Monroe County Looks to Install Major Solar Panel Project in GREECE

Solar Liberty would install 42,000 solar panels on 40 acres of land at the treatment plant in GREECE and at the Gloria Drive Landfill in Penfield that ...

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The Attica Zoological Park

If you’ve had enough of strolling around popular Athenian neighborhoods, why not take a unique journey through five continents without leaving Greece? Founded by Jean-Jacques Lesueur, the Attica Zoological Park was opened in 2000 in Spata initially as a Bird Park, and today hosts over 2,000 animals representing 350 species. With a total area of […] The post The Attica Zoological Park appeared first on The National Herald.

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POLITICO Pro’s Morning Energy: From Bonn to Paris - Gazprom’s squeeze

By Sara Stefanini | @SaraStefaninii | Send tips to sstefanini@politico.eu| Subscribe for this daily column http://politico.eu/registration | If you prefer to read this on your desktop click here Hello and welcome to POLITICO Pro’s Morning Energy. Iran locks up some LNG technology, Russia tightens its grip on Europe and turns up the Asian charm, and Miguel Arias Cañete lands in Papua New Guinea. — WHAT’S HAPPENING: BON BONN: The week-long climate negotiations in Bonn may have done little to pare down the 80-plus pages of text that will form the basis for a deal to reached at the COP21 summit in December, but leaders stressed they did make progress. The meeting’s two co-chairs said they will issue a slimmer draft of the agreement in the first week of October. The final negotiating session before the Paris climate summit is October 19-23. That’s the “crucial phase,” said Laurence Tubiana, France’s ambassador for climate negotiations. “We look at all the pieces of the puzzle, and now everybody knows everything. Now we have to assemble all the pieces of the puzzle.” However, that draft is unlikely to resolve the thorniest issues, including finance and the legal framework of the agreement. Those will be dealt with in Paris. Our POLITICO Pro colleagues in Washington report (paywall): http://politico.pro/1ioorVk and the draft agreement they’ll be taking to the session next month: http://bit.ly/1Ux6K1H — ‘WE’RE ALL FRUSTRATED:’ The pace of the negotiations is not as important as the direction, said Christiana Figueres, executive secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. And the good news is the COP21 talks are now underway on three levels: negotiators, ministers, and heads of state, and that’s “quite unique,” Figueres said. “We all want to see this baby born,” she added. “The proof is in the pudding, and the pudding is coming out of the oven in Paris.” — BRING THE COFFEE: NGOs agree that the ball is now rolling. But the talks are still focused on figuring out larger issues “rather than substance,” Greenpeace’s Jasper Inventor said in a press briefing Friday. On climate financing, the divide between rich and poor countries “remains unbridged.” Negotiators should be “ ready to drink lots of coffee and negotiate until the early hours of the morning” during the upcoming October sessions, Inventor said. DEVIL IN THE TEXT: That was the lesson learned from the COP15 summit in Copenhagen in 2009, said Connie Hedegaard, the EU climate commissioner between 2010 and 2014 and Denmark’s COP15 minister. Back in September 2009, “most people thought, as most people think today, that of course it would be possible to get an agreement,” she told us. “But we learned that many obstacles lie in the text.” One concern is that the issue of a so-called firewall — the division of burdens between developed and developing countries — remains a sticking point. “Time is short, and despite all the good will, we have seen how difficult it can be if there are too many square brackets when you get to Paris,” Hedegaard said. KEEP CHECKING BACK: There is increasing support among parties for putting a five-year review clause in the final COP21 deal, which would allow states to boost their ambitions over time, NGOs said. But it’s still unclear how such a mechanism would work in the EU’s case. The bloc’s 2030 energy and climate commitments were only agreed after months of divisive negotiations over numbers and processes. EU members would sit down in 2025, potentially the first review year, to review their ambitions. Asked about this, Elina Bardram, the EU’s chief negotiator, reiterated the bloc’s support