need much watering, but does not seem to mind being over watered too. However, if you over water the plant can get big heavy leaves and stems. Ideally to keep leafs small and not over bulged, ensure that soils surface dries out between watering. During the winter months reduce watering, allowing the soil surface to be mostly dry.
Feed between March and October, does not need feeding during the winter months. Use a balanced liquid feed monthly, or a slow release organic feed -replacing pellets every two months.
Leaf and Branch Pruning:
Structural pruning or any heavy branch pruning is best can be carried in early spring. AS it is a fast grown species pruning and pinching needs to be carried out regularly over the growing season. On larger trees you may have to pinch or prune every week, to keep branches small. If you need longer branches then it is best to let the apex grow, but remove leaves from the base of the branch upwards leaving about 3-4 nodes at the apex.
Re-potting & Growing Medium:
Spring is the best time to re-pot. Allow the soil to dry out before attempting repotting. After repotting shelter the tree in shaded warm area, and water only sparingly until new growth establishes itself. A well drained soil mixture is best, use a 100 percent Damolin Clay, or for younger plants 1 part Akadama and 3 Parts Pumice or Fuji-Grit. You can reduce the root ball by about a third. Repot only evry second year.
Shaping is best carried out buy pruning and pinching. However, you can wire the branches during the dormant periods, but keep and eye out for wire biting into the branch.


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IoT Barcamp Notes
On Tuesday, 4th October, Oliver and I participated in our first German bar camp in Düsseldorf on the hype topic Internet of Things (IoT): www.iotbarcamp.de. I would like to share my personal notes on the talks I heard and my general impressions of the camp.
The venue encompassed the entire floor in a modern office building located in Düsseldorf Golzheim, in the heart of Düsseldorf's fashion district. It was a large open space with enough room to move around, a number of tables and chairs for taking breaks or to talk and work together with colleagues. So far so good.
The day progressed according to the time schedule starting with an introduction by the organisers and the opportunity for everyone in the audience to introduce himself/herself, together with three hashtag-like topics of one's own interests. With 130 people I was quite worried about how long that would take, but everyone managed to keep it short.
The introduction round revealed a diverse set of interests around IoT: from business topics (business models, ventures) through to UX design, platform building, hardware, radio, smart cities, autonomous vehicles, security, prototyping, LORA.
Session Planning was quite straight-forward: 23 session submissions, with 20 available slots. After a short debate, two sessions joined, and two more were placed during the lunch break.
Sascha Pallenberg's keynote was intended to be live streamed (because of Sascha being in Taipeh), but due to technical problems it was recorded and played back. Sascha showed what "Smart City" really means being in Taipeh: autonoumous underground trains, NFC payment being the norm and so on. Really interesting, especially when comparing the situation to - lets say - countries like Germany. Watch the recording on the barcamp live page, German-only.
I had to hurry to finish my last slides for a session I was to give at 11:00, about "Data formats for the IoT: Developing for embedded and web". We researched different data formats and their efficiency with regards to size a and compared to binary formats. For example, parsing JSON or even XML on an embedded device can be really hard, whereas parsing the same structure in binary form can be quite easy to code AND reduces data sizes when transmitting or storing.
I wondered if this topic would fire up discussions in the audience: If it makes sense, if it makes a difference, whether it is needed because it has already been solved? I was not disappointed. We had a lively discussion covering a lot of aspects, so obviously we raised a relevant topic.
You can take a look at my slides here. This and other material will be the basis of our upcoming projects, so stay tuned :)
The next session I visited was "IoT Service Kit" presented by Michael Hufelschulte from Cassini. The core idea is to have an offline "playground" to prototype mobile and IoT solutions. The IoT is not only about software behind a web interface, and not only about hardware gadgets either: It's also about technology becoming ubiquitous, so we should model and design the usage of it as well. The IoT service kit does that, and Michael invited the audience around a table to design and run through a sample case.
I was also happy to find a session about radio technology: Crowd sourced LPWAN, LoraWAN and The Things Network,by @kgbvax. I already knew a bit about LORA and read about the underlying radio technology in the slide presentation "Reversing LORA") but I still had some questions, such as what nodes to attach to a gateway, how to code against it, costs, regulations etc. All answered, nice session!
The last session i visited was "Selecting the right radio technology for IoT". Lyn Matten from mm1 Technology introduced the various pitfalls that may arise when selecting a radio technology for your own project, be it security, energy consumption, regulations, internationalisation etc. Bottom line: Know your requirements (as always :-) Slides: to be determined.
I'm still waiting for the session notes and the full list of links to the slides. I hope they're going to be published by the barcamp team, so i can supply them to you.
Looking forward to the next IoT Barcamp!


