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LeopoldS

Schumpeter: More than just a game | The Economist - 3 views

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    remember the discussion I tried to trigger in the team a few weeks ago ...
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    main quote I take from the article: "gamification is really a cover for cynically exploiting human psychology for profit"
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    I would say that it applies to management in general :-)
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    which is exactly why it will never work .... and surprisingly "managers" fail to understand this very simple fact.
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    ... "gamification is really a cover for cynically exploiting human psychology for profit" --> "Why Are Half a Million People Poking This Giant Cube?" http://www.wired.com/gamelife/2012/11/curiosity/
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    I think the "essence" of the game is its uselessness... workers need exactly the inverse, to find a meaning in what they do !
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    I love the linked article provided by Johannes! It expresses very elegantly why I still fail to understand even extremely smart and busy people in my view apparently waiting their time in playing computer games - but I recognise that there is something in games that we apparently need / gives us something we cherish .... "In fact, half a million players so far have registered to help destroy the 64 billion tiny blocks that compose that one gigantic cube, all working in tandem toward a singular goal: discovering the secret that Curiosity's creator says awaits one lucky player inside. That's right: After millions of man-hours of work, only one player will ever see the center of the cube. Curiosity is the first release from 22Cans, an independent game studio founded earlier this year by Peter Molyneux, a longtime game designer known for ambitious projects like Populous, Black & White and Fable. Players can carve important messages (or shameless self-promotion) onto the face of the cube as they whittle it to nothing. Image: Wired Molyneux is equally famous for his tendency to overpromise and under-deliver on his games. In 2008, he said that his upcoming game would be "such a significant scientific achievement that it will be on the cover of Wired." That game turned out to be Milo & Kate, a Kinect tech demo that went nowhere and was canceled. Following this, Molyneux left Microsoft to go indie and form 22Cans. Not held back by the past, the Molyneux hype train is going full speed ahead with Curiosity, which the studio grandiosely promises will be merely the first of 22 similar "experiments." Somehow, it is wildly popular. The biggest challenge facing players of Curiosity isn't how to blast through the 2,000 layers of the cube, but rather successfully connecting to 22Cans' servers. So many players are attempting to log in that the server cannot handle it. Some players go for utter efficiency, tapping rapidly to rack up combo multipliers and get more
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    why are video games so much different than collecting stamps or spotting birds or planes ? One could say they are all just hobbies
Nicholas Lan

Advancing Aeronautics: A Decision Framework for Selecting Research Agendas | RAND - 1 views

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    possibly some of you might find this interesting. methodology for selecting research agendas particularly with respect to NASA from the RAND corporation "Develops a unified decisionmaking approach for selecting aeronautics research agendas that quantifies the social and economic reasons for the research, balances competing perspectives, and enables transparent explanation of the resulting decisions."
Luís F. Simões

The Emerging Revolution in Game Theory - Technology Review - 2 views

  • The world of game theory is currently on fire. In May, Freeman Dyson at Princeton University and William Press at the University of Texas announced that they had discovered a previously unknown strategy for the game of prisoner's dilemma which guarantees one player a better outcome than the other. That's a monumental surprise. Theorists have studied Prisoner's Dilemma for decades, using it as a model for the emergence of co-operation in nature. This work has had a profound impact on disciplines such as economics, evolutionary biology and, of course, game theory itself. The new result will have impact in all these areas and more.
  • Ref: arxiv.org/abs/1208.2666: Winning isn't everything: Evolutionary stability of Zero Determinant strategies
LeopoldS

Come On, China, Buy Our Stuff! - NYTimes.com - 1 views

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    Interesting article on china us trade inequalities
Dario Izzo

