and the characters sure enough speak French (and Arabic) but the film remains the absolute apotheosis of Italian Neo-Realism Shot amidst the daily life on the streets of the Kasbah on grainy low-contrast 16mm film with a consistently hand-held camera and featuring amateurs in starring roles Battle proved so convincingly Neo-Realist that it features an on-screen disclaimer asserting that no documentary footage appears in the film Adding to the realist air is Pontecorvo’s refusal to take a moral position; the torturing French paratroopers and bomb-toting café-obliterating Algerian housewives are all one to him showing us the historical wheel as it turns and his dispassion (though he’s kinda rooting for the Algerians) makes Battle timeless in a way that more overt agit-prop could never be and detailed film ever made on anti-colonial insurgency We all know the Pentagon screened the film last year in Iraq It certainly couldn’t have cheered them up irrefutable: 1) Insurgency turns to terrorism to make up for its lack of a formally trained and equipped army 2) The colonialist power is forced to match its opponent in barbarity—kidnappings state-sanctioned murder—to have any chance of holding on the colonial power pays a moral cost that likely outweighs any tactical/political benefits These conclusions set the context for Pontecorvo’s next film Battle of Algiers deals with the outcome of hundreds of years of colonial oppression (originally titled: Queimada) is a tragedy of historical and personal inevitability Pontecorvo makes his loyalties (barely) known is presented as the inevitable collision of entrenched culture and the new paradigm arriving either via the barrel of a gun or thanks to someone’s pernicious self-interest (or hews to the Neo-Realist aesthetic: show the world as it is The screenplay offers two men as incarnations of irreconcilable historical forces an English intelligence agent sent to a Portuguese-controlled Caribbean island to foment a native revolution His revolution’s goal is to displace the Portuguese monopoly and turn the island into a British trading zone Once he convinces the former and current slaves that such a revolution is possible the role of race in political power and the colonial manipulation of all of the above Pontecorvo takes on these themes so clearly and directly—while keeping them secondary to the drama of the narrative—that Burn becomes a lesson in how few other films ever address them at all The island is known as Queimada ("burnt" in Portuguese) because the Portuguese set it on fire it to quell an indigenous rebellion Having thus killed off all the native inhabitants they imported African slaves to work their cane fields we see a small glaringly white off-shore key—a dumping ground for the bodies of slaves who died on the voyage from Africa Pontecorvo sets the scene: everything on the island that pretends to be progress is built on the bones of dead slaves (The original screenplay cast the island and its overlords as Spanish citing the size of the potential Spanish market and the certain banning of the picture illiterate cane-cutter—whom Brando incites to lead the revolution—is Evaristo Márquez illiterate cane-cutter whom Pontecorvo found in Columbia Promotional materials insist that not only had Márquez never acted in a film Brando lost his shit about three-quarters of the way through production—fed up with Pontecorvo shooting a million takes while surreptitiously whispering to and poking Márquez to guide him through his scenes—and fled Colombia Pontecorvo ended up shooting in more luxurious locations he’s portraying a symbolic figure of history in the form of a character Yet Márquez comes off as wholly believable as a cane-cutter He yields nothing to Brando as a character or an on-screen force Early in the picture we have to grant him some slack but he’s not the only reason we have to be generous This version orginale—this uncut original print—is dubbed in Italian more detailed narrative and an epic sensibility absent in the butchered English-language version But a curse because it splits the storytelling into two perceptual spheres self-consciously gorgeous cinematography and the sophisticated visual narrative that needs no dialogue The less convincing sphere features the scenes dependent upon the spoken word maybe because we don’t know what he sounds like But every time Brando’s mouth moves and Italian emerges we’re hurled—and I mean hurled—out of the story and back into the awareness of sitting in a theatre watching a movie and wishing Brando would speak Inglese Especially because Brando wears this role as easily as the fawn-colored cut-away he sports in the final sequence The guy loved playing upper-class (but tough-ass) fops: Fletcher Christian in Mutiny on the Bounty and Lt a Wehrmacht officer with a conscience in The Young Lions In one key scene he speaks to a black soldier who’s helping track down Brando’s former pupil Márquez (Brando’s creation of a determined revolutionary has succeeded far too well) As long as Márquez is alive and a fugitive with the perfect insouciant self-loathing of precisely the upper-class British self-betrayer he portrays on the contrary; I work for an overall sum." And the wit of that moment is lost when an Italian stranger’s voice emerges from Brando’s pie-hole you might also find yourself noticing how well Brando rides a horse It’s tricky placing Brando at this point in his career It’s shocking to re-discover how much grace Brando once possessed and how physical his performances could be Pontecorvo abandons the scruffy conventions of Neo-Realism Opening with a montage of psychedelic blood-spattered images over one of Ennio Morricone’s weirdest most exhilarating songs—a deranged amalgam of 1969 Euro electronic space-jazz and soaring African chant—the film self-consciously pursues beauty for its own sake the camera lingers over lush Caribbean vegetation as it does over unspeakable slums and Graham Greene-like tropical brothels (circa 1840s) Pontecorvo’s camerawork in Battle is austere and understated; here it’s full of movement and experimentation Pontecorvo’s clearly enthralled with the landscape and the vibrancy of the colors For him they’re metaphors for the seduction of the island and the life-force of its (non-European) inhabitants dangerous moments of pure physicality: African dances Brando helping push a corpse-laden hand-cart past a field of indifferent workers is a movie-movie and revels in its over-the-top style but sometimes the movie-ness takes over the story He edits with restraint and a minimum of cuts Most shots—save the usual back-and-forth in conversation—are self-contained narratives He sets a scene and then zooms or pans to the punch line we see the bloody dead bodies of Portuguese soldiers lying in the dust Pontecorvo pans slowly from the corpses to a mob of ragged fugitive former slaves smiling wildly and dancing joyously with their rifles held high They’re dancing because they’ve discovered And—payback being a what?