for a review clause. She emphasized that it would be good for the world, but dodged the details of how it would work internally. Arias Cañete’s statement: http://bit.ly/1UyUXQo LIQUID IRAN: Germany’s Linde has secured a foothold in Iran’s (potential) future liquefied natural gas (LNG) exports, Argus Media reports. The company has reached a deal with state-run National Iranian Gas Export (NIGEC) to provide liquefaction technology for a plant with a capacity to export 10.8 millions tons per year of LNG. The licenses and some of the facilities needed for the Iranian LNG plant have already been purchased, but sanctions have kept them from being delivered, said NIGEC general manager Mostafa Sharif. Linde representatives joined German Economy Minister Sigmar Gabriel on a visit to Iran soon after July’s tentative agreement to block Iran from building a nuclear bomb. http://bit.ly/1PPKb7c — WHAT THE MAJORS THINK: Representatives from some of Europe’s biggest energy companies met with Arias Cañete on Friday and told him they expect Iranian gas exports Europe to mostly come in the form of LNG, rather than via pipeline, we hear. However, they said to expect oil exports first, and gas in the medium term. For now, companies are keen to get involved in energy saving and power generation projects in the country. GAZPROM SQUEEZES ITS FIST: The Russian major’s agreement with European peers to expand the Nord Stream gas pipeline to Germany, reached at the Eastern Economic Forum in Vladivostok Friday, sits awkwardly with the EU’s effort to diversify its gas away from Russia. It comes as Moscow pushes to bypass Ukraine as a gas transit route. “If completed, this might imply lower (or no) gas transit revenues for Ukraine, and possibly higher gas prices,” said Georg Zachmann from Bruegel Research. If Russia stops sending gas through Ukraine to Central and Eastern Europe, it could also make Ukraine more dependent on Russian gas. That’s because Ukraine currently receives so-called reverse flows — Russian gas that goes to neighbors like Slovakia, and then travels back to Ukraine. “Absent transits through Ukraine, Slovakia might not be in a position any more to provide cheap reverse flows back to Ukraine,” said Zachmann. — STILL NO TURKISH DELIGHT: The Nord Stream II project isn’t Russia’s only plan for diverting its European exports away from Ukraine; there’s also the planned Turkish Stream, which would land at the Turkish-Greek border. But the Russian and Turkish governments have yet to come to a final agreement to proceed. “Building both Nord Stream II and a full-blow 63 billion cubic meter per year TurkStream makes no sense for Gazprom,” said Zachmann. Instead, Moscow may choose to go with a smaller version that supplies Turkey and the Balkans, which currently receive gas delivered through Ukraine, he added. Kalina reports: http://politi.co/1Fnumz2 LET’S SWAP THIS: Besides making waves with its Nord Stream 2 announcement, Gazprom also made news for deciding to revive a multi-billion euro asset swap with German chemical group BASF, only months after the agreement was scrapped due to the conflict in Ukraine, the FT reports. Under the deal, Gazprom will take full control of a jointly-operated European gas trading and storage business, including the biggest underground gas storage facility in Western Europe. It will also receive a 50 percent stake in BASF subsidiary Wintershall’s North Sea operations. In return, Wintershall will receive stakes in two western Siberian gas fields. The article: http://on.ft.com/1JT3TdA, and the press release: http://on.basf.com/1OgHVFo ON THE BLOCK: In yet more Gazprom news, the company plans on holding three gas auctions this week to defend its European market share. It wants to boost exports to Europe and Turkey by 7 percent to make up for a 30 percent drop in prices. It’s a shift for Gazprom, which until now has relied on long-term take-or-pay contracts with its European customers. The auctions will be for 3.24 billion cubic meters, to be delivered over six months. Bloomberg has more:  http://bloom.bg/1O7wAcM CHARM OFFENSIVE: Amid strained with Europe, Russia used the Vladivostok forum to continue its pivot to Asia. In pursuit of new investment to help cope with big debts and low oil prices, Russia is giving Asian companies access to its prized oil and gas assets, the FT reports. State oil major Rosneft, for instance, gave India’s state-run ONGC a 15 percent share of its largest oil and gas