Check your country impact on science!!! - 8 views

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    Did you know that papers in space science are among the most quoted? Check how your country is doing .... you will be surprised :)
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    In terms of country based quotations ("Most scited countries") I cannot access space science, only Geosciences, Immunology, Material Science, and Psychiatry & Psychology. But when I first saw the list of countries at the left under "Impact in Science" I saw Argentinia was on top, and USA was on last position. Yes, I was surprised, until I realised that is was just an alphabetical order. Did you see the same list?
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    scotland's a separate country. must be preparing for independence already. and it's highest percentage is for space science. crazy
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    Dajan, you need to click on the country you are interested in ....
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    Nooo, can't be THAT simple.
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    data a bit old .... newer data (but less well presented) at http://sciencewatch.com/ there you can also read: "The 20th century was largely dominated by the US as a major powerhouse of scientific research and innovation, with 40% of the papers indexed in the Web of Science fielded by US scientists in the 1990s. By 2009, that figure was down to 29%. The US now struggles to keep pace with increased output from Europe and Asia."
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    hottest space science paper in January 2012: Field: Space Science Article Title: Herschel Space Observatory An ESA facility for far-infrared and submillimetre astronomy Authors: Pilbratt, GL;Riedinger, JR;Passvogel, T;Crone, G;Doyle, D;Gageur, U;Heras, AM;Jewell, C;Metcalfe, L;Ott, S;Schmidt, M Journal: ASTRON ASTROPHYS, 518: art. no.-L1 JUL-AUG 2010 * ESTEC SRE SA, ESA Res & Sci Support Dept, Keplerlaan 1, NL-2201 AZ Noordwijk, Netherlands. * ESTEC SRE SA, ESA Res & Sci Support Dept, NL-2201 AZ Noordwijk, Netherlands. * ESTEC SRE OA, ESA Sci Operat Dept, NL-2201 AZ Noordwijk, Netherlands. * ESTEC SRE P, ESA Sci Operat Dept, NL-2201 AZ Noordwijk, Netherlands. * ESOC OPS OAH, ESA Mission Operat Dept, D-64293 Darmstadt, Germany. * ESAC SRE OA, ESA Sci Operat Dept, Madrid 28691, Spain.
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    Interestingly, Space Science is the only field in which my country has positive "Impact vs. world" value (even more interestingly as we don't even have a proper national space agency)...
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    this might also be an indication / point to an issue with their data concerning space science publications ... quite surprising indeed that all Europeans are doing so well in this field
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    Something should be wrong, for Spain I can read: Economics & Business 4.54 -28 Only minus 28!
LeopoldS

American Innovation Losing its Shine? - 4 views

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    interesting reflections by MIT head on innovation in US
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    interesting, especially since in all COmmission papers US innovation is praised and changes expected are only related to China/India (for the better)... Article mixes a lot talk on innovation with numbers that I do not see necessarily connected (trade deficit, GDP growth etc.). Seems to me the real problematique behind the article is only the next planned distribution of federal funds and where they should cut...
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    well I understand her point. Spending cuts are only vicious short term solutions against economical downturn since growth (GDP is an interesting measure indeed) comes from innovation, research and production. Nonetheless, what she is describing is happening in EU too. So who will take the lead? I am not certain China is the one. In my view, it has not yet solved its domestic issues... and US still has more Nobel Prize than China. One thing for sure, the way it is EU is only a "wagon" of the train...
LeopoldS

The Space Review: The cislunar econosphere (part 1) - 1 views

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    visionary ..
johannessimon81

Nasa-funded study: industrial civilisation headed for 'irreversible collapse'? - 4 views

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    Sounds relevant. Does ESA need to have a position on this question?
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    This was on Slashdot now, with a link to the paper. It quite an iteresting study actually. "The scenarios most closely reflecting the reality of our world today are found in the third group of experiments (see section 5.3), where we introduced economic stratification. Under such conditions, we find that collapse is difficult to avoid."
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    Interesting, but is it new? In general, I would say that history has shown us that it is inevitable that civilisations get replaced by new concepts (much is published about this, read eg Fog of War by Jona Lendering on the struggles between civilisations in ancient history, which have remarkably similar issues as today, yet on a different scale of course). "While some members of society might raise the alarm that the system is moving towards an impending collapse and therefore advocate structural changes to society in order to avoid it, Elites and their supporters, who opposed making these changes, could point to the long sustainable trajectory 'so far' in support of doing nothing." I guess this bang on it, the ones that can change the system, are not benefitted by doing so, hence enrichment, depletion, short term gain remain and might even accelerate to compensate for the loss in the rest of the system.
LeopoldS

Oxford Martin Commission for Future Generations | Oxford Martin School - 0 views

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    high profile authors writing about long-term challenges and opportunities ...
Loretta Latronico Poulain