—that knowledge brings ecstasy Prescient and germane ain’t the half of it And there are moments clearly designed to evoke that war The British fire endless cannon into an apparently empty and indifferent jungle Black soldiers hunt their own kind in service to the white colonial bosses The revolutionaries suffer incredible privation but come out fighting these images of a war of culture and of race of old orders overturned and of Western bafflement in the face of murderous hatred Others might say the story is "torn from today’s headlines." I’d say it predicts tomorrow’s David N Meyer’s Fall 2004 Cinema Studies course at the New School: Revolutionary Movies; The Incendiary Cinema of the ’60’s (#: 6022 NFLM 3) starts Sept 22nd and is open for registration at www.newschool.edu David N. Meyer's Spring Semester cinema studies course at The New School begins January 26, The Desperate Horizon: Road Movies, Westerns, and the American Landscape. Home Please enter the email address you use for your account so we can send you a link to reset your password: Few aspects of Biden’s climate law have spurred more controversy than the “three pillars” — a set of rules proposed by the Treasury Department for how to claim a lucrative new tax credit for producing clean hydrogen The Treasury has been under immense pressure from Congress, energy companies, and even leaders at the Department of Energy to relax the rules since before it even published the proposal in December criteria designed to prevent the program from subsidizing projects that increase U.S greenhouse gas emissions rather than reduce them are too expensive and complicated to comply with and would sink the prospects for a domestic clean hydrogen industry The consequences of losing the three pillars can only be guessed at using models which are built on assumptions and can’t predict the future with certainty But proponents say the stakes couldn’t be higher the pillars don’t just prevent carbon emissions They mitigate the risks of rising electricity costs for everyday Americans one of the most generous energy credits the government offers could become incredibly easy to claim The clean hydrogen tax credit was created by the Inflation Reduction Act and offers up to $3 per kilogram of hydrogen produced with the top dollar amount reserved for fuel that is essentially zero-emissions The hope was that this would be enough to bring down the cost of hydrogen made from electricity to parity with hydrogen made from natural gas hydrogen could help decarbonize other carbon-intensive industries excitement for the tax credit ran high and companies quickly began making plans for new factories Announcements of new hydrogen production capacity more than tripled from 2 million tons per year in 2021 to 7.7 million by the end of the following year according to the energy consulting firm Wood Mackenzie after the Treasury’s proposal dropped last December hydrogen companies that get electricity from the grid which is still largely powered by fossil fuels would be required to buy clean energy credits with specific attributes in order to mitigate their emissions and render their hydrogen “clean.” The credits must come from power plants located in the same region as the hydrogen production — the first pillar — that were built no more than 3 years before the hydrogen plant — the second pillar — and be purchased for every hour the plant is operating — the third pillar The three provisions work together to ensure that new clean power plants are brought online to meet hydrogen’s energy demand But finding clean energy credits with these features is not easy — there aren’t many systems in place to do this yet The Treasury took more than a year to publish its initial proposal companies lobbied aggressively for a more lenient version There was so much money on the line that some businesses flooded the public with ads in newspapers and on streaming and podcast services delivering a cryptic warning that “additionality” — the requirement to buy energy from new power plants — was threatening to “set America back.” Until businesses have clarity on whether the three pillars will stay or go Several previously announced projects have been delayed Few companies have reached offtake agreements Almost none have received a final investment decision or started construction “They’re losing advantage over other parts of the world,” Hector Arreola a principal analyst for hydrogen and emerging technologies at Wood Mackenzie Momentum to develop hydrogen projects has started to shift back to Europe which has already finalized its own definition of what constitutes clean hydrogen It’s hard to imagine a path forward for the Treasury to keep the three pillars intact Last week’s letter outlined the current state of play in stark terms “Without significant changes to the draft guidance,” it said “one of the most powerful job creation and emission reduction tools in the IRA will likely be hamstrung by future court challenges and unfulfilled private sector investment.” Constellation wrote that the requirements for purchasing clean electricity “have no basis” in the law “People can always sue today to challenge regulations,” Keith Martin a renewable energy tax lawyer at the firm Norton Rose Fulbright “It’s just that the odds of success have increased.” The Supreme Court’s ruling undermines regulatory agencies’ authority to interpret federal statute (Plug Power didn’t respond to a request for clarification by publish time.) the 13 