field. http://on.ft.com/1JLKsXk — HEADLESS BODY: Russia signed some 30 cooperation agreements with China during President Vladimir Putin’s visit to Beijing on Friday, including several on energy. But most of those are non-binding, so don’t take them too seriously, Bloomberg reports. “Practice shows that out of 10 agreements, we get one or at most two contracts,” said Sergei Tsyplakov from Sberbank. Among those is an agreement for a possible third gas pipeline from the Sakhalin region in Russia’s Far East to China. However, the governments have tempered expectations for the second pipeline, from Siberia to western China, saying not to expect it until 2016. They agreed to the first, the Power of Siberia to eastern China, in May 2014. http://bloom.bg/1fZfaRJ NORTH SEA WORRIES: Big worries that parts of the North Sea may be abandoned if low prices force out some energy companies, leaving the crippling costs of running infrastructure to be shared among a smaller number of companies. Andy Samuel, the head of the new Oil and Gas Authority, told the FT that companies have to do a better job of working together, despite competitive pressures. A report to be released today warns that whole areas of the continental shelf could be shut down if companies can’t do a better job of burden sharing. The story: http://on.ft.com/1VI4fMy TRICKY POWER BALANCE: Meaning electricity, not control. The partial solar eclipse in March put the European electricity sector to the test: If it’s a sunny day, will a grid that is increasingly reliant on renewables (especially in Germany) withstand a solar blackout? Fortunately, cloudy skies in much of Europe limited the effects of the eclipse. But grid operators still had to ramp up their backup electricity supply, just in case, and then deal with a surge in sunshine once it passed. The Economist takes a look at the risk of relying on renewables, and options for storing energy for later. http://econ.st/1JTaaWP RENEWABLE SECURITY: Militaries around the world are turning to energy efficiency and sustainability as a way of bolstering their own security, reducing their reliance on fossil fuels as well as saving money. The U.S. Navy has made the biggest commitment so far, agreeing to build a 210 megawatt solar energy facility, which will supply 14 Navy installations. Construction of the Mesquite Solar 3 plant in California begins this month and should be completed by the end of 2016. Renewable Energy Focus: http://bit.ly/1PUkr9z FLYING LOW: Aircraft emissions are falling short of United Nations fuel efficiency goals by 12 years, according to the International Council on Clean Transportation. The efficiency of commercial jet fuel is improving by an average of 1.1 percent per year, but air traffic is expected to grow much faster — at 4.1 percent per year for 20 years. “When demand for your service grows four times quicker than the fuel efficiency of new planes, you clearly have a CO2 emissions gap,” said Andrew Murphy from the NGO Transport & Environment. Press release: http://bit.ly/1JE1J2l and study: http://bit.ly/1JTdJ3A — WHAT’S COMING: LONG HAUL: Miguel Arias Cañete, climate and energy commissioner, starts the week in Papua New Guinea for the Pacific Islands Forum. He’s there until Friday, where climate action will be on the table once again. The EU has been building a strong alliance with small island states since the COP17 summit in Durban, South Africa, said Hedegaard, who attended the 2013 forum in the Marshall Islands. “I know all the effort it takes the travel there, to prioritize it in a busy schedule, and the fact that Cañete is doing it emphasizes again how much Europe attaches to really understanding the Pacific Islands position and having a dialog with them.” BREAK’S OVER: Just because Bonn’s over doesn’t mean climate discussions are. They resumed yesterday and continue today at an informal ministerial in Paris, organized by the French government. The focus is on finance, technology, loss and damages from climate change, and adaptation, Tubiana said. BACK IN STRASBOURG: The European Parliament is back in session. The Industry, Research and Energy Committee meets tonight from 21:00 to 22:30 and will discuss studies on EU energy governance and the effects of the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership on European energy markets, plus a briefing on energy price trends. Follow it here: http://bit.ly/1OnkzOB _Thanks to Kalina Oroschakoff, Anca Gurzu and Helena O’Rourke-Potocki. _

