River Thames

China's Xiamen: A successful practice of sustainable development in bay city

Retrieved on: 
Wednesday, February 28, 2024

Xiamen is rich in marine resources, but its sea area is small, which has been subjected to intense development and frequent economic activities.

Key Points: 
  • Xiamen is rich in marine resources, but its sea area is small, which has been subjected to intense development and frequent economic activities.
  • The meeting is believed as the start of the comprehensive treatment of the lake that has lasted more than 30 years so far.
  • The city has conducted training courses in Costa Rica on topics such as mariculture technology and marine spatial planning.
  • It has also joined forces with BRICS countries to establish a BRICS ocean sustainable development research center.

Ghana: Kumasi city’s unplanned boom is destroying two rivers – sewage, heavy metals and chemical pollution detected

Retrieved on: 
Wednesday, February 7, 2024

Kumasi, Ghana’s second largest city, has a high level of encroachment and this has led to the pollution of water bodies.

Key Points: 
  • Kumasi, Ghana’s second largest city, has a high level of encroachment and this has led to the pollution of water bodies.
  • As scholars of urban planning and chemistry, we conducted a study in the greater Kumasi metropolis to understand the extent of encroachment and pollution of two rivers, Subin and Wiwi.
  • We also wanted to know more about the extent of water pollution, land-use dynamics and water resources regulations, and how they influence the quality of water resources.
  • We recommend that the city authorities monitor what is happening better and do more to prevent degradation of Kumasi’s water bodies.

Effects of land use on the quality of water bodies

  • Also, the intense pressure of urbanisation on the available land has resulted in a high level of encroachment in wetlands.
  • As a result of limited investment in sewage plants, most of the city’s untreated waste water is discharged into the surface water bodies.
  • This has implications for the quality and sustainability of these water bodies.
  • During heavy rains, the refuse runs off into the water, affecting water quality and flow.
  • The industrial activities along the water bodies include washing bays, auto-mechanical activities, welding and wood processing.

Time for Kumasi to wake up

  • Urban growth can coexist with natural resources if human activities located near water bodies don’t threaten their quality and continued existence.
  • Our study shows that Kumasi has developed with little regard for its natural assets.
  • City authorities ought to put in place measures to clean the water bodies and convert buffer areas into parks and green spaces.
  • Ecologically sensitive areas that are 100 feet away from wetlands should be compulsorily acquired as natural assets for the public interest.


The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

Board Games Market size to grow by USD 3.42 billion from 2022 to 2027, Market is fragmented due to the presence of prominent companies like Atlas Games, Alderac Entertainment Group and Berkshire Hathaway Inc., and many more - Technavio

Retrieved on: 
Friday, January 5, 2024

NEW YORK, Jan. 5, 2024 /PRNewswire/ -- The board games market is estimated to grow by USD 3.42 billion from 2022 to 2027, growing at a CAGR of 7.55%.

Key Points: 
  • NEW YORK, Jan. 5, 2024 /PRNewswire/ -- The board games market is estimated to grow by USD 3.42 billion from 2022 to 2027, growing at a CAGR of 7.55%.
  • The board games market is fragmented owing to the presence of many global and regional companies.
  • CMON Ltd. - The company offers Mayhem board games, such as Looney Tunes and Teen Titans Go.
  • The toys and games market is estimated to grow at a CAGR of 8.1% between 2022 and 2027.

Seeing histories of forced First Nations labour: the 'Nii Ndahlohke / I Work' art exhibition

Retrieved on: 
Wednesday, November 8, 2023

The exhibition brings together artists from the communities whose children attended this institution, and it runs until June 24, 2024.

Key Points: 
  • The exhibition brings together artists from the communities whose children attended this institution, and it runs until June 24, 2024.
  • It emerged from the Munsee Delaware Language and History Group, a community-based language and history learning project.

Manual labour demands

  • Their labour was invisible within the school budget.
  • However, the Indian department was aware that Mount Elgin students were not given progressive training in skilled trades and that manual labour demands on students kept them out of the classroom and therefore compromised their education.

Farm labour, domestic service

  • Manual labour prepared students for limited work opportunities: farm labour for boys and men, and domestic service for girls and women.
  • Significantly, forced labour was a key issue in student resistance at Mount Elgin including running away, setting fires and attempting to ruin farm equipment.

Labour as central theme

  • Nii Ndahloke / I Work, addresses histories of student labour at Mount Elgin but also its larger impact on reserve and settler economies of southwestern Ontario in the era.
  • The show also addresses histories of gendered experiences of Indian education, racism, student illness, intergenerational collaboration and the preservation of different forms of labour and the stories and metaphors that accompany them.