Agent-based computer models could anticipate future economic crisis - 1 views

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    "The Illinois Commerce Commission wanted to make sure that if they deregulated the power market, individual producers of electricity would not be able to manipulate the market during times of high demand by withholding capacity or charging excessive rates. The Argonne model found that during certain times of heavy load such a situation could emerge, which led to the recommendation that independent monitors maintain some oversight of the power market." Interesting this study on power grids !
Dario Izzo

Probabilistic Logic Allows Computer Chip to Run Faster - 3 views

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    Francesco pointed out this research one year ago, we dropped it as noone was really considering it ... but in space a low CPU power consumption is crucial!! Maybe we should look back into this?
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    Q1: For the time being, for what purposes computers are mainly used on-board?
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    for navigation, control, data handling and so on .... why?
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    Well, because the point is to identify an application in which such computers would do the job... That could be either an existing application which can be done sufficiently well by such computers or a completely new application which is not already there for instance because of some power consumption constraints... Q2 would be then: for which of these purposes strict determinism of the results is not crucial? As the answer to this may not be obvious, a potential study could address this very issue. For instance one can consider on-board navigation systems with limited accuracy... I may be talking bullshit now, but perhaps in some applications it doesn't matter whether a satellite flies on the exact route but +/-10km to the left/right? ...and so on for the other systems. Another thing is understanding what exactly this probabilistic computing is, and what can be achieved using it (like the result is probabilistic but falls within a defined range of precision), etc. Did they build a complete chip or at least a sub-circiut, or still only logic gates...
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    Satellites use old CPUs also because with the trend of going for higher power modern CPUs are not very convenient from a system design point of view (TBC)... as a consequence the constraints put on on-board algorithms can be demanding. I agree with you that double precision might just not be necessary for a number of applications (navigation also), but I guess we are not talking about 10km as an absolute value, rather to a relative error that can be tolerated at level of (say) 10^-6. All in all you are right a first study should assess what application this would be useful at all.. and at what precision / power levels
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    The interest of this can be a high fault tolerance for some math operations, ... which would have for effect to simplify the job of coders! I don't think this is a good idea regarding power consumption for CPU (strictly speaking). The reason we use old chip is just a matter of qualification for space, not power. For instance a LEON Sparc (e.g. use on some platform for ESA) consumes something like 5mW/MHz so it is definitely not were an engineer will look for some power saving considering a usual 10-15kW spacecraft
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    What about speed then? Seven time faster could allow some real time navigation at higher speed (e.g. velocity of a terminal guidance for an asteroid impactor is limited to 10 km/s ... would a higher velocity be possible with faster processors?) Another issue is the radiation tolerance of the technology ... if the PCMOS are more tolerant to radiation they could get more easily space qualified.....
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    I don't remember what is the speed factor, but I guess this might do it! Although, I remember when using an IMU that you cannot have the data above a given rate (e.g. 20Hz even though the ADC samples the sensor at a little faster rate), so somehow it is not just the CPU that must be re-thought. When I say qualification I also imply the "hardened" phase.
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    I don't know if the (promised) one-order-of-magnitude improvements in power efficiency and performance are enough to justify looking into this. For once, it is not clear to me what embracing this technology would mean from an engineering point of view: does this technology need an entirely new software/hardware stack? If that were the case, in my opinion any potential benefit would be nullified. Also, is it realistic to build an entire self-sufficient chip on this technology? While the precision of floating point computations may be degraded and still be useful, how does all this play with integer arithmetic? Keep in mind that, e.g., in the Linux kernel code floating-point calculations are not even allowed/available... It is probably possible to integrate an "accelerated" low-accuracy floating-point unit together with a traditional CPU, but then again you have more implementation overhead creeping in. Finally, recent processors by Intel (e.g., the Atom) and especially ARM boast really low power-consumption levels, at the same time offering performance-boosting features such as multi-core and vectorization capabilities. Don't such efforts have more potential, if anything because of economical/industrial inertia?
pacome delva