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Sovereign Debt as Weapon: Subverting Democracy in GREECE

GREECE and its people have been victimized during the last five years by policies purported to provide a sustainable solution to the country's ...

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Friday's Best Bet: St. Nicholas GREEK Festival

When 5-9 p.m. Friday, 11 a.m.-9 p.m. Saturday-Sunday, 11 a.m.-8 p.m. Monday • Where St. Nicholas GREEK Orthodox Church, 4967 Forest Park ...

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Fossils show big bug ruled the seas 460 million years ago

WASHINGTON (AP) — Earth's first big predatory monster was a weird water bug as big as Tom Cruise, newly found fossils show. Almost half a billion years ago, way before the dinosaurs roamed, Earth's dominant large predator was a sea scorpion that grew to 5 feet 7 inches, with a dozen claw arms sprouting from its head and a spike tail, according to a new study. Scientists found signs of these new monsters of the prehistoric deep in Iowa, of all places. Geologists at the Iowa Geological Survey found 150 pieces of fossils about 60 feet under the Upper Iowa River, part of which had to be temporarily dammed to allow them to collect the specimens. Then scientists at Yale University determined they were a new species from about 460 million year ago, when Iowa was under an ocean Then, all the action was in the sea and it was pretty small scale, said James Lamsdell of Yale, lead author of the study published Monday in the journal BMC Evolutionary Biology. "This is the first real big predator," Lamsdell said. "I wouldn't have wanted to be swimming with it. There's something about bugs. When they're a certain size, they shouldn't be allowed to get bigger." Technically, this creature — named Pentecopterus decorahensis, after an ancient Greek warship — is not a bug by science definitions, Lamsdell said. It's part of the eurypterid family, which are basically sea scorpions. Those type of creatures "are really cool," said Joe Hannibal, curator of invertebrate paleontology at the Cleveland Museum of Natural History. Hannibal wasn't part of the study, but praised it for being well done, adding "this species is not particularly bizarre — for a eurypterid." Unlike modern land scorpions, this creature's tail didn't sting. It was used more for balance and in swimming, but half this creature's length was tail, Lamsdell said. There were larger sea scorpions half way around the world at the same time but those were more bottom feeders instead of dominant predators, he said. Lamsdell could tell by the way the many arms come out of the elongated head how this creature grabbed prey and pushed it to its mouth. "It was obviously a very aggressive animal," Lamsdell said. "It was a big angry bug." ___ Online: The study: http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12862-015-0443-9 ___ Seth Borenstein can be followed at http://twitter.com/borenbears Join the conversation about this story »

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Boaters mapping Pacific garbage to arrive in San Francisco