Artists’ own histories

  • The artists’ resulting works range widely and meaningfully address the artist’s own histories.
  • As part of the exhibition design, a red line along the wall follows visitors around the exhibit.

Community-based approach

  • The exhibition reflects a different approach to both history and curation.
  • We hope people will leave with is a better understanding of the residential school system in Canada as a shared history.
  • Mary Jane Logan McCallum receives funding from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research and The Social Science Research Council of Canada, Heritage Canada, Ontario Arts Council.
  • Julie Rae Tucker receives funding from the Social Science Research Council of Canada and the Ontario Arts Council.

The Way of the Ancestors and how it can help us hear The Voice

Retrieved on: 
Tuesday, October 3, 2023

The book opens a window into the private Aboriginal world of law, justice and politics.

Key Points: 
  • The book opens a window into the private Aboriginal world of law, justice and politics.
  • But the thrust of The Way of the Ancestors goes deeper into the law governing human relationships, authority, justice, reconciliation, and the settling of grievances (Makarrata).
  • Already published are those on Songlines, Design, Country, Astronomy and Plants, with an edition on Innovation to be released shortly.
  • Indeed, for the first time the outside world is permitted to glimpse the deep concepts, practices, and emotions of a way of living that sustained 2000 generations.

Building ‘moral muscle’

    • The colonisers’ common law, while containing provisions respecting individual rights, was largely intended to protect property and good order.
    • The constitution they constructed for Federation, explicitly excluded First Peoples, along with Chinese and other non-Europeans, from citizenship.
    • Indigenous law’s purpose is not to protect the wealth, power, and property of the leadership class.
    • The capital of Indigenous society is intellectual and moral, not material, and the law is about proper behaviour towards other people and the natural world.
    • Indigenous Law has evolved to ensure the wellbeing of the society by building the inner wellbeing of individuals and collective wellbeing.
    • The Yolungu see this as the building of “moral muscle”.

Managing emotions

    • Central to traditional life is learning to manage emotions, feelings that can be both productive and hideously destructive.
    • One strategy is the use of Pitjantjatjara/English fridge magnets containing the words for around 50 emotions in both languages.
    • Senior women had observed that young people, especially young males, could not express their emotions in either their own language or in English.

Olympic swimming in the Seine highlights efforts to clean up city rivers worldwide

Retrieved on: 
Thursday, August 3, 2023

This ban was in place to stop people immersing themselves in river waters polluted by stormwater, sewage and chemicals.

Key Points: 
  • This ban was in place to stop people immersing themselves in river waters polluted by stormwater, sewage and chemicals.
  • The clean waters of the swimmable Seine are being promoted as a positive legacy of these games.
  • But it’s not the first time Olympic swimming events have been held in the famous river.

A brief history of river swimming

    • She is typically represented standing on a boat: clambering over and swimming under the river’s vessels was clearly for mere mortals.
    • Swimming in rivers has a very long history related to pleasure and politics.
    • Competitive river swimming remained common in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
    • Even Chinese leader Mao Zedong used river swimming to promote his health and political image.
    • However, like the 1900 obstacle race, organised and informal river swimming in cities became uncommon.

The quest for swimmable cities

    • The Seine will reopen for swimming thanks to a €1.4 billion (A$2.3 billion) regeneration project to “reinvent the Seine”.
    • It began in 2017 and includes floating hotels, walkways and other social spaces as well as swimming and diving areas.
    • The revival of swimming in the Seine is just one example of how outdoor and “wild” swimming is contributing to better caring for rivers.
    • While we know this is good for people, public interest in clean, swimmable waterways for our own health, wellbeing and pleasure can also have great benefits for these environments.

Kosmos Announces the Release of Three Highly Anticipated Board Games, Available for the First Time in the U.S. at Gen Con 2023

Retrieved on: 
Wednesday, August 2, 2023

My Island's appearance at Gen Con marks the game's worldwide debut, eagerly anticipated by fans as the follow up to 2020's Spiel des Jahres-nominated My City.

Key Points: 
  • My Island's appearance at Gen Con marks the game's worldwide debut, eagerly anticipated by fans as the follow up to 2020's Spiel des Jahres-nominated My City.
  • Attendees can purchase these games, along with a multitude of other games in Kosmos' prestigious line, at the Kosmos booth, #2405, from August 3-6.
  • Most often, Kosmos games get their initial release in Europe, where the esteemed board game publisher is based.
  • These three Gen Con releases will be widely available at the end of August.

Classic literature still offers rich lessons about life in the deep blue sea

Retrieved on: 
Wednesday, July 12, 2023

In the novel, a supposedly indestructible vessel strikes an iceberg.