Democratic senators propose that hydrogen producers should be able to purchase clean energy from existing power plants that are already supplying the grid if they are located in a state that has a clean energy standard or as long as the power plant doesn’t reallocate more than 10% of its power to hydrogen production They recommend losing the hourly matching requirement altogether and replacing it with annual or monthly matching depending on when plants start construction The senators also suggest allowing projects built in areas with “insufficient clean energy sources,” meaning places with suboptimal sun to source their power from farther outside the region the chief legal officer for Electric Hydrogen a company that has historically supported the three pillars told me in an interview she thought these proposals represented a good compromise the effectiveness of green hydrogen as a decarbonization tool is being artificially held back,” she said later in an email “We need to give up perfection on both sides of the three-pillar debate and find the ‘good enough’ solution that lets early mover projects move forward with less stringent requirements.” But other proponents told me the letter carves out so many loopholes that the pillars would remain in name only the policy director for emerging technologies at the Natural Resources Defense Council told me the letter was “outrageous” and “a giveaway buffet.” Daniel Esposito a manager in the electricity program at the think tank Energy Innovation told me he can’t imagine any scenario where these exceptions don’t result in an emissions boost rather than a reduction which found that the difference in cumulative emissions between scenarios with less stringent requirements and the full three pillars comes out to less than 1% by 2039 a professor of engineering and public policy at Carnegie Mellon who worked on that research told me the three pillars add a level of regulatory complexity to hydrogen production that is not worth the cost in terms of the emissions savings and that the Treasury should subsidize electrolytic hydrogen regardless of where the electricity comes from “We need to deploy this infrastructure,” Jaramillo told me “We need to deploy it now so it’s available later.” they planned to build enough capacity to produce more than 6 million tons of hydrogen per year this debate is not just about hydrogen — think of all the other energy-intensive industries that will have to electrify before we can reach net zero Plenty of stakeholders still believe that the Treasury can find a middle ground by making the three pillars more flexible. The American Clean Power Association, which represents a wide range of energy companies, has proposed loosening the hourly matching aspect for projects that start construction before 2028 Fakhry acknowledged the need for flexibility but her recommendations are much more narrow than the senators’ she would allow hydrogen producers to buy power from existing nuclear plants but only if they are at risk of retirement and the purchase would help keep them open Esposito said Energy Innovation would support power procurement from existing clean resources that are curtailed meaning they produce power that currently goes unutilized the Supreme Court has just given “677 federal district court judges greater latitude to substitute their own judgment for subject matter experts at the federal agencies.” a Treasury spokesperson told me the agency is still considering the many thousands of comments the agency received on the proposed rules “The Biden Administration is committed to ensuring that progress continues and that the IRA’s investments continue to create good-paying jobs the department may not be able to avoid a lawsuit “We will use every tool available to us — including the courts — to either defend a strong final rule or challenge an unlawful one that reflects the asks in the letter,” Fakhry told me There’s also a realpolitik argument here that the industry might want this all to be over more than it wants to kill the three pillars “The number one thing people want is business certainty,” Esposito told me “I don’t think people want this to drag on for another two years.” Emily Pontecorvo The administration can’t have it both ways on the Clean Air Act The Trump administration filed lawsuits this week against four states that are pursuing compensation from oil and gas companies for climate change-related damages But Trump’s separate aim to revoke the government’s “endangerment finding,” the conclusion that greenhouse gases pose a threat to public health and should therefore be regulated under the Clean Air Act could directly undercut the legal basis for the suits the Trump administration is arguing that the Clean Air Act preempts the states’ actions But if the Environmental Protection Agency rules that the Clean Air Act does not require the federal regulation of greenhouse gases Two of the lawsuits target Vermont and New York for their new “climate superfund” laws that require the companies responsible for the greatest amount of emissions over the last three decades to pay into a fund supporting adaptation and disaster response The Department of Justice is also suing Hawaii and Michigan to block them from suing fossil fuel companies for damages for climate change-related harms Neither state had actually filed such a lawsuit yet although both had expressed interest in doing so (Hawaii went ahead and filed its suit on Thursday night.) “I just want to start by saying that these lawsuits by the government are totally unprecedented,” Rachel Rothschild an assistant professor of Law at Michigan State University never before has the federal government tried to preemptively stop a state from filing a liability case against companies Trump had directed Attorney General Pam Bondi to “stop the enforcement” of state climate laws and actions that “may be unconstitutional” or “preempted by federal law.” The order singled out lawsuits against oil companies as well as climate superfund laws calling both a form of “extortion” and a “threat to economic and national security.” Nevermind that climate change is a major threat to economic and national security and states have filed these lawsuits and created these laws