Power Law Explains Insurgent Violence - 1 views

  • To try to explain the mechanism behind these patterns, the team borrowed a simple computer model from economics. The model treated all insurgencies like a marketplace--groups of people constantly deciding whether to act. Rather than coordinating, the groups simply watch the news. The size of the carnage reported at any given time determines the probability that a group of a given size will strike next. Like clockwork, the attacks over the course of the conflict--from the smallest to the most deadly--have the same distribution.
Joris _

Are cosmic rays really causing Toyota's woes? | freep.com | Detroit Free Press - 2 views

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    Sounds like one of Calvin's alibis: Aliens! Dad, aliens! A sarcastic Venusian entered the kitchen...
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    i think they could also be a cause for Greece's economic crisis
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    Well, then I suggest to elect Spaceman Spiff instead of Papandreou as Prime Minister! :-)
pacome delva

Making A Decision? Take Your Time - 3 views

  • Recent research out of MaastrichtUniversity School of Business and Economics shows that indeed delaying a choice, in general, can help us make better decisions. 
LeopoldS

YouTube - 7 digital trends at Davos 2011 [World Economic Forum talk] - 3 views

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    I like the iToilet. In Japan this technology is used since many years, even on public places. In this sense, the electrified toilet is a trend only in western countries.
Nicholas Lan

prediction markets - 2 views

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    talking of interesting business models - > futures markets for whether or not despots will still be in power by the end of the year. Markets>Foreign Affiars/International security
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    "Challenge the Intrade Crowd with Your Wisdom"... Yeah...
Francesco Biscani

Why I don't care very much about tablets anymore - 5 views

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    There it goes :)
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    "So a new tablet will never be exciting the way that a new, luxury gel ink pen will be exciting" Man, I immediately felt like ordering some new luxury gel ink pens!
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    like also this one: "Some of the really savvy new media efforts like Flipboard are exciting, but after the initial "wow" factor wears off, these apps mainly serve to remind me that there's already too much good stuff to read out there, and that my life is slipping away from me in an infinite stream of interesting bits about smart animals, dumb criminals, outrageous celebs, shiny objects, funny memes, scientific discoveries, economic developments, etc.. I invariably end up closing the app in a fit of guilt, and picking up one of the truly fantastic dead tree or Kindle books that I'm working my way through at the moment, so that I can actually exercise my brain (as opposed to simply wearing it out)."
Nicholas Lan

Betting on Green - 5 views

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    breakthroughs vs. accelerated deployment in climate change mitigation technologies.
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    interesting guy indeed ... "Forget today's green technologies like electric cars, wind turbines, solar cells and smart grids, in other words. None meets what Mr Khosla calls the "Chindia price"-the price at which people in China and India will buy them without a subsidy. "Everything's a toy until it reaches that point," he says. I also like this one since its a bit like ACT topic selection: ""I am only interested in technologies that have a 90% chance of failure but, if they do succeed, would change the infrastructure of society in some radical way," he says." should we propose SPS to him ? :-)
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    one more: ""I never compute returns. If you start forecasting cash flows, you lose innovation, you lose instinct. You average yourself down to mediocrity." "I've had many more failures than successes in my life," admits Mr Khosla. "My willingness to fail gives me the ability to succeed."
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    indeed. puts me in mind of the often reinvented private ACT idea. actually there's a bunch of interesting looking articles on his website. http://www.khoslaventures.com/khosla/papers.html . No sps in the solar one as far as i can tell :) found this bit intriguing too in that, albeit presumably out of context, it doesn't make sense ""The solution to our energy problems is almost the exact opposite of what Khosla says," declares Joseph Romm, who is the editor of Climate Progress, an influential climate blog, and a senior fellow at the Centre for American Progress Action Fund, a think-tank. "Technology breakthroughs are unlikely to be the answer. Accelerated deployment of existing technologies will get you down the cost curve much more rapidly than a breakthrough."" found this seemingly not very well considered piece (to be fair a blog post) by the guy http://climateprogress.org/2010/07/02/is-anyone-more-incoherent-than-vinod-khosla/ . maybe he's written some more convincing stuff in this vein somewhere.
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    "Mr Khosla (...) is investing over $1 billion of his clients' money in black swans" Well, with his own money his approach might be a little different :-)
Luís F. Simões

