- Written by Robert McCaffrey Editorial Director, Global Cement
I have recently completed what I called my ‘trip-ofa- lifetime,’ a two week trek around the Annapurna Circuit1 in Nepal. I made the most of the trip and visited a Nepalese cement plant at the end of the trek (see page 64). I thought I would share some of the ‘learnings’ that I brought back with me at the end of the trip.
- Written by Peter Edwards. Editor, Global Cement Magazine
Irecently bought a magazine with a picture of John F Kennedy on it. He was artificially aged to his mid- 60s with the words ‘What if...’ writ large above him. It was a striking image. I liked the premise and almost ran with it to the check-out. I had chanced upon What if... Book of Alternative History, which asks historians to imagine plausible alternative timelines in which major events are altered at a single ‘fork in the road.’ It makes for an interesting series of thought experiments.
- Written by Peter Edwards. Editor, Global Cement Magazine
I recently came across ‘Guitar Zero,’ a book by Gary Marcus about whether musicians are born or raised. It follows the author’s own experience of learning to play the guitar - a lifelong dream - at the ‘grand old age’ of 38. Despite trying and failing many times before, Marcus applies his expertise as a cognitive scientist to work around his limitations, with great success. Along the way, he takes in detours into musical theory, popular psychology, teaching methods, the ageing process and the nature of music itself.
- Written by Peter Edwards. Editor, Global Cement Magazine
Keen readers will have spotted a short note in the Dear Readers of the February 2023 issue of Global Cement Magazine, stating that all of the content within this title is ‘proudly’ written by humans. This was a thinly-veiled aside about ChatGPT, the advanced chatbot that was launched by OpenAI in November 2022 and the potential for it to ‘automate away’ jobs in the publishing industry. Not to be outdone Google has since released a competitor, Bard.
- Written by Peter Edwards. Editor, Global Cement Magazine
In 2001 my school physics class went on a field trip to the Joint European Torus (JET) fusion experiment close to Oxford, UK. That day, we learned that the JET condenses hydrogen nuclei and ‘bashes’ them together to produce helium. This is the reaction that takes place inside the sun and it produces a LOT of energy. However, the strong magnetic fields required to create stable plasmas at temperatures of up to 150,000,000°C - 10 times hotter than the centre of the sun - also consume a LOT of energy. Due to this, for the first 65 years of development, no fusion reactor produced more energy than it consumed. This, along with the high cost and extremely short lifespan of the refractories and other consumables used to contain a rotating swirl of plasma, as well as the sheer difficulty of the task itself, are just some of the major barriers to fusion becoming a viable source of energy. Hence the popular joke: Fusion is the power of the future... and always will be.
