Rom 11

1 I ASK entonces: ¿Ha rechazado Dios y totalmente desautorizado a su pueblo? Por supuesto que no! ¿Por qué, yo mismo soy israelita, un descendiente de Abraham, un miembro de la tribu de Benjamín! [I Sam. 12:22; Jer. 31:37; 33:24-26; Phil. 3:5.]

2 No, Dios no ha rechazado y desautorizado a su pueblo [cuyo destino] Él ha marcado y nombró foreknown y desde el principio. ¿No saben lo que la Escritura dice de Elías, cómo se invoca a Dios contra Israel?

3 Señor, que han causado la muerte de Su profetas, que han demolido sus altares, y yo solo estoy izquierda, y buscan mi vida.

4 Pero, ¿cuál es la respuesta de Dios a él? He mantenido para mí siete mil hombres que no han doblegado la rodilla a Baal! [I Reyes 19:18.]

5 Así también en el momento actual hay un remanente (una pequeña minoría creer), seleccionados (elegido) por la gracia (de Dios unmerited favor y gracia).

6 Pero si es por la gracia (Su unmerited favor y gracia), ya no es condicionada a obras o cualquier cosa que los hombres lo han hecho. De lo contrario, la gracia ya no sería gracia [que no tendría sentido].

7 ¿Qué entonces [vamos a concluir]? Israel no obtener lo que solicita [el favor de Dios por la obediencia a la ley]. Sólo los elegidos (los pocos elegidos) obtenido, mientras que el resto de ellos se convirtió en callously indiferente (ciego, endurecido, insensible e hizo de ella).

8 Como está escrito, Dios les dio un espíritu (una actitud) de estupor, ojos que no ven y oídos que no oyen, [que ha continuado] hasta el día de hoy.

9 Y David dice: Que su mesa (su fiesta, banquetes) convertirse en una insidia y una trampa, una trampa y una [retribución justa [repuntando como un boomerang sobre ellos];

10 Deje que sus ojos se oscureció (atenuados) a fin de que no puede ver, y hacer que doblar la espalda [stooping debajo de su carga] para siempre.

11 Por lo tanto, pido, ¿Han tropezado para caer [a su total ruina espiritual, irremediablemente]? De ninguna manera! Pero a través de su paso en falso y la transgresión salvación [se ha] a los gentiles, a fin de despertar Israel [a ver y sentir lo que perderá el derecho] y de manera que sean celos.

12 Ahora bien, si su tropiezo (su caducidad, su transgresión) ha enriquecido el mundo [en general], y si [Israel] la falta de medios tales riquezas de los gentiles, lo que parece un enriquecimiento y una mayor ventaja seguirá su plena reincorporación!

13 Pero ahora me dirijo a ustedes que son gentiles. En la medida entonces como yo soy apóstol a los gentiles, me dan mucha importancia el estrés en mi ministerio y ampliar mi oficina,

14 Con la esperanza de que mis colegas celosos Judios [con el fin de remover hasta que imitar, copiar y apropiado], y, por tanto, la gestión para salvar algunos de ellos.

15 Porque si su rechazo y la exclusión de los beneficios de la salvación se [anulado] para la reconciliación de un mundo a Dios, lo que su aceptación y la admisión? [Será nada menos que] la vida de entre los muertos!

16 Ahora bien, si el primer puñado de masa como el que ofrece primicias [Abraham y los patriarcas] está consagrada (santa), por lo que es toda la masa [de la nación de Israel], y si la raíz [Abraham] es consagrada (santa), por lo que son las ramas.

17 Pero si algunas de las ramas se rompieron, mientras que usted, un brote de olivo silvestre, injertadas en entre ellos para compartir la riqueza [de la raíz y savia] del olivo,

18 No se cuenta con más de las ramas y su orgullo a sus expensas. Si lo hace presumir y sentirse superior, recuerde que no es usted el apoyo que la raíz, la raíz, sino [que apoya].

19 Ustedes dirán entonces, las ramas fueron rotas (poda) fuera para que yo pudiera ser injertadas en!

20 Eso es cierto. Pero ellos estaban rotas (poda) fuera a causa de su incredulidad (su falta de verdadera fe), y que se establezcan a través de la fe [porque usted hacer creer]. Así que no se siente orgulloso y arrogante, sino de pie en temor y miedo se reverentemente.

21 Porque si Dios no perdonó las ramas naturales [a causa de la incredulidad], ni va a escatimar ustedes [si son culpables del mismo delito].

22 Entonces nota y agradecemos el gentil bondad y la severidad de Dios: severidad hacia los que han caído, pero Dios la gracia a usted la bondad - siempre y cuando continúe en su gracia y permanezco en Su bondad, de lo contrario también será cortado (poda de distancia).

23 Y aun los otros [los caídos ramas, Judios], si no persisten en [aferrándose a] su incredulidad, serán injertados, por Dios tiene el poder de injerto en ellos de nuevo.

24 Porque si se han reducido de lo que es por naturaleza un olivo silvestre, y contra naturaleza injertado en un olivo cultivado, ¿cuánto más fácil será para estos injerto natural [ramas] volver a [la matriz de valores de] sus propio olivo.

25 Para que usted se auto-opiniones (sabio en tu propia conceits), no quiero que pierda esta verdad escondida y misteriosa, hermanos: un endurecimiento (insensibilidad) [temporalmente] caído sobre una parte de Israel [último] hasta que el [c] número completo de la ingathering de los Gentiles ha llegado a,

26 Y así todo Israel se salvará. Como está escrito, se entregará al portador proceden de Sión, él desterrar ungodliness de Jacob.

27 Y este será mi pacto (Mi acuerdo) con ellos cuando voy a quitar sus pecados.

28 Desde el punto de vista del Evangelio (buenas noticias), ellos [los Judios, en la actualidad] son enemigos [de Dios], que es para su beneficio y ventaja. Pero desde el punto de vista de la elección divina (de la elección, de selección divina), siguen siendo la amada (muy querida para él) en aras de sus antepasados.

29 Por los regalos de Dios y de Su llamamiento son irrevocables. [Él nunca cuando se retire una vez que se han dado, y Él no cambia su opinión acerca de aquellos a quienes Él da su gracia o para que Él envía su palabra.]

30 Del mismo modo que una vez que estuvo desobediente y rebelde hacia Dios, pero ahora han obtenido [su] misericordia, a través de su desobediencia,

31 Así que también ahora se están desobedientes [cuando usted recibe misericordia], que a su vez, puede un día, a través de la misericordia que está disfrutando, también reciben la misericordia [de que puedan compartir la misericordia que ha demostrado a usted - a través de usted como mensajeros del Evangelio a ellos].

32 Para Dios ha consignado (encerradas a) todos los hombres a la desobediencia, que sólo Él puede tener misericordia de todos ellos [por igual].

33 ¡Oh, la profundidad de las riquezas y la sabiduría y el conocimiento de Dios! ¿Cómo insondable (inescrutable, unsearchable) son Sus sentencias (Sus decisiones)! ¿Y cómo encontrar (misterioso, undiscoverable) son sus caminos (sus métodos, sus caminos)!

34 Para que ha conocido la mente del Señor y que ha entendido su pensamiento, o que tiene un [nunca] sido su consejero?

35 o que haya dado a Dios todo lo que él podría ser devueltas o que podía reclamar una recompensa?

36 A partir de Él y por Él y para Él son todas las cosas. [Por todas las cosas proceden con Él y proceden de Él; todas las cosas en vivo a través de Él, y todas las cosas en el centro y tienden a consumar y para poner fin a Él.] Él se gloria por siempre! Amén (así sea).

Economics Focus: On the poverty line

Has “a dollar a day” had its day?

IN DECEMBER 2007 the World Bank unveiled the results of the biggest exercise in window shopping in history. Scouts in 146 countries scoured stalls, supermarkets and mail-order catalogues, recording the price of more than 1,000 items, from 500-gram packets of durum spaghetti to low-heeled ladies' shoes.

This vast enterprise enabled the bank to compare the purchasing power of many countries in 2005. It uncovered some statistical surprises. Prices in China, for example, were much higher than earlier estimates had indicated, which meant the Chinese income in 2005 of 18.4 trillion yuan ($2.2 trillion at then-market exchange rates) could buy less than previously thought. At a stroke, the Chinese economy shrank, in real terms, by 40%.

