The 2008 Olympics, hosted by China, began on Friday 8th August with a spectacular opening ceremony.

Directed by Zhang Yimou, an acclaimed Chinese filmmaker, the ceremony showed scenes representing triumphs from China’s past, including famous Chinese inventions such as gunpowder, the compass and paper.

Read more in this article from BBC News, and look at fantastic photos posted by The Boston Globe.

Photo: Adam Pretty/Getty Images (via The Boston Globe)

Toyota and Japan Rail are testing an innovative new vehicle for public transport. The vehicles are a cross between train and bus - they have rubber tyres for use on roads and steel wheels for travelling on rails. They can swap from one to the other in less that 15 seconds.

Photo: NeiTech (Flickr)

They are perfect for use in areas where the population is not high enough to justify a rail network - people can get picked up by the bus which then drives via road to the rail track to continue its journey.

Wired blog explains more and claims this would also be a perfect transport solution in parts of the USA.

A few weeks ago we wrote about the films from around the world shown on May 10th, Pangea Day. It seems like the event was a great success, with screenings in many diffferent world locations including Cairo, London, Los Angeles and Mumbai.

If you didn’t catch one of the live showings, don’t worry because the programme has now been uploaded onto the Pangea Day website. There are 51 short films from many different places and you can watch them here.

A few weeks ago Global Culture blog featured a post about people who are open to new experiences. One of the points of the post was that cities of the USA which have been more open to receiving immigrants are now hubs for creativity and innovation.

In other words, immigrants can have a positive effect on a community because they bring new skills, an open mind and create global connections.

One early and important example of this phenomenon was the town of Huntsville in Alabama. Home to a space programme led by German scientists after World War II, the town supplied the brains behind the launch of the first American satellite in 1958 and put astronauts on the moon in 1969.

So what was the effect of opening up to immigration on this one-time cotton market town? It is now a thriving city of 170,000 people and has one of the highest concentrations of scientists and engineers in the USA.

Germany has for a long time been very progressive with regards to green initiatives such as recycling and use of renewable energy.

A new study* from Mckinsey looks at the economics behind Germany’s efforts to reduce emissions, and finds that the country can reduce emissions to 70% of 1990 levels without impacting economic growth or quality of life for German people. In fact with the right measures, such as better insulation and increased use of renewable energy, there will even be a profit for investors.

Germany already has the world’s largest capacity of installed wind power, which limits future potential from this relatively economical source of renewable energy. Reductions of more than 30% from 1990’s levels will entail some difficult trade-offs and potentially high costs. However this is a good indication that up to a certain level, reducing emissions does not have to mean forfeiting growth.

*The article is free, but you may have to register to get at it.

Tags: emissions reduction, energy, global warming,

Our purpose here at PocketCultures is to try to bridge differences between people of different nationalities by showing new aspects of different countries and world cultures. It’s an area which in our opinion is not getting enough attention at present, which is why we were delighted to find out about Pangea Day - an innovative event by leading film makers aiming to change the way we think about other countries.

The main screening itself will be held on May 10, at locations all around the world, and also broadcast live on the internet and television. But you can already catch some trailers on YouTube. Among those submitted so far are ‘Japan sings for Turkey’, a traditional Japanese rendition of the Turkish national anthem, ‘France sings for USA’ - elegantly-shot black and white scenes of Paris set to the background of Parisians singing the Star Spangled Banner.

Documentary maker Jehane Noujaim, the inspiration behind the event, explains the reasoning behind the idea of using films to show stories in this article. Learning someone’s story, and coming to see them as a person, rather than a ‘foreigner’ is key to breaking down prejudices.

Update: the films have now been uploaded to the Pangea Day website. Watch them here.

Queen Rania of Jordan is embracing technology in her efforts to increase cross-cultural dialogue and help understanding between her country and the rest of the world.

She has launched a YouTube page to try to answer people’s questions about Arabs and the Middle East. She will accept questions until August 12th.

In her vlog she says that she has been surprised by some of the questions she has received so far (such as ‘do all Arabs hate Americans?’) and she aims to break some stereotypes with her campaign and help people to see the real side of the Arab and Muslim world and culture.

This initiative is sure to raise a lot of awareness - there are already more than 500 questions posted on the YouTube page.

Whilst Queen Rania is obviously not an average citizen of Jordan or the Middle East and so probably cannot speak for all the Arab world, this initiative should help to increase awareness and understanding of some important facts.

Tip-off from Global Voices Online.

Bangladesh is one of the most densely populated countries on earth, and suffers from severe flooding almost every year. This can be disastrous for the rice crops, which cannot survive if they stay flooded for more than 3 days. Since around two thirds of the population make their living from rice crops, a bad flood can cause many problems.

Now the International Rice Research Institute, based in Manila, has developed a strain of rice which can endure flooding for at least 10 days. This article from Al Jazeera describes how the new strain of rice can help farmers in Bangladesh.

From the 8th Century, Muslim tradition and culture set trends in eating, music and style that still influence us today. Their experiments, discoveries and inventions with liquids, light and time opened the door to myriad new chemical compounds, measurements of time in precise and minute detail and devices used in space observation and deep sea exploration. Also a book has been published to collect this beautiful collection of information and images.

http://www.1001inventions.com

China’s new 1,200-mile railway crosses some of the harshest terrain on the planet. Plug in your oxygen supply. 47 hours of sceneries from Beijing to Lhasa. All aboard the Tibet express, reading this article of the American magazine ‘Wired’

http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/14.07/chinarail.html