because they are scrambling to find ways to pay to address the unprecedented damages brought by the increasing severity of wildfires and floods the federal government had warned states that they were going to need to take more responsibility for preparing for and responding to increasing natural disasters “[States] do not have the resources alone to address this problem,” said Rothschild “These companies have engaged in an activity that causes external harms that they’ve not taken into account as part of their business practices they’'re imposing all the costs of those harms on states and citizens and they should be liable to help us deal with the resulting problems That’s a very normal activity for tort suits.” that some states are testing to get oil companies to pay up The DOJ’s lawsuits claim that states cannot fine oil companies for their emissions because that authority lies with the federal government under the Clean Air Act That argument is underpinned by the Environmental Protection Agency’s endangerment finding which stems from a 2007 Supreme Court ruling that greenhouse gases are a pollutant as defined by the Clean Air Act and therefore the EPA must determine whether these emissions pose a threat to public health The court said that if the agency finds there is enough scientific evidence to say greenhouse gases are harmful it must develop regulations to rein them in This was a big headache for Trump during his first term He wasn’t allowed to simply repeal Barack Obama’s greenhouse gas rules — by law If he’s able to reverse the endangerment finding he could undo climate protection rules and that would be that At the same time, he’d make oil companies much more vulnerable. “There is great concern that reversing the finding would open the door to a lot more nuisance lawsuits against all types of energy companies,” Jeff Holmstead, a partner with Bracewell, a lobbying firm, told E&E News “It would eliminate one of the best arguments that oil companies have used to get lawsuits against them dismissed,” he added is confident that states’ superfund laws and tort suits are defensible regardless of what happens to the endangerment finding These actions have nothing to do with the Clean Air Act because they are not an attempt to regulate emissions “They're trying to impose liability for local and public health harms from past activities,” she said One thing is for certain: Between states’ lawsuits suing oil companies and probably future suits against any actions the Trump administration takes on endangerment there’s going to be a whole lot of new case law about greenhouse gases over the next four years The fundamentals are the same — it’s the tone that’s changed At some point in the past month, the hydrogen fuel cell developer Plug Power updated its website Beneath a carousel explaining the hydrogen ecosystem and solutions for transporting fuel the company’s home page now contains a section titled “Hydrogen at Work.” reliable power while reducing reliance on imported fuels,” the text in this new box reads “Plug’s hydrogen and fuel cell solutions strengthen the energy grid and enhance national security as a leader in the global energy transition.” It is fairly ordinary website copy, but to a keen reader, the text jumps out as an obvious Trump 2.0 tell. Plug Power — like many green economy companies — has pivoted to meet the political and economic moment, where “energy independence” and “energy dominance” are in and “climate” and “sustainability” are out “I am actually shocked every time I look at the website of a climate tech company that still uses the language from 12 months ago from four months ago — that doesn’t do them any good,” Peter Atanasoff the managing director and vice president of Scratch Media and Marketing which helps B2B technology companies and climate tech businesses achieve growth and recognition The shift in language is more significant than just brands chasing the latest buzzwords “The real trigger” for resulting differences in branding between the first and second Trump administrations has been “the change of tone and change of economic policy,” Atanasoff told me “It is explicit opposition to any of these technologies." Lobbyists and clean energy companies that want to be in the administration’s good graces have adapted That has changed the tenor of green business at large office of Browning Environmental Communications told me over email that tweaking brand language is “typical after any change of administration particularly when there are significant shifts in policy.” But especially for organizations in the public eye “it’s more important than ever to highlight the historic and potential economic benefits of environmental solutions — and show how they are supported by the president of the management consulting service Green Strategies and the chairman of the White House Climate Change Task Force under President Bill Clinton “It’s what I refer to as climate capitalism which is the realization that by incorporating climate change and its risks and opportunities into your business strategy you’re actually going to be a more successful Companies are attempting to match the frequency of the administration and the broader policy ecosystem — a frequency that tends to be aggressive and heavy on words like “dominance” and “security.” It might also take the form of decreasing the volume at which companies had previously shouted their climate bona fides the senior vice president of public relations at Scratch M+M said her team has also advised touting “American-made production” in brand messaging and reframing copy to focus on “the positive impacts and immediate business benefits” of the companies rather than more idealistic messaging about climate goals that may have had stronger resonance during the Biden administration and at a time when even the word “green” can give you a black mark dismissed reading too much into how language itself changes under President Trump “If yesterday a new technology company was touting itself as a climate solution and now it’s touting itself as a way to achieve energy dominance — I don’t care,” he said “Good business remains good business,” Ballentine went on It might sound like branding agencies are encouraging