Since then, many scholars have wondered what this economic demotion means for the bank's global poverty counts. It famously draws the poverty line at “a dollar a day”, or more precisely $1.08 at 1993 purchasing-power parity (PPP). In other words, a person is poor if they consume less than an American spending $1.08 per day in 1993. By this yardstick 969m people suffered from absolute poverty in 2004, a drop of over 270m since 1990. The world owed this progress largely to China, where poverty fell by almost 250m from 1990 to 2004.

But if the Chinese economy was 40% smaller than previously thought, surely its poverty count must be correspondingly higher. Surjit Bhalla, of Oxus Investments, speculated that China's toll would increase by more than 300m. He mischievously accused the bank's number-crunchers of conspiring to lift the poverty count so as to keep their employer in business beyond its natural life.

Give a quarter, take a quarter

The dollar-a-day definition of global destitution made its debut in the bank's 1990 World Development Report. It was largely the discovery of Martin Ravallion, a researcher at the bank, and two co-authors, who noticed that the national poverty lines of half-a-dozen developing countries clustered around that amount. In two working papers* published this week, Mr Ravallion and two colleagues, Shaohua Chen and Prem Sangraula, revisit the dollar-a-day line in light of the bank's new estimates of purchasing power. They also provide a new count of China's poor.

Thanks to American inflation, $1.08 in 1993 was worth about $1.45 in 2005 money. In principle, the researchers could count the number of people living on less than this amount, converted into local money using the bank's new PPP rates. But $1.45 a day strikes the authors as a bit high. Rather than update their poverty line, they propose to abandon it. It is time, they say, to return to first principles, repeating the exercise Mr Ravallion performed almost two decades ago, using the better, more abundant data available now.

They gather 75 national poverty lines, ranging from Senegal's severe $0.63 a day to Uruguay's more generous measure of just over $9. From this collection, they pick the 15 lowest (Nepal, Tajikistan and 13 sub-Saharan countries) and split the difference between them. The result is a new international poverty line of $1.25 a day.

Why those 15? The answer is philosophical, as well as practical. In setting their poverty lines, most developing countries aim to count people who are poor in an absolute sense. The line is supposed to mark the minimum a person needs to feed, clothe and shelter himself. In Zambia, say, a poor person is defined as someone who cannot afford to buy at least two to three plates of nshima (a kind of porridge), a sweet potato, a few spoonfuls of oil, a handful of groundnuts and a couple of teaspoons of sugar each day, plus a banana and a chicken twice a week.

But even in quite poor countries, a different concept of poverty also seems to creep in, the authors argue. It begins to matter whether a person is poor relative to his countrymen; whether he can appear in public without shame, as Adam Smith put it.

This notion of relative deprivation seems to carry weight in countries once they grow past a consumption of $1.95 per person a day. Beyond this threshold, a country that is $1 richer will tend to have a poverty line that is $0.33 higher (see chart). The authors thus base their absolute poverty line on the 15 countries in their sample below this threshold.

How many people in the world are poor by this new definition? The authors are not yet ready to say. But they have taken another look at China. By their new standard, they find that 204m Chinese people were poor in 2005, about 130m more than previously thought.

That is the bad news. The brighter news is that China's progress against poverty is no less impressive than previously advertised. By Mr Ravallion's and Ms Chen's new standard, the number of poor in China fell by almost 407m from 1990 to 2004, compared with the previous estimate of almost 250m.

China's economic co-ordinates may be different than thought, but its trajectory is much the same. And therein lies a lesson. Give or take a dime or two, it matters little where a poverty line is drawn. Like a line in the sand, an absolute poverty standard shows whether the economic tide is moving in or out. It does not matter too much where on the beach it is drawn.

For practical purposes, policymakers will always care more about their own national poverty lines than the bank's global standard. The dollar-a-day line is more of a campaigning tool than a guide to policy. And as a slogan, $1.25 just doesn't have the same ring to it. A better option might be to reset the poverty line at $1 in 2005 PPP, which would line up reasonably well with at least ten countries in the authors' sample. In adding a quarter to the dollar-a-day poverty line, the researchers may cut its popular appeal by half.

*“Dollar a day revisited”. Working Paper 4620.

“China is poorer than we thought, but no less successful in the fight against poverty”. Working Paper 4621.

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May 22nd 2008
From The Economist print edition

Taking Over

God answered the Israelites’ prayer for a quick fix, for an early deliverance from God’s maturity process, but it cost them dearly. When they complained about the difficulty of their trial and longed for the good old days of slavery under Pharaoh when they had meat to eat, God gave them quail— and He also sent leanness to their souls. (See Psalm 106:13–15.) He was saying, “You got out too quickly. This was all part of your training. I know when it’s time to bring you out of this, and I know what I’m doing. Since you feel you know better, you can reap what you have sown.”

I tell the people at my church: “If you’re going through something difficult, if you feel that you are going through hell, I have one piece of advice for you: Don’t stop. Ask God, ‘What is it You are trying to teach me? What is it You want to show me through this?’”

The church is not here to bail everybody out of their problems. This may sound radical and even heretical to you, but I have to tell you that everywhere I see great victory, faith and accomplishments in God’s Word, I also see great perseverance in the face of great suffering. It is my conviction that when we preach against the process of maturity in the Christian life, we preach against the order of God.

God is trying to help us grow up by marching us into such levels of maturity that we will be able to accomplish His purposes on this earth. It can only be done with the “Godkind-of-faith.”

—Eddie Long

Lord, I want to grow up. I choose today to embrace Your dealings rather than run from them.

Eddie Long, Taking Over (1999), 101–102.

Recognize Your Calling

That is why I would remind you to stir up (rekindle the embers of, fan the flame of, and keep burning) the [gracious] gift of God, [the inner fire] that is in you.
—2 Timothy 1:6

Before I knew I was called to preach, I would privately repreach entire sermons I had just heard, thinking, I would have said this, and, I would have done that. Then, I would think, Women don’t preach! But my spirit was stirred by the preacher’s anointing because I had the same anointing.

If you are called to do something, you will get stirred up in the presence of someone operating in that same anointing. For example, if you have an anointing to lead worship, or to do special music, you will probably get more excited about the music than the sermon being preached. When in doubt, ask God to make clear your calling.

Prepare The Way

Many people use the excuse that they don’t need to worship the Lord in the scriptural, demonstrative ways He has ordained because they are worshiping Him “in their hearts, in their own way.” However, it is not enough to simply say that we are worshiping God “in our hearts.” He commands that we worship Him outwardly, in the midst of the congregation.

I heard this comment for years in reference to dancing in worship: “It doesn’t matter how high you jump. It matters how straight you walk when you come down.” This statement and the attitude it conveys are used too often to support a mind-set that says it doesn’t really matter if you worship outwardly and demonstratively or not, as long as your “heart is right.”

This is simply not true. Part of our obedience, part of our heart being right, is following the scriptural mandates of worship. Obviously, all the singing, shouting, dancing and clapping we do is vain and empty if our hearts are hard and our spirits polluted.

But if we are not worshiping the Lord in outward, demonstrative, biblically prescribed ways, could it be that it is a result of our sin or unresolved pain? Do we refuse to dance because we will look foolish? That could be evidence of pride.

God wants us free. And while dancing in worship is certainly not a guarantee of inner freedom, there is deliverance and release that comes when we give our inhibitions and fears to God and worship Him in this way.

—Robert Stearns

Lord, help me to forget about what people think so I can please You through exuberant praise.

Robert Stearns, Robert Stearns, Prepare The Way (1999), 172–173.

A New Desire

For I endorse and delight in the Law of God in my inmost self [with my new nature].
—Romans 7:22

When we are born again, we get a new “want to.” The law says we “have to, should, and ought to,” but we want to do the right thing because God has put a new heart in us to replace the hard stony one that used to be indifferent to Him and His will (See Ezekiel 36:26).

Learn to recognize the difference between the desires of your flesh and the desires placed in you by the Holy Spirit. Psalm 1:1–2 says, “BLESSED (HAPPY, fortunate, prosperous, and enviable) is the man who walks and lives not in the counsel of the ungodly . . . But his delight and desire are in the law of the Lord, and on His law (the precepts, the instructions, the teachings of God) he habitually meditates (ponders and studies) by day and by night.”

Battle Field of The Mind

I. Mental Strongholds

A. 2 Corinthians 10:4-5 – For the weapons of our warfare are not physical [weapons of the flesh and blood], but they are mighty before God for the overthrow and destruction of strongholds, [Inasmuch as we] refute arguments and theories and reasonings and every proud and lofty thing that sets itself up against the [true] knowledge of God; and we lead every thought and purpose away captive into the obedience of Christ (the Messiah, the Anointed One) . . .