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Scientists and volunteers who have spent the last month gathering data on how much plastic garbage is floating in the Pacific Ocean will return to San Francisco and share preliminary findings.Volunteer crews on 30 boats have been measuring the size and mapping the location of tons of plastic waste floating between the West Coast and Hawaii.Three of the boats, including a 171-foot mother ship, will arrive at San Francisco's Piers 30-32 on Sunday, when the next steps will also be announced. The boats went on a 30-day voyage as part of the "Mega Expedition," a major step in an effort to eventually clean up what's known as the Great Pacific Garbage Patch.The expedition was sponsored by The Ocean Cleanup, an organization founded by Boyan Slat, a 21-year-old innovator from the Netherlands who first became passionate about cleaning the oceans of plastic while diving in the Mediterranean Sea five years ago."I was diving in Greece and realized that there were more plastic bags than fish, and I wondered why can't we clean this up," Slat said.Slat dropped out of university after his first six months and has dedicated his life to developing the technology that he says can start removing garbage by 2020.He has envisioned using long-distance floating barriers that will attach to the seabed and will target rotating ocean currents full of waste and skim garbage from the surface while aquatic life and the currents themselves pass underneath.After his idea was shared thousands of times on the Internet, Slat decided to launch a kick starter campaign and raised $2 million euros (about $ 2.27 million) that helped to start his organization. Soon, his innovative solution got the attention of major philanthropists in Europe and Silicon Valley who are helping fund the data-gathering efforts and the technology's development.The Pacific expedition, which will end in mid-September, will gather data that will be more extensive than what has been collected in the past 40 years, Slat said. It also will give a better estimate of the how much plastic waste is in the Pacific Ocean, he said.The boaters are using GPS and a smartphone app to search for and record the plastic. They take samples and ship them to the Netherlands, where the plastics are counted and recorded.An interesting finding has been that most of the plastic mass in the Pacific Ocean is large debris, Slat said."This shows us why is urgent to do the cleanup because that debris will eventually be fragmented by ultraviolet radiation into smaller and smaller pieces that are more dangerous because they get ingested by birds and fish and they end up in the food chain," Slat said.The Great Pacific Garbage Patch was discovered by Charles J. Moore in 1997 as he returned home from the Transpacific Yacht Race, which starts in Los Angeles and ends in Honolulu.Join the conversation about this story »

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Kos Residents Attack Greek Defense Minister Panos Kammenos

Residents on the Greek island of Kos cannot bear the situation any longer. Over the last month, thousands of undocumented migrants and refugees have arrived on the island, however there is no place where they can be accommodated. The crowd expressed its frustration today, August 21, when Greek Defense Minister Panos Kammenos arrived on the

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Turkish Stream May Extend to Austria via Balkan Route

Greece, Hungary, Macedonia and Serbia may sign a memorandum on the construction of a gas pipeline from Turkey to Austria in the autumn, Vedomosti reported on Wednesday, citing a participant in the project The foreign ministers of the four countries are expected to meet in September to take a decision on preparations for a feasibility study, an official of Hungarian gas company FGSZ has confirmed to the the Russian newspaper. An official of Hungary’s foreign ministry said the planned pipeline has been called Tesla and the first meeting of the working group in charge of drafting the project has taken place on 25 June, according to Vedomosti. The Tesla pipeline will be an extension of the Turkish Stream pipeline proposed by Russia’s Gazprom to carry Russian natural gas to Turkey beneath the Black Sea. A planned gas hub at Turkey’s border with Greece will enable the potential transit of Russian gas to southern and central Europe. The Tesla pipeline project, with an annual capacity of 27 billion cubic meters (bcm), is expected to be finalized by 2019, if approved by all participants. The pipeline would pass through Greece, Macedonia, Serbia and Hungary to eventually reach the Baumgarten gas hub near Vienna. Its length will be 1,300-1,400 km. Preliminary estimates put its cost at EUR 4-5B, Vedomosti said. A final investment decision is expected to be made in the first quarter of next year. Construction works are planned to start a year later. A extension of the pipeline to Italy from Greece might also be built, according to a source close to the Greek side in the negotiations. In this case the capacity of the pipeline on Greek territory should be increased by 15 bcm of gas which Italy would receive through Tesla. According to a source familiar with the project, the planned investment in Tesla doesn’t include an extension from Greece to Italy. If the Greek section of Tesla has to have capacity to carry 42 bcm (27 bcm + 15 bcm), its estimated cost will be about EUR 2B.   The Turkish Stream pipeline comprising four lines with a combined annual capacity of 63 bcm has been proposed to run from Russia to Turkey beneath the Black Sea. Out of the 63 billion cubic metres, Turkey is to take about 14 billion cubic metres while the remainder is proposed to be transited to a gas hub, to be built on Turkey’s border with Greece, for exports to Europe. Turkish Stream was launched as a substitute to the Gazprom-led South Stream pipeline project which Moscow cancelled in December 2014 over objections from the European Commission. Turkish Minister Taner Yildiz on Wednesday told reports he has sent a draft agreement on Turkish Stream to Moscow and is now waiting for a response. The construction of the first line of Turkish Stream from Russia to Turkey will cost EUR 4.3B, while the price of the four proposed pipes will be EUR 11.4B, according to Gazprom estimates. Gazprom has declined to comment on plans for the construction of the Tesla pipleine, Vedomosti said. If and when Turkish Stream starts functioning bringing Russian gas to Turkey, Tesla will face competition from the Eastring gas pipeline project, Vedomosti said.   Eastring has been proposed as an extension to Turkish Stream to Slovakia via Bulgaria and Romania. In early June, Slovakia's Prime Minister Robert Fico proposed to connect Eastring to Turkish Stream and Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev promised to study the proposal, Vedomosti said.          