Key Points: 
  • In the novel, a supposedly indestructible vessel strikes an iceberg.
  • A man of untold wealth dreams of voyaging to the bottom of the sea, sharing with a select few passengers a glimpse of the mysteries of the deep.
  • He descends to the ocean floor in order to gawk at the wreckage of a great ship that sank years before.

Exploring the ‘seven seas’

    • A “league” (French “lieue”) was a measure that has been different lengths at different times in history.
    • In Melville’s novel, the great white whale rams the good ship Pequod and drags Captain Ahab to a watery death.
    • For Hardy, the claim that the Titanic was “unsinkable” is a prime example of human arrogance.

Unexplored depths

    • Indeed, it is often said that we know more about Mars than we do about the bottom of the sea.
    • The National Ocean Service reminds us that the seas cover more than two-thirds of the planet.
    • This fear is depicted in such haunting paintings as Théodore Géricault’s “The Raft of the Medusa” and J.M.W.
    • In our world of marine biodiversity loss, bleached coral and ocean acidification, we need positive as well as paranoid imaginings of the deep.

Among the first

    • It was only with the invention of the submarine that humans could reach more than a few feet below the surface of the waves.
    • In the 1620s the Dutch inventor Cornelis Drebbel descended into the River Thames in a bell-shaped submersible powered by oars, his oxygen supplied by setting fire to saltpeter.
    • His more immediate inspiration was the Plongeur, designed for the French navy in the early 1860s.
    • It reached a depth of 30 feet – or 9 meters – and could stay underwater for two hours.
    • Verne saw a model of it at the 1867 Exposition Universelle in Paris, where he also learned about a recent discovery: the mechanical power of electricity.

Hungry gold miners created Victoria's Murray cod fisheries – and we're still dealing with the consequences

Retrieved on: 
Friday, June 16, 2023

By 1852, ships hailing from Melbourne were sailing up the River Thames, carrying up to 10 tonnes of gold to London.

Key Points: 
  • By 1852, ships hailing from Melbourne were sailing up the River Thames, carrying up to 10 tonnes of gold to London.
  • Convicts, previously reluctant to be sent out to the colony, now begged for transportation.
  • Immigrants from England, Europe, The United States and China arrived in Melbourne in their hundreds each day.
  • Some canny miners who saw the boom was fast fading had an eye out for business opportunities.

“We cannot exhaust the fish”

    • These long-lived predators cruised around the main channels of rivers, ate crayfish, mussels, fish and even ducks and mice when they could get them.
    • By May 29th, the correspondent proposed exchanging the “superabundant” nuggets of the diggers with that of the “superfluous luxuries” in the Murray.
    • At the age of 27, Massachusetts-born Joseph Waldo Rice established the Lake Moira Fishing Company in mid–1855 with five others.
    • “We cannot exhaust [the fish],” suggested the Argus journalist, and ten times as many as they proposed could be harvested would not even deplete a small section of river.

Boomtime and collapse

    • Intensive fishing, questionable practices such as taking fish during the spawning season, a lack of regulation and the later rise of recreational fishing exhausted the supposedly inexhaustible resource.
    • Fish stocks fluctuated over time as fishing effort rose and fell, but catches hit rock-bottom in the early 1960s and never recovered.
    • It was only in the early 2000s that the unprofitable fishery was finally banned in all states of the Murray-Darling Basin.

Will the cod ever recover?

    • Recovery of Murray cod stocks to pre-European levels is probably unrealistic and the recovery will be slow.
    • Many have put in place strategies to help ensure the Murray cod and many other native freshwater fish have a future.
    • This is an edited extract from The Life and Times of the Murray Cod, CSIRO Publishing, 2023.

Pearson Secures Vitality and ECI Partners as Latest 80 Strand Subtenants

Retrieved on: 
Wednesday, June 14, 2023

LONDON, June 14, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- Pearson , the world's leading learning company, today announced that it has secured UK and US based private equity firm, ECI Partners ("ECI") and UK based medical insurer Vitality as subtenants at its global headquarters on 80 Strand, London.

Key Points: 
  • LONDON, June 14, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- Pearson , the world's leading learning company, today announced that it has secured UK and US based private equity firm, ECI Partners ("ECI") and UK based medical insurer Vitality as subtenants at its global headquarters on 80 Strand, London.
  • ECI will be taking c.14,000sq ft on the remainder of level 8 with Vitality acquiring c.20,000sq ft on part of level 5 within the building.
  • Mundy Miller, VP, Global Head of Property & Workplace, at Pearson commented: "We welcome Vitality and ECI Partners as the newest tenants of the 80 Strand family and are grateful they have selected us as their new home.
  • The subtenancy arrangements with ECI and Vitality have been led by its joint global real estate advisors, Gryphon Property Partners and CBRE.