1. Satan relentlessly seeks to build strongholds in our minds.

He is a liar and he only lies or twists the truth, which is lying. He deceives. We are deceived when we believe things that are not true.

2. We have weapons with which to defeat him.

3. It is a spiritual war we are fighting, and our weapons are spiritual. This war cannot be fought in a normal way.

4. We can’t hit Satan, shoot him, strangle him, tie him up with a rope, or put him in jail; but we can defeat him.

B. What is a stronghold?

1. An area that is dominated by an enemy

2. If Satan dominates your attitude toward yourself, God, food, or money, etc., he is in control in that area.

BATTLEFIELD OF THE MIND 1

C. Our Weapons

1. John 8:31-32 and Hebrews 4:12 – God’s Word believed, meditated upon, heard, spoken out loud, and read is a weapon.

2. Luke 4:1-13

a. Jesus was following the Holy Spirit when Satan attacked.

b. Satan attacked Him when He was tired and weak.

c. Satan tried to make Him question who He was.

d. Satan showed Him what the world had to offer. He wanted Jesus to think about what He did not have right now and what He could have with a little compromise.

1) Matthew 4:8
2) I John 2:15-17
3) I John 3:17

e. Satan offered Jesus power, authority, and things in exchange for one little compromise.

f. Satan once again attacks Jesus’ identity: “If you are God’s child, then let’s see you get yourself out of this mess!”

Romans 8:36-39

g. IMMEDIATELY following EACH lie of Satan, Jesus used His spiritual weapon of the Word of God.

D. The Weapon of Praise and Worship

1. Romans 4:18-22

a. Praise is thanking God for what He has done – talking about His goodness, mercy, and power; singing to Him or about Him.

BATTLEFIELD OF THE MIND 2

It can be expressed in enthusiastic body language, clapping, twirling, jumping, up-lifted hands, head bowed, etc.

b. Some people would experience freedom if they would be more enthusiastic and expressive.

2. II Chronicles 20:17-22 – As the people worshiped God, the enemy became confused and was self-slaughtered.

Praise is more involved with thanking God for Who He is.

Worship is adoration; it goes deeper than praise. Worship would usually be more quiet and reverent, while praise is more jubilant and a bit noisy.

3. David repeatedly said: “I WILL praise God. I WILL worship.” You can begin by decision, and your feelings will start to change gradually.

E. The Weapon of Prayer

1. James 4:2 – You have not because you ask not.

2. Luke 22:40-46 – Jesus prayed during His suffering, temptation, and agony of mind.

II. A Deceived Mind Produces A Deceived Life.

A. Genesis 3:1-6 – Eve was deceived by the lies of Satan. He attacked her mind.

1. Eve should have checked her heart.

B. Matthew 24:4 – See that no one deceives you and leads you astray.

C. I Corinthians 3:18 – Let no person deceive himself by thinking he knows it all.

1. Worldly wisdom and philosophy are worth nothing if they disagree with God’s Word.

BATTLEFIELD OF THE MIND 3

D. James 1:22 – Reasoning causes us to deceive ourselves.

E. The worldly person wants to understand everything mentally.

1. An atheist or agnostic won’t believe because they can’t see God or figure Him out. They want control of their lives.

2. Not believing in God is often just an excuse for one not being willing to change their lifestyle.
.
F. Romans 10:10-11 – With the heart (not the head) a person believes and is justified and made right with God.

III. The Renewing Of The Mind Is A Vital Necessity.

A. Romans 12:2 – Our mind must be renewed if we want to experience God’s good plan.

B. Ephesians 4:23 – Mind and attitude must be renewed daily.

C. Proverbs 23:7 – As a man thinks, so is he.

1. Where the mind goes, the man follows.

D. Colossians 3:2 – Set your mind and keep it set on what is above (high things), not on low earthly things.

E. It is a process, so don’t give up!

IV. Be Positive – Think On Good Things.

A. Believe the best, not the worst.

B. Matthew 8:13 – It shall be done for you as you believe.

C. A negative mind produces a negative life.

D. A positive mind produces a positive life!

Daily Tune-up:The Father's Blessing

Years ago I talked with God about the cross, and I asked Him why Jesus had to suffer so much. The Father showed me something very precious. I believe Jesus actually bled to death during His crucifixion.

All those hours on the cross, His precious blood flowed from those fresh wounds until He was about to pass out from the loss of blood. At that moment, the Father took the sins of the world and placed them upon that broken, emaciated body, and Jesus became sin who knew no sin. God made Him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God (2 Cor. 5:21).

Jesus had been bleeding profusely for six hours. His blood had already been poured out before the sins of the world were placed upon Him. That holy blood was never contaminated by the sins of the world. His blood remains holy, untouched by your sins and mine. It is as pure and holy as ever, full of mercy and life. It was His body that was broken and contaminated.

That is why the Book of Hebrews says the blood of Jesus cries better things than the blood of Abel (12:24). The blood of Abel was crying out for revenge: “God, do something. My brother has murdered me.”

But what does the blood of Jesus cry? “Father, forgive them for they know not what they do. For these guilty people, Lord, I will provide the way to mercy. I will take their place. Let mercy be given them.”

—John Arnott

Lord, thank You that the blood of Jesus will forever have the power to cleanse me from the guilt of sin.

Sources

John Arnott, The Father's Blessing (1995), 212–213.

Starting Your Day Right: Follow God's Spirit

And He Who searches the hearts of men knows
what is in the mind of the [Holy] Spirit [what His intent is], because the Spirit intercedes and pleads [before God] in behalf of the saints according to and in harmony with God’s will.
—Romans 8:27

Many people follow their own desires or other people’s advice instead of following the Spirit of God. The Holy Spirit is given to each one of us to lead us into the fullness of our destiny, and into the fullness of what Jesus died to give us.

Your faith in Jesus gives you the promise of heaven, but God wants to work all things together for your good in this life too (See Romans 8:28). Don’t be satisfied with receiving half of what Jesus died to give you. Follow the Spirit’s leading so that you will get all that God has for you. Seek God for clear guidance to remain right in the center of His perfect will for every single day.

Starting Your Day Right: Devotions for Each Morning of the Year

Whatever may be your task, work at it heartily (from the soul), as [something done] for the Lord and not for men, knowing [with all certainty] that it is from the Lord [and not from men] that you will receive the inheritance which is your [real] reward.
—Colossians 3:23

Jesus died so that you can enjoy abundant life, not just the days you are off work or on vacation or when you get to go shopping or golfing—but every day of your life.

He wants you to enjoy going to the grocery store. He wants you to enjoy driving the kids to school. He wants you to enjoy paying the bills. He wants you to enjoy cleaning the house or mowing the yard.

You can enjoy life if you determine to do so. Say, “I am going to enjoy every aspect of my life, because Jesus died so that I could have joy unspeakable and full of glory.”

Correspondent's Diary: Education in Sweden and Finland - Our friends in the north

Finding the secret to educational success

Monday

THE best schools in the world, it is generally agreed, are in Finland. In the OECD's Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) studies, which compare 15-year-olds' reading, mathematics and science abilities in more than 50 countries, it routinely comes top. So politicians, academics, think-tankers and teachers from all over the world visit Finnish schools in the hope of discovering the magic ingredient. Journalists come too, and now it’s my turn.

And since I'm coming this far north, I want to take in Sweden too. That social-democratic paradise has carried out school reforms that make free-market ideologues the world over weak at the knees. In the 1990s it opened its state-education system to private competition, allowing new schools to receive the same amount for each pupil as the state would have spent on that child.

Sweden is my first stop. My week starts with post-breakfast coffee with Widar Andersson, an ex-chairman of Sweden’s Independent Schools Association. When the independent schools reforms were first mooted in 1991, he was a member of parliament for the Social Democrats, in one of their rare spells in opposition. “I think I was the only Social Democrat in favour of the reforms,” he tells me.

In 1994, when they came into force, he and two state-school teachers opened one of the very first independent schools. It was not the first time he took on the state: years earlier he and a few other social workers had set up a private company trying innovative ways to treat drug addicts. “I learned there must be other ways to do things than those the state has decided are right, especially in a country like Sweden where the state is so large,” he says.