companies to “play along” with the administration but Nelson of Scratch M+M stressed that wasn’t what she was trying to say “To be a thriving company that is going to change the world you need to make sure you don’t go out of business.” The message might be more accurately summarized as “read the room.” A report from Heatmap’s San Francisco Climate Week event with Tom Steyer Climate Tech's Next Winners.Sean Vranizan Tom Steyer and Robinson Meyer.Sean Vranizan Sam D'Amico and Nico Lauricella.Sean Vranizan Impulse's high-power Cooktop on display at the event.Sean Vranizan All three panelists acknowledged that it’s a delicate time for clean tech investors and companies alike “Volatility and uncertainty are the enemies of running and planning a business,” warned Kra The true cost of the tariffs is therefore extremely high Kolster agreed that things are generally gloomy in the investment space but also highlighted the technologies that are currently thriving in the past few weeks.” The companies and technologies she’s excited about faster,” as Steyer pointed out earlier in the evening Swaminathan added that there will always be a certain element of risk when it comes to investing in emerging technologies “Clean tech companies have so many single points of failure,” he said “And you have to prop up each part with the right leadership team You have to have strong pillars so that [your company] doesn’t break.” Guests following the discussion.Sean Vranizan This website is using a security service to protect itself from online attacks The action you just performed triggered the security solution There are several actions that could trigger this block including submitting a certain word or phrase You can email the site owner to let them know you were blocked Please include what you were doing when this page came up and the Cloudflare Ray ID found at the bottom of this page Make sure to copy Registration number after successful submission Your payment is verified online.Your payment status showing payment The young man was rescued immediately after being injured by at least one stab wound to the abdomen; there was nothing that could be done for him and he died shortly after A 24-year-old of Moroccan origins was stabbed and killed this night in via San Giovanni Battista in Pontecorvo The murder took place at approximately 1 am the Carabinieri of the Pontecorvo company and the Frosinone operations department began to investigate and identify some people who could be involved in the murder Some of them were taken to the barracks but they were not arrested The investigations carried out by the military are ongoing Read also other news on Nova News Click here and receive updates on WhatsApp Follow us on the social channels of Nova News on Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, Telegram He had been a professor of economics who taught at Columbia University for four decades and served as an advisor to the U.S including the United Nation’s food and agriculture organization His attendance at Dartmouth College was interrupted by his volunteer service in World War II where he served as a combat engineer in the Trailblazer’s 70th Division He saw action against the German defense of Saarbrucken and the invasion of Germany that marked the end of the war he completed his undergraduate and master’s degrees in economics He married the love of his life Margaret Thatcher who he had met during basic training in Bend in economics from the University of California He served as an assistant professor at the University of Colorado in Boulder and was appointed full professor at Columbia in 1968 began to focus on the economics of fishing It was also where service as an advisor teacher and mentor began to emerge as the central theme of his life In 1964 he was invited to the University of Buenos Aires as a guest lecturer to advise on Argentina’s fishing industry followed by an evaluation of anchovy production in Peru and as a Fulbright guest lecturer at the University of Bergen in Norway in 1967 That lead to appointments to many advisory positions for governmental agencies including the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration International Marine Science Affairs Policy Committee of the National Academy of Sciences State Department for Law of the Sea negotiations and numerous others His contributions to the public sector complimented his work as a professor at Columbia’s Graduate Business School Pontecorvo published countless academic books they were highly regarded in academic circles He found time to support his local community library where he was responsible for a new library building in New City and a four-fold increase in the library budget He and his wife Margaret first brought their family to Chilmark for a month in the mid-1960s It quickly became a family tradition that was followed soon after by building a house in Aquinnah Summers on the Vineyard have become a treasured family experience now being passed down to younger generations He is survived by four sons — Michael Anthony and Andrew — and their families He and Margaret will be interred together in the Aquinnah cemetery on Saturday Memorial donations can be sent to Wampanoag Tribe of Gay Head (Aquinnah) The Vineyard Gazette welcomes obituaries of people who have lived or vacationed regularly on Martha’s Vineyard Tuesday for publication in print on Friday Obituaries will appear online and in print we probe the fundamental structure of particles that make up everything around us We do so using the world's largest and most complex scientific instruments Know more The Higgs Boson The W boson The Z boson The Large Hadron Collider The Birth of the web Antimatter Latest news Media News The research programme at CERN covers topics from kaons to cosmic rays and from the Standard Model to supersymmetry See all resources Italian physicist Bruno Pontecorvo is remembered for his far-reaching insights, some of which have represented milestones in modern physics. This year, on the centenary of his birth, a conference in Rome (11-12 September) and a workshop and exhibition in Pisa Italy (late October to December) will celebrate his life and work In 1936 Pontecorvo moved to Paris to work with Irène and Frédéric Joilot-Curie, but