Before Aliyu Ali attended the World Future Energy Summit this week in Abu Dhabi, he was not sure if the attention being given to renewable energy was real or just hype.
But yesterday the undergraduate student at the American University of Dubai (AUD) said he was impressed by the amount of practical, ground-level solutions being offered by the world's leading technology and energy firms as well as Masdar, the clean technology company.
"It feels real now," said Ali, who hails from Nigeria. "They gave real life examples of how renewable energy can be implemented in the Northern Emirates. Then I started thinking how this can be implemented in my country."
Ali was one of several members of Young Future Energy Leaders, a programme of the Masdar Institute of Science and Technology, who attended a seminar yesterday at the summit on cultivating the next generation of clean-technology leaders.
Executives from the non-profit, energy, academic and venture capital professions encouraged the young people of today to get involved in what they called the most exciting and dynamic emerging industries today - the production of power from renewable sources such as wind, solar, algae and other plants.
"It is a fascinating, fascinating sector to work in," Katrina Landis, the chief executive of BP Alternative Energy, told audience members. "In my entire career I have never been more excited than in the two years I have spent in alternative energies."
Ms Landis said there were limitless possibilities for entering the field of clean energy, depending on one's appetite for risk and skills, from engineering to finance .
Alexander O'Cinneide, the head of venture investments at Masdar, called alternative energy, "without a doubt the most exciting sector to work in".
He said the most important factor in deciding whether to back a particular business plan was the quality of the company's management.
Mr O'Cinneide pointed out that one of Masdar's recent investment choices, the Abu Dhabi solar development company Enviromena Power Systems, was a recent start-up. It attracted Masdar's venture fund because its management had delivered the company's projects on time and within budget.
Bianca Jagger, the founder and chairwoman of the Bianca Jagger Human Rights Foundation, was optimistic about the work being done in Germany by the public and private sectors.
"While there are threats and opportunities, they are focusing on opportunity because the finality of fossil fuels forces us to find an alternative, and renewable energy is that alternative," said Ms Jagger, who is also a former model and an ex-wife of the Rolling Stones frontman Mick Jagger.
For Marwa Attiya, a junior in electrical engineering at AUD, found the answer to a question she had been pondering. "I had been asking, what is my role in this as a student - what can I do? Well, I found a lot of things."
igale@thenational.ae
Sinopharm vaccine explained
The Sinopharm vaccine was created using techniques that have been around for decades.
“This is an inactivated vaccine. Simply what it means is that the virus is taken, cultured and inactivated," said Dr Nawal Al Kaabi, chair of the UAE's National Covid-19 Clinical Management Committee.
"What is left is a skeleton of the virus so it looks like a virus, but it is not live."
This is then injected into the body.
"The body will recognise it and form antibodies but because it is inactive, we will need more than one dose. The body will not develop immunity with one dose," she said.
"You have to be exposed more than one time to what we call the antigen."
The vaccine should offer protection for at least months, but no one knows how long beyond that.
Dr Al Kaabi said early vaccine volunteers in China were given shots last spring and still have antibodies today.
“Since it is inactivated, it will not last forever," she said.
NYBL PROFILE
Company name: Nybl
Date started: November 2018
Founder: Noor Alnahhas, Michael LeTan, Hafsa Yazdni, Sufyaan Abdul Haseeb, Waleed Rifaat, Mohammed Shono
Based: Dubai, UAE
Sector: Software Technology / Artificial Intelligence
Initial investment: $500,000
Funding round: Series B (raising $5m)
Partners/Incubators: Dubai Future Accelerators Cohort 4, Dubai Future Accelerators Cohort 6, AI Venture Labs Cohort 1, Microsoft Scale-up
Russia's Muslim Heartlands
Dominic Rubin, Oxford
The White Lotus: Season three
Creator: Mike White
Starring: Walton Goggins, Jason Isaacs, Natasha Rothwell
Rating: 4.5/5
The specs
AT4 Ultimate, as tested
Engine: 6.2-litre V8
Power: 420hp
Torque: 623Nm
Transmission: 10-speed automatic
Price: From Dh330,800 (Elevation: Dh236,400; AT4: Dh286,800; Denali: Dh345,800)
On sale: Now
The smuggler
Eldarir had arrived at JFK in January 2020 with three suitcases, containing goods he valued at $300, when he was directed to a search area.
Officers found 41 gold artefacts among the bags, including amulets from a funerary set which prepared the deceased for the afterlife.
Also found was a cartouche of a Ptolemaic king on a relief that was originally part of a royal building or temple.
The largest single group of items found in Eldarir’s cases were 400 shabtis, or figurines.
Khouli conviction
Khouli smuggled items into the US by making false declarations to customs about the country of origin and value of the items.
According to Immigration and Customs Enforcement, he provided “false provenances which stated that [two] Egyptian antiquities were part of a collection assembled by Khouli's father in Israel in the 1960s” when in fact “Khouli acquired the Egyptian antiquities from other dealers”.
He was sentenced to one year of probation, six months of home confinement and 200 hours of community service in 2012 after admitting buying and smuggling Egyptian antiquities, including coffins, funerary boats and limestone figures.
For sale
A number of other items said to come from the collection of Ezeldeen Taha Eldarir are currently or recently for sale.
Their provenance is described in near identical terms as the British Museum shabti: bought from Salahaddin Sirmali, "authenticated and appraised" by Hossen Rashed, then imported to the US in 1948.
- An Egyptian Mummy mask dating from 700BC-30BC, is on offer for £11,807 ($15,275) online by a seller in Mexico
- A coffin lid dating back to 664BC-332BC was offered for sale by a Colorado-based art dealer, with a starting price of $65,000
- A shabti that was on sale through a Chicago-based coin dealer, dating from 1567BC-1085BC, is up for $1,950
The specs: 2018 BMW R nineT Scrambler
Price, base / as tested Dh57,000
Engine 1,170cc air/oil-cooled flat twin four-stroke engine
Transmission Six-speed gearbox
Power 110hp) @ 7,750rpm
Torque 116Nm @ 6,000rpm
Fuel economy, combined 5.3L / 100km