Then I head to the education ministry. The minister is in budget negotiations, but his officials brief me on the new government's plans (a centre-right coalition is once more in power). Copying Finland seems to be the name of the game: more teacher training, and lots of special-needs teaching. It must be galling to live next door to the world’s best schools, especially when to the rest of the world, the two countries look essentially identical.

Back in London, a Russian acquaintance who lived in Sweden for many years had offered me his explanation for the gap in school achievement between Finland and Sweden: Finland never did the 70s, he says, while the Swedes did it wholesale and are still stuck there. Swedish teachers can’t even take a child’s mobile phone away if he is using it during class, he fumes. Bertil Östberg, State Secretary to Jan Björklund, the education minister, laughs and agrees; apparently the great mobile-phone-in-class scandal was an issue in a previous election campaign. “We will give teachers the right to confiscate mobile phones,” he assures me.

I hear that the 1970s orthodoxy—that competition and grades destroyed a child's motivation—means that Swedish children who are failing to learn can proceed right through compulsory school without anyone intervening or even noticing. If parents ask for a report, they can be given one—but it mustn’t include anything that looks like a grade. I offer the sort of fatuity I imagine such documents include: “Helen has contributed nicely to classroom discussion”. It is acknowledged as a classic of the genre. The new government, I am told, will make grades and reports not only legal, but compulsory.

Next, a visit to Sodra Latin (South Latin), a popular and prestigious gymnasium (upper high school, for 16-19-year-olds). Education at this age is not compulsory, and although Sodra Latin is a state school, entry is highly competitive. It is particularly strong in music, with chamber and symphony orchestras, a jazz band and an excellent choir. The youngsters are clever and motivated. But, says the head teacher, it is the first time most have experienced competition, and many study late—the school is open till 10pm—and come in at weekends too.

I dine with Carl-Gustaf Stawström, the managing director of the Association of Independent Schools. He gives me a nice example of the way the market is providing choice and variety, as well as pressure for higher standards. His own daughter attends an independent gymnasium which crams most schooling into half-days. “If you want only to find problems, you see people who are trying to do things cheaply,” he says, “but she is a keen athlete and trains in the afternoons, so it suits her very well.”

Tuesday

I SPEND my second day in Sweden with representatives of Kunskapsskolan, Sweden's biggest chain of independent schools (it has 21 secondaries and 9 gymnasiums). It has recently been awarded a contract to open two “academies”—independent state schools—in London, and I have been intrigued by what I’ve heard about its highly personalised teaching methods.

At Kunskapsskolan Enskede, a few kilometres from the centre of Stockholm, I am met by Christian Wetell, its head teacher, and Kenneth Nyman, the company's regional chief. They explain the “voucher system” from which they make their money. For each pupil the school teaches, it receives from the local government what it would have spent educating the pupil in one of its own schools; in return, independent schools cannot charge anything extra, and must accept all students who apply. Provided schools follow Sweden’s national curriculum, they have wide latitude in their methods and pacing.

Consumers consuming

Kenneth sheds an interesting light on the thorny comparison with Finland. You have to look, he says, at what sort of students each country’s system wants. Sweden aims to produce socially conscious generalists. The Finnish system, by contrast, drives rather narrowly at academic success.

We talk about the unwritten rules which children pick up by osmosis. Sweden has a Lutheran tradition: citizens are expected to work hard, do their share, solve their own problems and contribute to the general good. “The limit to freedom,” he says, “is when you negatively affect others.” Sweden's national culture thus constrains its students' apparent freedom.

Christian shows me around his school. It is bare but pleasant, with lecture theatres, open areas where students work at their own pace and classrooms with doors for tutorials.

Kunskapsskolan posts the entire curriculum on a website. Each week students agree on their goals for the next week, and the timetable of classes and lectures they will attend, individually with a tutor. They do most of the work on their own. The following week their progress will be reviewed. I am shown a student's logbook for the past term; mostly, progress has been uneventful, but on one page is the dire warning that this young person will have to work all Easter to catch up. A few weeks later, to my relief, there is a smiley face and a message: “Well done! You're back on track.”

“If I compare myself with my friends who went to a regular school,” Teo Derviskadic, a boy in his final year, tells me, “it feels I have matured more; I plan my days better. They ask me, how you can keep up, how can you decide where to be? But some kids here have missed out, because they didn't learn to take responsibility.”

After school lunch (delicious), Per Ledin, the company's CEO, takes me on to Kunskapsskolan Globen, a gymnasium nearby. Looking directly at me to see how I react, he says: “We do not mind that we are being compared to McDonald's.”

Education is a service industry; to turn a profit, a service industry needs customers. “So you only make a profit by being popular, like a hotel, which only makes money if it has guests in most rooms most nights.”

Next, he drives me to meet Peje Emilsson, one of Kunskapsskolan's founders and chairman of its board. He tells me about the company’s move into England. “Personalisation is a buzz-word among British school leaders. They recognise that will be difficult with corridors and classrooms and teachers at the front.”

Peje's interest in education reform was sparked when his daughter's state school refused to let her switch from a mathematics programme to social sciences (“We need more girls in mathematics,” they told her). She moved to one of Sweden's few private schools. As I take a taxi to the airport for my flight to Helsinki, I reflect that it's hard to imagine any Swedish school—state or independent—treating a valued customer like that today.

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Wednesday

I AM feeling nostalgic. I spent two years in Finland in the late 1990s on a European Union post-doctoral fellowship at the University of Jyvaskyla in central Finland, and haven't been back since. I wonder how much things will have changed—the country had only just joined the European Union back then, and has since joined the euro and experienced an economic boom.

First stop this morning is Kulosaari comprehensive school, in a suburb of Helsinki. Finnish comprehensives teach children from seven to 16; after that almost all youngsters spend another three years in either grammar or vocational schools.

Kulosaari school is lovely. The children are calm (far calmer than those at my son's primary school in Cambridge, England) and talk to adults respectfully, but as equals.

Rex Features

Benefit from the best

Dan Wood, from Maidstone in England, one of two native English speakers on the staff, teaches children in the school's bilingual programme. He has been in Finland for ten years now, and has no intention of leaving. “My mum works in a school at home,” he tells me. “I really just don’t want to go back to that system, the stress of school inspections.”

One thing surprises me: the number of children being taught in “special education” classes. I am used to children with learning difficulties being integrated into mainstream classes whenever possible. But in Finland, large numbers, including many with behavioural difficulties rather than more strictly medical problems, are taught separately.

Of the 20 children in the two special classes that I see, 18 are boys. I think again of my own nearly-seven-year-old, a clever, naughty little menace who I am sorry to say has caused his teachers and classmates considerable trouble, and wonder in which class this school would put him, and how he would fare there.

The special classes undeniably do a good job: as well as having the world's highest average standards, Finnish schools have one of the smallest gaps between the best-performing students and the worst. But Finland is also proud of its low “between-school variation”—and this looks like my first myth. There certainly is segregation in Finnish education, but it happens between classes, rather than between schools—and very, very early.

After lunch I visit Helsinki’s teacher-training facility. Matti Meri, a professor of pedagogy, tells me that the root of the Finnish education system's success is its extraordinary ability to attract the very best young people into teaching: only around 10% of applicants are accepted for teacher training.

By chance, a group of trainee teachers has met for coffee and a chat after two-week stints teaching abroad. They laugh when a young man who has returned from England tells them that the school emailed him a few weeks before he travelled to inform him of its dress code: no jeans or piercings, no outlandish hairstyles. He has taught in Finland with his hair spiked, in a T-shirt and frayed jeans—and no one raised an eyebrow.

At the National Board of Education, I ask Irmeli Halinen what other countries should learn from Finland. The most important lesson, she says, is to develop excellent initial training for teachers. Second, start education late and gently—Finnish children are seven before they start formal school. And she offers a third lesson: “We don't waste energy or money or time on inspections or national testing.”

I ask her about the system's weaknesses; she tells me getting rid of bad teachers is difficult. Head teachers are trained to handle alcohol problems, and can insist that a teacher attends an alcohol-abuse programme, but it is almost impossible to get rid of them if such help doesn't work. (Alcoholism is a serious problem in Finland, a country cursed—in this respect—with a history that is both Nordic and Russian.)

In Kulosaari, the head teacher, Anneli Rautiainen, said alcoholic teachers in Finland are moved between classes and sometimes even between schools, so that they don't do too much damage to any one child's education. (She hastens to point out this is not a problem she is experiencing.) On the way back to my hotel, I reflect that if Finnish teachers weren't generally so excellent, those inspections and national tests might look a bit more attractive.