Shell energy scenarios to 2050 - 6 views

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    just in case you were feeling happy and optimistic
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    An energy scenario published by an oil company? Allow me to be sceptical...
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    Indeed, Shell is an energy company, not just oil, for some time now ... The two scenarii are, in their approach, dependant of economic and political situation, which is right now impossible to forecast. Reference to Kyoto is surprising, almost out-dated! But overall, I find it rather optimistic at some stages, and probably the timeline (p37-39) is unlikely with recent events.
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    the report was published in 2008, which explains the reference to Kyoto, as the follow-up to it was much more uncertain at that point. The Blueprint scenario is indeed optimistic, but also quite unlikely I'd say. I don't see humanity suddenly becoming so wise and coordinated. Sadly, I see something closer to the Scramble scenario as much more likely to occur.
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    not an oil company??? please have a look at the percentage of their revenues coming from oil and gas and then compare this with all their other energy activities together and you will see very quickly that it is only window dressing ... they are an oil and gas company ... and nothing more
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    not JUST oil. From a description: "Shell is a global group of energy and petrochemical companies." Of course revenues coming from oil are the biggest, the investment turnover on other energy sources is small for now. Knowing that most of their revenues is from an expendable source, to guarantee their future, they invest elsewhere. They have invested >1b$ in renewable energy, including biofuels. They had the largest wind power business among so-called "oil" companies. Oil only defines what they do "best". As a comparison, some time ago, Apple were selling only computers and now they sell phones. But I would not say Apple is just a phone company.
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    window dressing only ... e.g. Net cash from operating activities (pre-tax) in 2008: 70 Billion$ net income in 2008: 26 Billion revenues in 2008: 88 Billion Their investments and revenues in renewables don't even show up in their annual financial reports since probably they are under the heading of "marketing" which is already 1.7 Billion $ ... this is what they report on their investments: Capital investment, portfolio actions and business development Capital investment in 2009 was $24 billion. This represents a 26% decrease from 2008, which included over $8 billion in acquisitions, primarily relating to Duvernay Oil Corp. Capital investment included exploration expenditure of $4.5 billion (2008: $11.0 billion). In Abu Dhabi, Shell signed an agreement with Abu Dhabi National Oil Company to extend the GASCO joint venture for a further 20 years. In Australia, Shell and its partners took the final investment decision (FID) for the Gorgon LNG project (Shell share 25%). Gorgon will supply global gas markets to at least 2050, with a capacity of 15 million tonnes (100% basis) of LNG per year and a major carbon capture and storage scheme. Shell has announced a front-end engineering and design study for a floating LNG (FLNG) project, with the potential to deploy these facilities at the Prelude offshore gas discovery in Australia (Shell share 100%). In Australia, Shell confirmed that it has accepted Woodside Petroleum Ltd.'s entitlement offer of new shares at a total cost of $0.8 billion, maintaining its 34.27% share in the company; $0.4 billion was paid in 2009 with the remainder paid in 2010. In Bolivia and Brazil, Shell sold its share in a gas pipeline and in a thermoelectric power plant and its related assets for a total of around $100 million. In Canada, the Government of Alberta and the national government jointly announced their intent to contribute $0.8 billion of funding towards the Quest carbon capture and sequestration project. Quest, which is at the f
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    thanks for the info :) They still have their 50% share in the wind farm in Noordzee (you can see it from ESTEC on a clear day). Look for Shell International Renewables, other subsidiaries and joint-ventures. I guess, the report is about the oil branch. http://sustainabilityreport.shell.com/2009/servicepages/downloads/files/all_shell_sr09.pdf http://www.noordzeewind.nl/
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    no - its about Shell globally - all Shell .. these participations are just peanuts please read the intro of the CEO in the pdf you linked to: he does not even mention renewables! their entire sustainability strategy is about oil and gas - just making it (look) nicer and environmentally friendlier
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    Fair enough, for me even peanuts are worthy and I am not able to judge. Not all big-profit companies, like Shell, are evil :( Look in the pdf what is in the upstream and downstream you mentionned above. Non-shell sources for examples and more objectivity: http://www.nuon.com/company/Innovative-projects/noordzeewind.jsp http://www.e-energymarket.com/news/single-news/article/ferrari-tops-bahrain-gp-using-shell-biofuel.html thanks.
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