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Will Greece be saved by... solar?

The protest marked the start of a crowdfunding campaign that Greenpeace hopes will draw attention to a natural resource that Greece possesses in ...

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Sharks in Greece? Great white shark on isle of Samos

Who says there are no sharks in Greek waters?

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Home Sweet Home! Greeks building a hospitable place for migrants (pics)

Recycling the containers used in the 1999 earthquake

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The first ice cream recipe called for a repulsive ingredient made inside sperm whales

During your next summer cooldown with ice cream, ponder the surprising history and science behind the frozen treat. Or maybe not, because it's kind of gross. Journalists Cynthia Graber and Nicola Twilley have pieced together a fascinating, science-infused origin story of ice cream in their latest episode of Gastropod, a podcast about food science and history. As Gastropod explains, in 1558 Italian scholar Giambattista della Porta published the critical trick behind making smooth, rich ice cream: lowering the freezing point of water. He achieved this by mixing saltpeter into snow, using the slush to rapidly freeze a bucket of water. (Today we use table salt and ice.) But Della Porta didn't invent ice cream. That happened when word of his method found its way into the kitchen of English noblewoman Lady Anne Fanshawe. According to Gastropod, Fanshawe scribbled down what's arguably the earliest-known recipe for ice cream. Social historian and blogger Ivan Day personally discovered the recipe after sifting through some old books he won in an auction. Here's Fanshawe's complete recipe for "icy cream," circa the 1660s (which is noticably missing the salt part): Take three pints of the best cream, boyle it with Mace, or else flavor it with orange flower water or ambergreece, sweeten the cream, with sugar[.] let it stand until it is quite cold, then put it into Boxes, either silken or firm then take, Ice chopped into small peeces and putt it into a tub and set the Boxes in the Ice covering them all over, and let them stand in the ice two hours, and the cream will come to be ice in the Boxes, then turne them out into a charger with some of the same Seasoned cream, so serve it up to the Table. I bolded the part with "ambergreece" — spelled "ambergris" today — because it's very strange and repulsive stuff. Ambergris might sound familiar if you've ever read Herman Melville's "Moby Dick." Here's how the character Ishmael describes it in the novel: [A]mbergris is soft, waxy, and so highly fragrant and spicy, that it is largely used in perfumery, in pastiles, precious candles, hair-powders, and pomatum. The Turks use it in cooking, and also carry it to Mecca, for the same purpose that frankincense is carried to St. Peter's in Rome. Some wine merchants drop a few grains into claret, to flavor it. Ambergris is in Moby Dick, of course, because it sperm whales make it. Adult sperm whales hunt and eat hundreds of pounds of squid in the darkest depths of the ocean every day. Squid have tough beaks and other indigestible parts, though, so whales vomit up the extra gunk every couple of days. But in about 1% of sperm whales, author Christopher Kemp details in his book "Floating Gold," a digestive defect allows the hard squid parts make their way into the whale's bowels — where they get stuck and block the intestinal tract. Here's how Kemp describes what happens next to the blockage: Feces build up behind it. The whale's gastrointestinal system responds by increasing water absorption from the lower intestines, and gradually the feces saturating the compacted mass of squid beaks become like cement, binding the slurry together permanently. ... Temporarily, feces make their way past it again, passing between the boulder and the wall of the intestines. And, slowly, the process repeats, adding additional strata to the boulder, which grows larger with each new layer in the same way that a tree grows, adding a new growth ring with each passing year. No one really knows if the lump of ambergris eventually kills the sperm whales, or if they manage to eventually pass it. Whatever the case, when the ambergris breaks free of its whale prison, it floats to the top of the ocean, cures in the salt and the sun, and gets discovered by adventurous humans. Today ambergris finds its way into museums and onto auction blocks: Pieces that weigh about 1 lb can fetch tens of thousands of dollars, mainly for their use in expensive perfumes (mostly the French variety, for ambergris' "sweet, woody odor"). So how does ambergris ice cream taste? Graber and Twilley tracked down historical gastronomist Sarah Lohman, who made some of Fanshawe's signature custard for the show. "It was really, really, really good," Twilley said. "To me, it felt kind of like vanilla, in that it was sort of a background thing. But then it was so much more complex tasting than vanilla. It was like vanilla on drugs." Listen to their full reaction in Gastropod's complete episode, below — along with some surprising and scientific twists and turns in the history of ice cream. Join the conversation about this story » NOW WATCH: This $1.7 Million Submarine Was Inspired By Whales