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Thursday

THE OECD's PISA studies are exhibit A for the excellence of Finland’s schools. Finland routinely comes top, or occasionally second, in tests every three years of 15-year-olds' abilities in reading, mathematics and science. It is impressive, but the suspicious-minded (or perhaps just the begrudgers?) wonder if it is really all down to brilliant schools.

I have a suspicion of my own. When I lived in Finland in the 1990s I learnt rather little Finnish (they speak great English, and I'm lazy), but I learnt to read words and say them correctly in about half an hour. Each letter corresponds to one sound, and only one; there are no exceptions and no combinations of letters that make different sounds, like “sh” or “th”. If a letter is repeated, it is simply said for twice as long. Is it, perhaps, just easier to learn to read and write in Finland than practically anywhere else?

AFP

Finland's high vowel-per-student ratio

This morning I am off to Helsinki University's Centre for Educational Assessment. Jarkko Hautamäki and his colleagues do not reject my theory, but they tell me that in Hong Kong, which also does very well in PISA, Chinese orthography is claimed to be part of the reason! If the same claim is made for both Chinese and Finnish, then either one is wrong or both are insufficient.

Mr Hautamäki and his colleagues believe the latter; they reel off a list of factors they think contribute to Finnish academic success. One is the ubiquity of print: “Almost every family has a newspaper delivered to the home,” he says, “and foreign language programmes are subtitled, not dubbed.”

Another is Finnish diligence. In a country with harsh weather and, until recently, a largely agrarian population, it is understood one must work, and work hard. Students took the PISA tests seriously, leaving very few questions blank. That boosted scores, since there were no marks lost for wrong answers. And Finnish children are good at tests, too, because they get them in school all the time, to help them understand how they are doing. “Tests to Finnish children are important but not scary,” he tells me.

So, I ask him, was Finland's high score a mirage, caused by nothing more profound than sensible spelling and good exam technique? No, he says; the country's schools do two exceptional things—and he can prove it, with charts.

The first shows “inter-generational income elasticity” in various countries. This is the technical term for the correlation between people's income and that of their parents. In Finland it is low: parental income is a minor influence on earning. In other words, Finns switch economic classes easily. In Britain and America, it is high, meaning the opposite. “Finns trust teachers and schools—and this chart shows that we trust them for a reason,” he says. “What Finnish schools do is genuinely effective.”

The second shows the profile of the PISA results in various countries. “Between-student” variation in Finland is extremely low, meaning a narrow gap between the scores of the most able and least able groups. This trick is easy to pull off if standards are uniformly low, but Finland's average is the world's highest, meaning it does almost unbelievably well by its weakest students.

In the afternoon, I go to the Finnish parliament to meet the education minister, Sari Sarkomaa. Before the meeting, I peek into the empty debating chamber. There are large naked figures carved on the walls, one with particularly plump buttocks. It is typical of this utterly unprudish nation. Finns cannot understand the foreign habit of wearing swimming costumes in the sauna (a Finnish invention); Finns pile in naked, family with guests, all generations together.

Ms Sarkomaa is completely—and rightly—obsessed with keeping the status of teachers high. “We will do anything possible to keep the profession attractive,” she says. “Yes, salary is important [teachers did pretty well in the last public-sector pay deal], but many other factors can help. We need to improve the training of school principals. Such highly educated workers want to have highly qualified managers.” If Finnish teachers ever decided to turn militant, they would be able to bring the country to its knees in no time.

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Friday

FINLAND'S schools may lead the world, but its universities are nothing special. This bothers the Finnish government. “As a country that thinks its future is purely dependent on its know-how, we cannot afford average results in universities,” says Jyrki Katainen (pictured), the finance minister.

This is my last appointment before I fly back to London, and Mr Katainen is telling me that his government thinks greater independence and a bit of capital may help the country's universities to specialise and innovate. So it has offered any universities willing to set up charitable foundations a deal too good to refuse: any money they raise by 2010, the government will top up by 2.5 times as much.

Reuters

Katainen: Equality booster

Finland is hardly the only country worried about the global reputation of its universities. As with schools, the advent of international rankings has made list-watchers of everyone. The Shanghai Jiao Tong and THE rankings are enormously important both for universities, which are increasingly reliant on international students, and for countries, who take their positions on the charts quite seriously.

Most countries have decided that the way to break into the top ranks is to boost a few chosen universities rather than fund all equally. They look to America, which dominates the top of both rankings. Its elite private institutions have enormous endowments and attract top names; small liberal-arts colleges provide a more intimate education; many state universities offer an excellent education at a keen price; and its community colleges give no-frills tuition to locals and often serve as a springboard for future progression.

So, I ask Mr Katainen, does the Finnish government hope to see an elite emerge? The answer is a flat no. That would not be the Finnish way: equality is one of the country's fundamental values

Fees for university study are also off the agenda. “There is not even a debate about this. We think that as a nation we can get the average quite close to the top,” he says coolly. I have my doubts that the same trick can be pulled off with universities as with schools—but if anyone can do it, it will be the Finns.

I leave for the airport with a lot to think about. I've seen two very different ways to organise state schooling, and there's no question which one I preferred.

The problem is, it wasn't the one that produced the best results.

I loved Sweden's profusion of different sorts of schools—surely different methods work for different children. I loved the way competition was forcing schools to think more pointedly about quality—Kunskapsskolan's head teachers know that when a student is unhappy with what they offer, they risk 70,000 kronor walking out the door. And most of all I loved that Swedish parents are in control of state education—municipalities can't close small rural schools against the wishes of local parents in the name of efficiency, for example, because parents would simply threaten to open their own schools.

But it is Finland's no-choice, teacher-knows-best version of schooling that beats the world. That poses challenges, both for my orthodox free-market beliefs and for other countries desperate to bottle the magic and export it.

Can it really be true that if you dismantle schools inspectorates, make it practically impossible to sack teachers and refuse to publish exam results (officials and schools get to see how Finnish students do on national tests; parents and children don't), you can make every school a good school?

Somehow, I doubt it. After all, England's schools could do pretty much what they liked in the 1970s, and many did, with hardly impressive results.

Finland's secret is simple: its teachers are so highly regarded that the very best young people compete for this coveted job. The successful few study for at least five years and are actually taught how to teach (you would be surprised how rare this is on teacher-training courses). And then, once they start work, their students pay attention and work hard (when I asked Finns whether there were some families who despised education and resented schools, they seemed puzzled by the question).

I have seen what works. But I don't know how my country—where anti-intellectualism is rife, and where, sadly, all too often those who can't do, teach—could replicate it.

-

Jun 6th 2008
From Economist.com

Business: Book publishing in America - Unbound

Publishers worry as new technologies transform their industry

JEFF BEZOS, the founder and chief executive of Amazon, destination for nearly four-fifths of online book buyers, appears harmless. But to some in the publishing industry, he looms like a recurring nightmare. Having upset booksellers' apple-carts in the 1990s with his online stores, he is now widening his assault on the industry, as he personably explained in a speech at Book Expo America (BEA), a trade fair in Los Angeles, on May 30th.

AP

You're all doomed!

From the outside, book publishing looks like an impregnable edifice: 411,000 new titles were published in America last year, and more than 3 billion books sold there. Growth was 4.3% in the “adult trade” segment, the mainstay of the market. In fact, the existing order is fragile. Reading in America, as in many rich countries, is down. A study by the National Endowment for the Arts, an independent federal agency, says leisure reading is declining, especially among the young. Since 1985, books' share of entertainment spending has fallen by seven percentage points.

Books have changed very little in half a millennium, but they may now be on the verge of going digital. The first high-resolution e-book reader, made by Sony, came out in 2004. Last November Amazon launched the Kindle (pictured), a $359 e-book reader with a high-speed wireless link to the firm's online store, allowing e-books to be downloaded in seconds. Mr Bezos says Kindle e-books now account for 6% of sales of the 125,000 titles available in both print and electronic formats.

Though they are an improvement on a computer screen, e-book readers remain crude simulacra of books. A poll released by John Zogby at BEA found that 82% of Americans strongly prefer paper to pixels. None of the handful of e-book manufacturers will divulge sales figures. First-quarter sales of mass-market e-books in America have tripled since the same period in 2005, but they were worth just $10m.

