Word: nut
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...There's a good reason why Thomas, 24, doesn't give out his last name: he is concerned that his bosses at a nearby bank may not like his unconventional hiking attire, consisting of shoes, socks, a backpack - and nothing else. Thomas isn't just some nature nut in a birthday suit - he's one of a growing number of hikers who make the pilgrimage to Appenzell specifically so they can trek in the nude. (See pictures of skiing...
...much of the country lacks electricity. That's because most of its potential fuel is exported to neighboring countries through lucrative contracts that benefit the ruling generals instead of being used at home. The Burmese regime's stated solution to the longrunning national blackout? Jatropha. Also known as "physic nut," the plant produces a green nut that is pressed and processed into a biofuel catching on in entrepreneurial green pockets of the world from Florida to Brazil to India, which has already earmarked 100 million acres for the plant and expects the oil to account for one-fifth its diesel...
...Each of Burma's states and divisions was ordered to dedicate around 500,000 acres (202,000 hectares) to physic-nut cultivation, pressuring many ordinary citizens into a massive forced-planting campaign, according to human-rights groups. While my friend has enough money to pay for the mandatory seeds, many other Burmese aren't so lucky. Those who refuse to farm physic nut face possible jail time. By the end of 2008, the nation's top brass aimed to have 8 million acres (3.24 million ha) of jatropha scattered across Burma, some in vast plantations run by foreign companies, others...
...junta's planting directive has not been matched by adequate infrastructure to turn those acres into energy, like collection mechanisms, processing plants, distribution systems. My friend dutifully tends his jatropha trees and then watches the seeds fall on the ground and die. In his case, the spindly physic-nut shrubs in his garden are supplanting a fragrant frangipani tree or colorful hibiscus bush. But elsewhere in Burma - a nation where UNICEF estimates malnutrition afflicts one-third of children - farmers have had to put aside valuable crop land for a wasted plant...
Almonds are a huge business in California's Central Valley; the state's 660,000 nut-producing acres are responsible for some 90% of the world's crop. Every almond we eat is the result of multiple acts of pollination; without a massive number of bees to flit among the blossoms, growers say, almond trees would produce scarcely a tenth as many nuts. That's why, every February, more than a million beehives--with a total of some 20 billion bees--are shipped in on flatbed trucks from all over the country. (Video: TIME visits the buzzing almond orchards...