when the Nazis invaded Paris in 1940, he fled for the US. In 1943 he moved to Canada, where he not only worked on the design and operation of the Chalk River nuclear reactor but also found time for fundamental research on muons He also realized that it might be possible to detect neutrinos emitted by a nuclear reactor and proposed the technique that was later used by Raymond Davis to detect neutrinos from the Sun Pontecorvo later moved to the UK to work at the Harwell Atomic Energy Research Establishment. But in 1950 he left abruptly with his family for the Soviet Union and joined the Institute of Nuclear Problems at Dubna. It was there that he made the contributions to neutrino physics for which he is best remembered In 1959 he showed that neutrinos produced in the decays of particles from an accelerator could be observed with big detectors and proposed an experiment to find out if electron and muon neutrinos differ from each other. The successful implementation of such an experiment – independently proposed – at the Brookhaven Laboratory in the US in 1962 marked the beginning of high-energy neutrino physics at accelerators.  Most famously, Pontecorvo suggested in 1957 that neutrinos might "oscillate" - change from one type to another. The eventual discovery of neutrino oscillations by the Super-Kamiokande experiment in Japan was a triumph for Pontecorvo’s idea but it came nearly a decade after his death The continuing study of neutrino oscillations – and the necessary small neutrino masses – is a key area of modern particle physics Pontecorvo died on 24 September 1993 in Dubna The prestigious Pontecorvo Prize was instituted in his memory in 1995 awarded annually to an individual scientist recognizes "the most significant investigations in elementary particle physics" as acknowledged by the international scientific community More Social Media Accounts A new biography meticulously traces his disappearance and life in Russia Of all the precious military secrets of the second world war, none was guarded more zealously than the Manhattan Project. Winston Churchill was determined that neither the German enemy nor even the Soviet allies should know anything about the gigantic American-led venture to build the first nuclear weapons He had no idea that a spy network had long been efficiently dispatching British work on the atomic bomb to grateful authorities in the Kremlin Among the leakers were several nuclear scientists including a few who had been given security clearance in Britain The Soviets later had a rather better record with their nuclear project – it was never penetrated by even a single western spy the west – especially the American public – was shocked when nuclear spies were unmasked Most notorious of all the traitors was Klaus Fuchs a former Manhattan Project scientist who was guilty of the “crime of the century” according to the FBI’s director J Edgar Hoover Fuchs’s treachery enabled the Soviet Union to produce nuclear weapons – and break the US monopoly – at least two years earlier than experts expected the highest-ranking KGB officer ever to defect For 65 years no one has been able to give a definitive answer to the question: was he a spy who concluded that Pontecorvo left the west simply to escape persecution and a lawsuit in the US Now the physicist and prolific populariser Frank Close brings a fresh perspective to the story interviews with Pontecorvo’s family and former associates in Abingdon (where Close also lives) and with a deep appreciation of Pontecorvo’s considerable scientific achievements Of all the people who have been accused of being nuclear spies Pontecorvo was perhaps the most accomplished and imaginative physicist Born into an Italian Jewish family in 1913 handsome and an athlete (he aspired to be a national tennis champion) He made an excellent start by earning his research spurs in Rome working with the great nuclear physicist Enrico Fermi and later moved to Paris alongside two other world-class scientists Pontecorvo was not invited to join the Manhattan Project almost certainly because of his communist beliefs But his scientific knowledge and skills were put to good use in the related venture at the Chalk River laboratory in Canada where he had access to material that would have been very useful to the Soviets he moved to Harwell and became a colleague of Fuchs as Philby had previously alerted the Kremlin to the western intelligence community’s interest in Fuchs and in another less important spy Pontecorvo did some of his best work in the second half of his life He had a remarkable feel for the behaviour of the extremely elusive subatomic particles known as neutrinos billions of which rain down on us every second though only a minuscule number interact significantly with human beings or indeed any other matter His most outstanding achievement was to be the first to predict correctly that they should exist in more than one variety an important contribution to the physicists’ Standard Model of the innermost workings of atoms Pontecorvo was rightly regarded as a world authority on his subject but was not given the recognition he deserved Although he was undoubtedly a leading figure his contribution is somewhat exaggerated by Close who titles one of his subsections “Bruno conceives the Standard Model” Pontecorvo’s life was far from ideal in Dubna He was materially more comfortable than most Soviet citizens but his travel was restricted and he was accompanied by guards whenever he left home suffered terribly: her mental health deteriorated and she was repeatedly admitted to psychiatric institutions Pontecorvo took full advantage of her absences by spending more time with his mistress he was loyal to its government and to the memory of Stalin he was predictably more relaxed about criticising his government and apparently regretted his own actions He died in 1993 after a long struggle with Parkinson’s disease having told an interviewer from the Independent three years earlier That interview may have been read by Rudolf Peierls later a campaigner against nuclear proliferation He had been poleaxed when he heard that his friend and colleague Fuchs had confessed to being a spy Peierls subsequently thought deeply about the motivations