But Kindle and its kind are merely the first generation of a product that is sure to evolve quickly in the coming years. Eventually, e-books point the way towards a cleavage of content from platform, threatening publishing with the wholesale change that has hit the music industry. It is a familiar story: fearing piracy, publishers are already adopting various mutually incompatible security technologies that are sure to annoy readers—although ePub, a new standard backed by many big publishers, may clarify things.

Unlike digital music or video, digital books require consumers to change their consumption habits. In some categories, such as textbooks, digital books are growing rapidly. As well as reducing costs by eliminating printing, warehousing, shipping and returns, this transformation could help publishers such as Elsevier and Springer recapture America's $2.3 billion college textbook-resale market.

Although e-books may one day transform the industry, another new technology that is less visible to readers is already making itself felt. Print on Demand (POD), which allows books to be printed and bound to order, is making millions of books available even if they appeal to only a narrow readership. Here, too, academia leads the way. Stephen DeForge of Ames On-Demand says his POD business, which specialises in printing small runs of customised books for schools and universities, has been growing by 45% a year since 2001. Last year his firm printed more than 800,000 books in runs as small as ten copies at a time.

The opportunity has not been lost on Mr Bezos. In March Amazon announced that it would require all the POD books it sells to be printed by the company at its warehouses. Mr Bezos says that this enables Amazon to have a book ready to ship within two hours of an order being placed online. Between POD and the Kindle, Mr Bezos thinks he can sell “any book ever printed in any language”. But printers and distributors, like booksellers before them, fear the oncoming Amazon juggernaut.

Technology is also opening up new formats. Serialisation is making a comeback: a firm called DailyLit divides e-books into small chunks for drip-feeding by e-mail. Harlequin, a Canadian publisher of romantic fiction, sells short-fiction e-books for reading on PCs or other devices in a lunch hour. Last autumn the firm, which sells around 130m books a year, became the first big publisher to offer its entire catalogue in both printed and digital formats. Brent Lewis, who runs Harlequin's digital business, says his firm's digital readership is composed of the same middle-aged women who read its printed books.

An economic slowdown may play to the new technologies' strengths. The costs of printing and shipping paper and cardboard are rising. Mr DeForge says POD is now cheaper than standard printing for runs of fewer than 1,200 copies, and the threshold is rising quickly. And if consumers become more price-sensitive, e-books may become more appealing. This week's Kindle bestseller, a political memoir by Scott McClellan, a former White House spokesman, can be downloaded from thin air in less than a minute for $9.99. A paper copy costs $15.37 on Amazon's website, and will not be in stock for three weeks.

Publishing has only two indispensable participants: authors and readers. As with music, any technology that brings these two groups closer makes the whole industry more efficient—but hurts those who benefit from the distance between them

-

Jun 5th 2008 | LOS ANGELES
From The Economist print edition

Technology Quarterly: Case history - Tapping the oceans

Environmental technology: Desalination turns salty water into fresh water. As concern over water’s scarcity grows, can it offer a quick technological fix?

THERE are vast amounts of water on earth. Unfortunately, over 97% of it is too salty for human consumption and only a fraction of the remainder is easily accessible in rivers, lakes or groundwater. Climate change, droughts, growing population and increasing industrial demand are straining the available supplies of fresh water. More than 1 billion people live in areas where water is scarce, according to the United Nations, and that number could increase to 1.8 billion by 2025.

One time-tested but expensive way to produce drinking water is desalination: removing dissolved salts from sea and brackish water. Its appeal is obvious. The world’s oceans, in particular, present a virtually limitless and drought-proof supply of water. “If we could ever competitively—at a cheap rate—get fresh water from salt water,” observed President John Kennedy nearly 50 years ago, “that would be in the long-range interest of humanity, and would really dwarf any other scientific accomplishment.”

According to the latest figures from the International Desalination Association, there are now 13,080 desalination plants in operation around the world. Together they have the capacity to produce up to 55.6m cubic metres of drinkable water a day—a mere 0.5% of global water use. About half of the capacity is in the Middle East. Because desalination requires large amounts of energy and can cost several times as much as treating river or groundwater, its use in the past was largely confined to wealthy oil-rich nations, where energy is cheap and water is scarce.

But now things are changing. As more parts of the world face prolonged droughts or water shortages, desalination is on the rise. In California alone some 20 seawater-desalination plants have been proposed, including a $300m facility near San Diego. Several Australian cities are planning or constructing huge desalination plants, with the biggest, near Melbourne, expected to cost about $2.9 billion. Even London is building one. According to projections from Global Water Intelligence, a market-research firm, worldwide desalination capacity will nearly double between now and 2015.

Not everyone is happy about this. Some environmental groups are concerned about the energy the plants will use, and the greenhouse gases they will spew out. A large desalination plant can suck up enough electricity in one year to power more than 30,000 homes.

The good news is that advances in technology and manufacturing have reduced the cost and energy requirements of desalination. And many new plants are being held to strict environmental standards. One recently built plant in Perth, Australia, runs on renewable energy from a nearby wind farm. In addition, its modern seawater-intake and waste-discharge systems minimise the impact on local marine life. Jason Antenucci, deputy director of the Centre for Water Research at the University of Western Australia in Perth, says the facility has “set a benchmark for other plants in Australia.”

References to removing salt from seawater can be found in stories and legends dating back to ancient times. But the first concerted efforts to produce drinking water from seawater were not until the 16th century, when European explorers on long sea voyages began installing simple desalting equipment on their ships for emergency use. These devices tended to be crude and inefficient, and boiled seawater above a stove or furnace.

An important advance in desalination came from the sugar industry. To produce crystalline sugar, large amounts of fuel were needed to heat the sugar sap and evaporate the water it contained. Around 1850 an American engineer named Norbert Rillieux won several patents for a way to refine sugar more efficiently. His idea became what is known today as multiple-effect distillation, and consists of a cascading system of chambers, each at a lower pressure than the one before. This means the water boils at a lower temperature in each successive chamber. Heat from water vapour in the first chamber can thus be recycled to evaporate water in the next chamber, and so on.

No salt, please

This reduced the energy consumption of sugar refining by up to 80%, says James Birkett of West Neck Strategies, a desalination consultancy based in Nobleboro, Maine. But it took about 50 years for the idea to make its way from one industry to another. Only in the late 19th century did multi-effect evaporators for desalination begin to appear on steamships and in arid countries such as Yemen and Sudan.

A few multi-effect distillation plants were built in the first half of the 20th century, but a flaw in the system hampered its widespread adoption. Mineral deposits tended to build up on heat-exchange surfaces, and this inhibited the transfer of energy. In the 1950s a new type of thermal-desalination process, called multi-stage flash, reduced this problem. In this, seawater is heated under high pressure and then passed through a series of chambers, each at a lower pressure than the one before, causing some of the water to evaporate or “flash” at each step. Concentrated seawater is left at the bottom of the chambers, and freshwater vapour condenses above. Because evaporation does not happen on the heat-exchange surfaces, fewer minerals are deposited.

Countries in the Middle East with a lot of oil and a little water soon adopted multi-stage flash. Because it needs hot steam, many desalination facilities were put next to power stations, which generate excess heat. For a time, the cogeneration of electricity and water dominated the desalination industry.

Research into new ways to remove salt from water picked up in the 1950s. The American government set up the Office of Saline Water to support the search for desalination technology. And scientists at the University of Florida and the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) began to investigate membranes that are permeable to water, but restrict the passage of dissolved salts.

Such membranes are common in nature. When there is a salty solution on one side of a semi-permeable membrane (such as a cell wall), and a less salty solution on the other, water diffuses through the membrane from the less concentrated side to the more concentrated side. This process, which tends to equalise the saltiness of the two solutions, is called osmosis. Researchers wondered whether osmosis could be reversed by applying pressure to the more concentrated solution, causing water molecules to diffuse through the membrane and leave behind even more highly concentrated brine.

Initial efforts showed only limited success, producing tiny amounts of fresh water. That changed in 1960, when Sidney Loeb and Srinivasa Sourirajan of UCLA hand-cast their own membranes from cellulose acetate, a polymer used in photographic film. Their new membranes boasted a dramatically improved flux (the rate at which water molecules diffuse through a membrane of a given size) leading, in 1965, to a small “reverse osmosis” plant for desalting brackish water in Coalinga, California.