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Greece dry cleaner named hazardous waste site

The site of a dry cleaning shop on Dewey Avenue in Greece has been added to the state's list of inactive hazardous waste sites that pose a significant ...

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Greek Energy Minister Discusses Cooperation With Russian Ambassador

Greek Minister of Productive Reconstruction, Environment and Energy Panos Skourletis met with Russian Ambassador to Greece Andrei Maslov to discuss cooperation in the area of energy, a Ministry press announcement said. “Skourletis and Maslov discussed issues of bilateral relations with an emphasis on the issue of energy. A common desire for progress was expressed, on the basis

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Solarizing Greece Is a Way Out of the Crisis

Greece is facing a depression on a scale arguably comparable to the U.S. Great Depression of the late 1920s. Huge unemployment rates and a dramatic drop in family incomes of over 40 percent have Greek citizens pondering what the impacts will be of the new bail-out agreement. Unending austerity and lack of hope are all it seems the future has to offer. But there is a way to start changing things for the better. With energy poverty emerging as one of the most dramatic symptoms of the recession -- six out of every 10 households are struggling to pay their energy bills -- it is high time that Greece seized upon its greatest and still largely unexploited asset: the Sun. The new 'Solarize Greece' campaign by Greenpeace Greece aims to bring together all those who dream of a brighter and more sustainable future, not only for Greece but for all European countries. Its objectives are to help Greece kickstart solar power as a driver of the economy, to rid the country of the burden of fossil fuels that are holding it down economically and for Greece to fight its way back out of the crisis. Solar power has worked minor miracles for Greece before. In the turbulent decade of the 1970s that saw two major global energy crises, the Greek government offered tax incentives to households for solar water heaters, and a national policy was aimed at saving power. That led to hundreds of thousands of households installing solar heaters and significantly reduced energy bills. Equally important, a new industry was born and soon solar heaters became one of Greece's finest export products. It seemed then that the Sun had done its part to help Greece work its way out of a tight spot. Now, crushing national hardship together with climate change are urgent and even more compelling reasons for revisiting solar photovoltaic (PV) power and, this time, on a massive scale. Greece's short-lived 'PV Spring' of 2009-2013, driven by a feed-in tariff scheme, provided a glimpse of the country's real solar potential. Within five years installed solar capacity jumped from 47 to over 2,500 megawatts. A total of €4.5 billion was invested in modernising the energy sector and created around 50,000 jobs. In all, around 100,000 Greek families benefitted from the rise of the solar PV industry in one of the European countries most renowned for its sun. Today, Greece is in a position to do much more. Driven by the rapid fall in the costs of solar power, new legislation allows Greek citizens to generate cheap solar power for their own consumption, rather than selling it to the power grid. It means that, despite all of its economic hardships, Greece can seize on the enormous comparative advantage it has in solar power relative to northern European states. The tremendous untapped solar potential is a way to combat energy poverty and to cheaply kickstart economic growth. Hundreds of thousands of households and small and medium enterprises could generate their own power at a fraction of the cost that they buy it from the grid. Tens of thousands of new jobs can be created. With the costs of solar energy and storage expected to fall even further in the near future