of the nuclear traitors and was struck by the absence of spies on the Soviet nuclear project He suggested to his confidant and fellow pioneer Niels Bohr that the lesson of the Fuchs tragedy was that secrecy can be guaranteed only in “a totalitarian country in which everybody is ready to suspect his best friend of being an informer” If the Russians’ solution was the only effective one Peierls told me shortly before he died that he was unsure whether Pontecorvo was a spy but was “prepared to give him the benefit of the doubt” I suspect that Close’s impressively researched book would not have changed his mind and that the Pontecorvo case will be closed only after the Kremlin gives scholars full access to its 1950s security files Graham Farmelo’s Churchill’s Bomb is published by Faber. To order Half Life for £16 (£RRP £20) go to bookshop.theguardian.com or call 0330 333 6846 A £1.99 charge applies to telephone orders Carbon removal would seem to have a pretty clear definition It means taking carbon out of the atmosphere and putting it somewhere else — underground into the ocean — where it won’t warm the planet But a new kind of carbon removal project shows how this formula can conceal consequential differences between approaches There are two ways to look at what’s happening here it started in the atmosphere and ended up underground the corn sucked up carbon through photosynthesis; when it was processed into ethanol about a third of that carbon went into the fuel and the remainder was captured as it wafted out of the fermentation tank and stashed underground how that looks like carbon removal,” Daniel Sanchez an assistant professor at the University of California Berkeley who studies biomass carbon removal For the carbon to get from the atmosphere to the ground and then liquified using heat from a natural gas boiler If you account for the CO2 emitted during these other steps the process as a whole is putting more into the atmosphere than it’s taking out is Red Trail Energy really doing carbon removal Puro.earth takes the first view — the registry’s rules essentially draw a box around the carbon capture and storage Red Trail has to count the emissions from the energy it took to capture and liquify and inject the carbon but not from anything else that happened before that Puro has issued just over 157,000 carbon removal credits for Red Trail to sell Other carbon market registries including Gold Standard and Isometric more or less take the same approach for any projects involving biomass though they haven’t certified any ethanol projects yet (Isometric’s current rules disqualify ethanol plants because they only allow projects that use waste biomass.) But the nonprofit CarbonPlan, a watchdog for the carbon removal industry, argues that it’s a mistake to call this carbon removal. In a blog post published in December program lead Freya Chay wrote that because the carbon storage is “contingent upon the continued production of ethanol,” it’s wrong to separate the two processes The project reduces the facility’s overall emissions As long as an action results in less pollution warming the planet does it matter whether we label it “carbon removal” or “emission reduction” The point of carbon credits is that they are paying for an intervention that wouldn’t have happened otherwise what part of the project is being built because they receive carbon removal credits?” Marianne Tikkanen the co-founder and head of standard at Puro told me the emissions from the fermentation tank were considered to be zero since the carbon started in the atmosphere and ended up back in the atmosphere If you just look at the change that the sale of credits supported But the logic of carbon credits may not be totally aligned with the point of carbon removal Scientists generally see three roles for technologies that remove carbon from the atmosphere The first is to reduce net emissions in the near term — Red Trail’s project checks that box carbon removal can counteract any remaining emissions that we don’t know how to eliminate That’s how we’ll “achieve net-zero” and stop the planet from warming But those who say these labels really matter are thinking of the third role but global average temperatures have reached dangerous heights doing additional carbon removal — and lowering the total concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere — will be our only hope of cooling the planet there is a “clear conceptual problem” with calling a holistic process that emits more than it removes “carbon removal,” Chay told me “I think the point of definitions is to help us navigate the world,” she said “It will be kind of a miracle if we get there Decarbonization experts often refer to the emissions from ethanol plants as low-hanging fruit Out of all the polluting industries that we could be capturing carbon from The CO2 released when corn sugar is fermented is nearly 100% pure whereas the CO2 that comes from fossil fuel combustion is filled with all kinds of chemicals that need to be scrubbed out first and the ethanol industry has historically ignored the opportunity federal tax credits and carbon markets have made the idea more attractive Red Trail’s CCS project has been a long time in the making The company began looking into CCS in 2016 partnering with the Energy and Environmental Research Center the North Dakota Industrial Commission Renewable Energy Council Department of Energy on a five-year feasibility study answered questions about the project by email “Building a first-of-its-kind CCS project involved significant financial required substantial upfront investment and a commitment to navigating uncharted regulatory frameworks.” two years after Red Trail began capturing carbon the company’s application to participate in California’s low-carbon fuel market is still pending Though the company does sell some ethanol into the Oregon market it decided to try and sell carbon removal credits through Puro to support “broader decarbonization and sequestration efforts while awaiting regulatory approvals,” Johnson said Red Trail had already built its carbon capture system prior to working with Puro but it may not have operated the equipment unless it had an incentive to do so Johnson told me Red Trail does not