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Facebook Extends Privacy Controls to Mobile
For those inspired to change their Facebook privacy settings on-the-go, the social-networking site announced Wednesday that it has enabled a mobile version of its privacy dashboard.
All Facebook privacy settings will be available on any browser-based mobile device.
"As of today, you can use these controls no matter where you are, what kind of device you have access to, or when you want to make a decision about your information," Michael Eyal Sharon, Facebook's mobile product manager, wrote in a blog post.
To access, go to m.facebook.com/privacy on your phone or go the Settings page and click the "Change" link next to "Privacy Settings." You can then choose if friends, friends of friends, or everyone can see your content, customize certain settings, and access the site's privacy guide, formatted for mobile devices.
"Wherever you are connecting and sharing through Facebook, you should be able to make real time decisions over your information. Now you can," Sharon wrote.
Facebook is rolling out the new settings now, and it should be available for everyone soon, he concluded.
In May, Facebook unveiled updates to its privacy settings that provided a one-stop shop for selecting privacy settings, made less information publicly available, set controls for Pages, and allowed users to opt-out of third-party applications.


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Kata beach
Kata beach
Both Kata beach and Kata Noi beach are around the Laem Sai headland from Karon Beach. Of the two beaches, Kata Yai (big Kata) is more popular and known for its soft, super fine white sand and turquoise blue water of the Andaman Sea.
Surfing at Kata Beach in Phuket is a great low season activity and there are two surf shops and multiple beach outlets where you can rent a board per hour, by the day or weekly. The southern end of the beach has the best waves gets crowded at times but the atmosphere remains friendly. Just off the same area is a Flow Rider wave simulator machine at Phuket Surf House.
Shopping in Kata is also world class with several distinct shopping malls that feel somewhat like open air bazaars. Kata shoppers tend to come out after dinner when it's coolest and those who decide to shop during the day will have the shops pretty much to themselves. There are many international quality luxury boutiques, heaps of street stalls, and numerous shops to haggle over prices in a friendly manner. So it's a buyer's market in more ways than one.


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I absolutely LOVE these shoes!! I have four pairs and all of them are so beautifully made, sturdy and super comfortable. I've had so many positive comments from people loving how unique and gorgeous they are. Wouldn't hesitate to recommend them.
Catherine Strachan
I love my shoes and have received so many comments on them. They are extremely well-made, super comfy to wear and fit really well. The communication and delivery was also super efficient. Now I need to buy them in more colours!!
Maddy Tschirky
LOVE these shoes 💕 So very comfy and cute and I always get compliments when wearing. Can't wait till I can afford a pair in the new style 💕
Patrina Doig
I absolutely love my new Mary Janes! Thank you Nonik for your beautiful work x
Amy Kiss
I brought the elk pair loved them that much I ordered the white!! LOVE these shoes!
Sarah Jones
These shoes are just divine. Super comfy and they look gorgeous on.
Sarah Sheehy
I LOVE those shoes!
They are so very pretty and also very comfortable
And I love that this business is held by such a lovely mum, supporting other mums!
Beautiful product, beautiful ethics, beautiful people
Manon Depre
Very good quality, light weight and comfy flexible sole. I feel so feminine and pretty and get so many compliments when I wear them. I've been wearing them for 2 years and still going strong.. with leggings, jeans, dresses, skirts. I love the fact they are handmade by women who are being paid a good wage. A beautiful product.
Luci O'Brien
Beautiful! The kind of manufacturing I love to see. Bravo!
Elaine Thompson
Prior to purchasing my own pair of Luludu shoes, I had my eye on them! I spied them in 'Frankie Magazine' and just knew they had to be mine.
The INTEGRITY with which these shoes were made and the story of how they came into the world touched my heart, deeply. To my delight, I was lucky enough to be introduced to Alana - the 'creatress' some time after this and the only question that remained was...what colour will I choose!
I fell in love with them as soon as they were on my feet. They are light, comfortable and oh-so-pretty! I always get compliments when I wear them around town and they put a little extra sunshine in my day.
I am honoured for my money to go towards such an amazing brand that is making big leaps in the eco-fashion and fair trade industries. I believe in Alana's dream, because I believe in love.
Jasmin Wickham - Shakti Medicine
I got a pair of black crochet shoes for Christmas and I'm in love with them! Now to get them in all different colours!
Nikki Argent
Oh my goodness these shoes are divine! Well made and comfortable. Great communication with Alana on sizing. I am Australian size 10, 26cm. Perfect fit. Will be back for sure!
Kirsten Bagnall
I love love love my new black crotchet shoes! Best purchase of the summer! Wish I had them in every colour.
Jillian Veivers
Hi Alana, Just want to let you know I love my pair of Luludu shoes and enjoy wearing them. They go well with my work clothes too. I'm wearing them now. Initially I wasn't used to the thinner sole, but I remember wearing Vibram Fivefingers shoes and the Luludu shoes are like them - walk mindfully and tread gently. My feet and knees do not ache at the end of the day.
Jacin Chan - Singapore