there is the potential for Greece to save billions of Euros on its fuel import bill - money that would stay within the country and be redirected to where it matters most: sustainable investments, social welfare policies, saving pensions, and stimulating prosperity. So where could Greece find the funds for this initiative? Currently, through their electricity bills, Greek consumers pay around €800 million a year to subsidise oil imports to provide power to the country's many islands. This is a huge amount by Greek standards, and one that is equivalent to the newly proposed cuts in pensions from the national budget in 2015. This burden is set to increase as yet more oil-related power investments are scheduled for the islands. If these polluting and expensive projects are selected over investments in renewable energy and improvements in the power grid, Greek consumers will continue to throw away money for decades to come. That would not only steal resources from the economy but also compromise the chances of recovery. Greenpeace Greece sees a different energy future, and that is what its crowdfunding campaign is all about. Installing solar power in Greece's oil-dependent islands will bring relief to low-income households in need; it will help reduce oil consumption and pollution; and it will save money for Greek consumers on the mainland. Above all, it would be an example of a fair social policy that has tremendous developmental potential. Even more crucially, the campaign aspires to set in motion a transformation based on solarizing the entire Greek economy. We are talking here about a domino effect, as a step that addresses austerity and provides a brighter future. If we can muster the support for solar power for Greece's islands, why not for the whole of Greece? Solarizing Greece would be a step in assisting the country to again stand on its own feet, on its own terms. And a step that could have significant repercussions for the rest of the sun-bathed Mediterranean region. For Greece, untapped solar power means untapped sustainable economic development. The Sun is not only for tourist holidays. Greece has an opportunity to show the rest of Europe the true power of solar energy. Kumi Naidoo is Executive Director of Greenpeace International. -- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

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Larissa Goes ‘Green’ With First Wooden Solar-Powered Charging Bench

Dimitris Chaidas, an industrial designer and lab assistant at the Technological Educational Institute of Thessaly in Karditsa, Greece, has designed the first wooden solar-powered charging bench. Chaidas’ innovative creation, having a small but powerful photovoltaic system on its roof, can charge smartphones, tablets and other gadgets through its two USB ports. The wooden solar-powered bench, which allows visitors to rest on it while

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Greek Financial Crisis Taking Toll on Animals

Hundreds of cats are loose on the streets, and food is running low for some residents of Athens' zoo. It isn't just humans who are suffering as Greece ...

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From cats to rhinos, Greek crisis takes toll on animals

Hundreds of cats are loose on the streets, and food is running low for some residents of Athens' zoo. It isn't just humans who are suffering as Greece tries to claw its way out of economic crisis.

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Water Chief Denies SYRIZA Hiring

ATHENS – The new Managing Director of the Athens Water and Sewage Company (EYDAP) denied he was hired because of his  connection to the ruing Radical Left SYRIZA party that had denounced Greece’s history of runaway patronage hirings through political dealings. Yiannis Benisis asked to be judged on the quality of his work and disputed […] The post Water Chief Denies SYRIZA Hiring appeared first on The National Herald.

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