The energy requirements for thermal desalination do not much depend on the saltiness of the source water, but the energy needed for reverse osmosis is directly related to the concentration of dissolved salts. The saltier the water, the higher the pressure it takes (and hence the more energy you need) to push water through a membrane in order to leave behind the salt. Seawater generally contains 33-37 grams of dissolved solids per litre. To turn it into drinking water, nearly 99% of these salts must be removed. Because brackish water contains less salt than seawater, it is less energy-intensive, and thus less expensive, to process. As a result, reverse osmosis first became established as a way to treat brackish water.

Another important distinction is that reverse osmosis, unlike thermal desalination, calls for extensive pre-treatment of the feed water. Reverse-osmosis plants use filters and chemicals to remove particles that could clog up the membranes, and the membranes must also be washed periodically to reduce scaling and fouling.

Getting better all the time

In the late 1970s John Cadotte of America’s Midwest Research Institute and the FilmTec Corporation created a much-improved membrane by using a special cross-linking reaction between two chemicals atop a porous backing material. His composite membrane consisted of a very thin layer of polyamide, to perform the separation, and a sturdy support beneath it. Thanks to the membrane’s improved water flux, and its ability to tolerate pH and temperature variations, it went on to dominate the industry. At around the same time, the first reverse-osmosis plants for seawater began to appear. These early plants needed a lot of energy. The first big municipal seawater plant, which began operating in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, in 1980, required more than 8 kilowatt hours (kWh) to produce one cubic metre of drinking water.

The energy consumption of such plants has since fallen dramatically, thanks in large part to energy-recovery devices. High-pressure pumps force seawater against a membrane, which is typically arranged in a spiral inside a tube, to increase the surface area exposed to the incoming water and optimise the flux through the membrane. About half of the water emerges as freshwater on the other side. The remaining liquid, which contains the leftover salts, shoots out of the system at high pressure. If that high-pressure waste stream is run through a turbine or rotor, energy can be recovered and used to pressurise the incoming seawater.

The energy-recovery devices in the 1980s were only about 75% efficient, but newer ones can recover about 96% of the energy from the waste stream. As a result, the energy use for reverse-osmosis seawater desalination has fallen. The Perth plant, which uses technology from Energy Recovery, a firm based in California, consumes only 3.7kWh to produce one cubic metre of drinking water, according to Gary Crisp, who helped to oversee the plant’s design for the Water Corporation, a local utility. Thermal plants suck up nearly as much electricity, but also need large amounts of steam. “A thermal plant only is practical if you can build it in such a way that it can take advantage of very low-cost or waste heat,” says Tom Pankratz, a water consultant based in Texas, who is also a board member of the International Desalination Association.

Economies of scale, better membranes and improved energy-recovery have helped to bring down the cost of reverse-osmosis seawater-desalination. Although the cost of desalination plants and their water depends on where they are, as well as the local costs of capital and operations, prices decreased from roughly $1.50 a cubic metre in the early 1990s to around 50 cents in 2003, says Mr Pankratz. As a result, reverse osmosis is preferred for most modern seawater-desalination (though rising energy and commodity prices mean the cost per cubic metre has now risen to around 75 cents). Experts reckon that further gains in energy efficiency, and hence cost reductions, will be increasingly difficult, however. According to a recent report on desalination from America’s National Research Council, energy use is unlikely to be reduced by much more than 15% below today’s levels—though that would still be worthwhile, it concludes.

Sometimes, using desalination within water management may be the only way to ensure supply.

To achieve these reductions, researchers want to find better membranes that allow water to pass through more easily and are less likely to get clogged up. Eric Hoek and his colleagues from UCLA, for example, have developed a membrane embedded with tiny particles containing narrow flow channels, producing a significant increase in water flux. The membrane’s smooth surface is also expected to make it harder for bacteria to latch onto. Depending on a plant’s design, the new membranes could reduce total energy consumption by as much as 20%, reckons Dr Hoek. The technology is being commercialised by NanoH2O, a company on UCLA’s campus.

Meanwhile, the possibility of making membranes out of carbon nanotubes, which consist of sheets of carbon atoms rolled up into tubes, has also garnered attention. A study published in the journal Science in 2006 demonstrated unexpectedly high water-flow rates. But insiders think it will be a decade before the idea is ready for commercialisation.

As desalination becomes more widespread, its environmental impacts, including the design of intake and discharge structures, are coming under increased scrutiny. Some of the damage can be mitigated fairly easily. Reducing the intake velocity enables most fish species and other mobile marine life to swim away from the intake system, though small animals, such as plankton or fish larvae, may still get caught in the intake screens or sucked into the plant.

Measuring the impact

A bigger problem may be the leftover brine, which typically contains twice as much salt as seawater and is discharged back into the ocean. So far little scientific information exists about its long-term effects. In the past, most big seawater-desalination plants were built in places that did not conduct adequate environmental assessments, says Peter Gleick, president of the Pacific Institute, a think-tank based in California that published a report on desalination in 2006. But as plants are built in areas with tighter environmental restrictions, more information is becoming available.

Some recent measurements from Perth are encouraging. Initially scientists from the Centre for Water Research feared that the brine discharge from the plant would increase the saltiness of the coastal environment. But a monitoring study found that salinity returns to normal levels within about 500 metres of the plants’ discharge units. “The brine discharge is a problem that can be overcome with good design,” says Dr Antenucci.

A separate problem may be that some metals or chemicals leach into the brine. Thermal-desalination plants are prone to corrosion, and may shed traces of heavy metals, such as copper, into the waste stream. Reverse-osmosis plants, for their part, use chemicals during the pre-treatment and cleaning of the membranes, some of which may end up in the brine. Modern plants, however, remove most of the chemicals from the water before it is discharged. And new approaches to pre-treatment may reduce or eliminate the need for some chemicals.

Based on the limited evidence available to date, it appears that desalination may actually be less environmentally harmful than some other water-supply options, such as diverting large amounts of fresh water from rivers, for example, which can lead to severe reductions in local fish populations. But uncertainties over the environmental impacts of desalination make it hard to draw definite conclusions, the National Research Council concluded. Its report suggested that further research on the environmental impacts of desalination, and how to mitigate them, should be a high priority.

The reverse-osmosis process is increasingly being used not just for desalination, but to recycle wastewater, too. In Orange County, California, reclaimed water is being used to replenish groundwater, and in Singapore, it is pumped into local reservoirs, which are used as a source for drinking water. In both cases, the treated water is also available for tasting at local water-recycling facilities. This “toilet-to-tap” approach may leave some people feeling queasy, but wastewater is a valuable resource, says Sabine Lattemann, a researcher at the University of Oldenburg, Germany, who studies the environmental impacts of desalination. “Energy demand is lower compared to desalination,” she explains, “and you can produce high-quality drinking water.”

As water becomes more scarce, people will want to find several ways to secure their supplies. Many parts of the world also have enormous scope to use water more efficiently, argues Dr Gleick—and that would be cheaper than desalination. But sometimes, making desalination part of the approach to water management may be the only way to ensure a steady supply of drinking water.

In drought-ridden Western Australia, which ordered conservation years ago, the Water Corporation has adopted what it calls “security through diversity”, otherwise known in the industry as the “portfolio” approach. At the moment, Perth’s residents receive about 17% of their drinking water from seawater desalination. Desalination makes sense as one of several water sources along with conservation, agrees Dr Antenucci. But, he adds, “to say it is the silver bullet is wrong.”

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Jun 5th 2008
From The Economist print edition

Economics Focus: Building BRICs of growth

Record spending on infrastructure will help to sustain rapid growth in emerging economies

THE biggest investment boom in history is under way. Over half of the world's infrastructure investment is now taking place in emerging economies, where sales of excavators have risen more than fivefold since 2000. In total, emerging economies are likely to spend an estimated $1.2 trillion on roads, railways, electricity, telecommunications and other projects this year, equivalent to 6% of their combined GDPs—twice the average infrastructure-investment ratio in developed economies. Largely as a result, total fixed investment in emerging economies could increase by a staggering 16% in real terms this year, according to HSBC, whereas in rich economies it is forecast to be flat. Such investment will help support economic growth this year as America's economy stalls—and for many years to come.

Compounding this year's figure, Morgan Stanley predicts that emerging economies will spend $22 trillion (in today's prices) on infrastructure over the next ten years, of which China will account for 43% (see left-hand chart). China is already spending around 12% of its GDP on infrastructure. Indeed, China has spent more (in real terms) in the past five years than in the whole of the 20th century. Last year Brazil launched a four-year plan to spend $300 billion to modernise its road network, power plants and ports. The Indian government's latest five-year plan has ambitiously pencilled in nearly $500 billion in infrastructure projects. Russia, the Gulf states and other oil exporters are all pouring part of their higher oil revenues into fixed investment.

Good infrastructure has always played a leading role in economic development, from the roads and aqueducts of ancient Rome to Britain's railway boom in the mid-19th century. But never before has infrastructure spending been so large as a share of world GDP. This is partly because more countries are now industrialising than ever before, but also because China and others are investing at a much brisker pace than rich economies ever did. Even at the peak of Britain's railway mania in the 1840s, total infrastructure investment was only around 5% of GDP.

Infrastructure investment can yield big economic gains. Building roads or railways immediately boosts output and jobs, but it also helps to spur future growth—provided the money is spent wisely. Better transport helps farmers to get their produce to cities, and manufacturers to export their goods overseas. Countries with the lowest transport costs tend to be more open to foreign trade and so enjoy faster growth. Clean water and sanitation also raise the quality of human capital, thereby lifting labour productivity. The World Bank estimates that a 1% increase in a country's infrastructure stock is associated with a 1% increase in the level of GDP. Other studies have concluded that East Asia's much higher investment in infrastructure explains a large part of its faster growth than Latin America.

A recent report by Goldman Sachs argues that infrastructure spending is not just a cause of economic growth, but a consequence of it. As people get richer and more of them live in towns, the demand for electricity, transport, sanitation and housing increases. This mutually reinforcing relationship leads to higher investment and growth. The bank has developed a model that uses expected growth in income, urbanisation and population to forecast future infrastructure demands.

Urbanisation has the biggest impact on electricity requirements. Goldman calculates that a 1% increase in the share of people living in cities leads to a 1.8% increase in demand for installed capacity. A 1% rise in income per head leads to a 0.5% increase in demand. Putting this together, electricity capacity may have to surge by 140% in China and by 80% in India over the next decade (see right-hand chart). Air travel—and hence airports—will see the fastest growth in demand, because it is by far the most sensitive to income: a 1% increase in income per person leads to a 1.4% increase in the number of passengers travelling by air. The number of air passengers could jump by more than 350% in China and by 200% in India over the next decade.

China's faster growth in income per head and its more rapid pace of urbanisation mean that it is likely to pull even further ahead of India on most infrastructure measures. China could add 13 times as many fixed-line phones as India over the decade, seven times as many air passengers and six times as much electricity capacity. Brazil and Russia, which are already much more urbanised and relatively richer (implying slower growth in income), will also see more modest growth in infrastructure.

A boom in fumes

How will emerging economies finance all this spending? The fiscal finances of most emerging economies are in good shape. As a group, they are close to having a balanced budget, although a few, notably India, have large deficits. Even so, the vast scale of investment will require more private-sector money. To attract that, emerging economies will need to offer investors a decent return and that will require reform of their regulatory systems and a move towards market pricing. In India only about half of all electricity generated is paid for, because power is stolen and bills are left unpaid. In turn, the financing needs of massive infrastructure investment could encourage the development of domestic bond markets, bringing additional long-term benefits.

The infrastructure boom has global implications. Increased investment means more imports of capital equipment, which will help to slim current-account surpluses in China and elsewhere, and so reduce global imbalances. Rising demand for building materials will keep commodity prices high.

Last, but not least, will be the negative impact on the environment. An expected 75% increase in emerging economies' electricity demand over the next decade will worsen air pollution and global warming. Many fear that China's Three Gorges Dam, the world's largest hydroelectric project, could cause massive environmental damage. China's national bird, the red-crowned crane, is an endangered species. Some people may wish that the construction crane was also breeding less rapidly

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Jun 5th 2008
From The Economist print edition

GeoPediaSiberian Oil

Photograph by: Gerd Ludwig, National Geographic June 2008

Under communist rule, the U.S.S.R. was a major oil producer, with western Siberia providing most of the supply. Soviet production peaked in 1988 at around 12.5 million barrels per day (bbd), two-thirds of which came from western Siberia. Just before communism collapsed in 1991, oil production began falling, bottoming out in the mid-1990s at a little over six million bbd. Not until the late 1990s did production take off again.

Today western Siberia still produces about 70 percent of Russia's oil, and the province of Khanty-Mansi lies at the heart of the boom. All of Russia is reaping the benefits, but nowhere are the effects of the bonanza more obvious than in Khanty-Mansi cities like Surgut, Nefteyugansk, and Khanty-Mansiysk, the province's capital—all of which have been transformed by new investments in housing, commerce, arts, and science, among other areas.

Current Russian oil production, about ten million bbd, hasn't reached the levels of the late 1980s, but oil prices have increased tenfold over the past decade, giving the Russian government, which seized control of a number of oil fields from various oligarchs in the mid-2000s, a steady flow of revenue. And despite its lower production rate, Russia is now the world's top producer of crude oil and the second largest exporter of total oil products (behind Saudi Arabia). But the Russian government's tactics in managing its oil fields have made foreign investors wary and could pose a problem for the future of Russia’s oil economy.

Bibliography
Considine, Jennifer I., and William A. Kerr. The Russian Oil Economy. Edward Elgar, 2002.

"Russia Energy Profile." Energy Information Administration.

Ellman, Michael, ed. Russia's Oil and Natural Gas: Bonanza or Curse? Anthem Press, 2006.

Fortescue, Stephen. Russia's Oil Barons and Metal Magnates: Oligarchs and the State in Transition. Palgrave Macmillan, 2006.

Grace, John D. Russian Oil Supply: Performance and Prospects. Oxford University Press, 2005.

Grace, John D., interviewed by CERA.

Lincoln, W. Bruce. The Conquest of a Continent: Siberia and the Russians. Random House, 1994.

Khanty-Mansiysk Province.

Other Resources
Banjanovic, Adisa. "Russia's New Immigration Policy Will Boost the Population." Euromonitor International, June 14, 2007.

"Petroleum Data." Energy Information Administration.

Gaidar, Yegor. Collapse of an Empire: Lessons for Modern Russia. Brookings Institution Press, 2007.

Grace, John D. "Russia Oil: Up or Down? State or Market?" 2006 Horn Lecture on Energy.

"Khanty-Mansi (Ob-Ugrians) and Samoyeds."

Khanty Song.

Exporting Russian Oil to the Far East

By Karen Font

ver. 2 - Tue, May 20, 2008 at 11:33:02 AM

The Russian government has been negotiating with Chinese authorities to build a pipeline to move crude oil from eastern Siberia to Russia's Amur Province on the Chinese border. Part of the 1,680-mile (2,700-kilometer) pipeline—operated by Transneft, a government-owned company with one of the largest networks of oil pipelines in the world—may be open by late 2009, and when it reaches full capacity, it's expected to transport 600,000 barrels of oil a day.

Bibliography
"Russia to Begin China Oil Pipeline in 2008." AFX News Limited, July 9, 2007.

"Oil Exports." Energy Information Administration.

Golubkova, Ekaterina. "Russia Mulls Low Tariff for Oil Pipeline to China." Reuters, March 8, 2008.

Poussenkova, Nina. "The Wild, Wild East. East Siberia and the Far East: A New Petroleum Frontier?" Carnegie Moscow Center Working Paper No. 4, 2007.

Billionaires in Russia

By Karen Font

ver. 2 - Tue, May 20, 2008 at 11:34:05 AM

A 2008 list of the top 1,000 billionaires in the world included 87 Russian citizens, five of whom were earning more than $20 billion annually. A fifth of the Russian billionaires were oil or gas tycoons. Some of these oligarchs have been accused of tax evasion and fraud, a few have been linked to murder, and others are rumored to have ties to the mafia. Yet other Russian billionaires have shown a philanthropic side, spending tens of millions of dollars—or more—on Russian artworks, particularly Russian icons, and donating them to the state. Some have established foundations or charities, some have contributed to city infrastructure projects. U.S. museums and other organizations have also benefited from these oligarchs' financial donations.

Bibliography
"The World's Richest People: Billionaires 2008." Forbes (March 24, 2008).

"World's Billionaires"

Finn, Peter. "A Rich Market for Russian Icons." Washington Post, February 5, 2008.

Other Resources
Link of Times Foundation.

Open Russia Foundation

Last updated: May 13, 2008

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Karen Font

GeoPedia: World Oil

When Will the Peak Hit?

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Christy Ullrich