pay income tax at the corporate level That means individual investors can take advantage of the credit but it’s not a big enough benefit to secure project finance The project “requires significant capital expenditure and long-term monitoring for compliance,” she said “Access to the carbon market was the needed incentive to secure the investment and the continuous project operation.” after an independent audit of Red Trail’s claims need to sell carbon removal credits to justify operating the CCS project (Red Trail is currently also earning carbon credits for fuel sold in Oregon but Puro is accounting for these and deducting credits from its registry accordingly.) All this helps make the case that it’s reasonable to support projects like Red Trail’s through the sale of carbon credits But it doesn’t explain why we should call it carbon removal she said that the project interrupts the “short cycle” of carbon: The CO2 is captured during photosynthesis and then it’s released back into the air in a continuous loop — all in a matter of months Red Trail is turning that loop into a one-way street from the atmosphere to the ground taking more and more carbon out of the air over time That’s different from capturing carbon at a fossil fuel plant where the carbon in question had previously been trapped underground for millennia a carbon removal advisor who co-founded the database CDR.fyi He told me that it didn’t make sense to categorize this project as “reducing emissions” from the plant because the fossil fuel-burning trucks that deliver the corn and the natural gas boilers cooking it are still releasing the same amount of carbon into the atmosphere lead to lower emissions in the atmosphere are carbon removal that's looking at it from a system perspective,” he said Red Trail Energy and Summit Carbon Solutions defended the label noting that this is the way carbon market registries have decided to treat biomass-based carbon sequestration projects “The fact that emissions remain from the lifecycle of the corn itself is not the focus of the removal activity,” Johnson told me “The biogenic CO2 is clearly removed from the atmosphere permanently.” Sanchez, the Berkeley professor, argued that Puro’s rules are adequate because there’s a path for ethanol plants to eventually achieve net-negative emissions. They will have to capture emissions from the boiler, in addition to the fermentation process, and make a few other tweaks, like using renewable natural gas, according to a recent peer-reviewed study Sanchez authored “That's not what's happening here,” he told me “but I view that as indicative that this is part of the basket of technologies that we use to reach net-zero and to suck CO2 out of the air.” (Red Trail is working on reducing its emissions even more The company is finishing engineering on a new combined heat and power system that will improve efficiency at the plant.) In addition to teaching at Berkeley, Sanchez is a principal scientist for the firm Carbon Direct which helps corporate buyers find “high quality” carbon removal credits He added that he felt the project was “worthy" of the dollars companies are designating for carbon removal because of the risk it involved and the fact that it would blaze a trail for others to follow Ethanol CCS projects will help build up carbon storage infrastructure and expertise enabling other carbon removal projects in the future Though there is seeming consensus among carbon market participants that this is carbon removal scientists outside the industry are more skeptical an Earth systems scientist who studies the carbon cycle at Stanford University said she understood the argument for calling ethanol with CCS carbon removal but she also couldn’t ignore the fact that capturing the carbon requires energy to grow the corn what are the other emissions in the project and are those being accounted for in the calculation of the CO2 removed?” a nonprofit that advocates for carbon removal policy we want to see the actual net negativity,” Sifang Chen the group’s managing science and innovation advisor In the U.S. Department of Energy’s Road to Removals report a 221-page document that highlights all of the opportunities for carbon removal in the United States the agency specifically chose not to analyze ethanol with CCS “due largely to its inability to achieve a negative [carbon intensity] without substantial retrofitting of existing corn-ethanol facilities.” It’s possible to say that both views are correct Each follows a clear logic — one more rooted in creating practical rules for a market in order to drive innovation the other in the uncompromising math of atmospheric science I wondered if I was making something out of nothing But the debate has significance beyond ethanol Sanchez pointed out to me that you could ask the same question about any so-called carbon removal process that’s tied to an existing industry which involves crushing up special kinds of rocks that are especially good at absorbing carbon from the air A lot of the companies trying to do this get their rocks from mining waste but they don’t include all the emissions from mining in their carbon removal calculation Summit Carbon Solutions noted that CarbonPlan supports claims of carbon removal by Charm Industrial a company that takes the biomass left behind in corn fields the company is not counting emissions from corn production or the downstream uses of corn Chay admitted that she didn’t have a great answer for why she drew the boundaries differently for one versus the other and this back-and-forth illustrates just how much ambiguity there is and why it’s important to work through these issues,” she told me in an email But she suggested that one point of comparison is to look at how dependent the carbon removal activity is on “the ongoing operation of a net emitting industry and how one thinks about the role of that emitting industry in a net-zero world.” There is no apparent version of the future where we no longer have mining as an industry But there is a path to eliminating the use of ethanol by electrifying transportation It’s worth mentioning that this niche debate about carbon removal is taking place within a much larger and longer controversy about whether ethanol belongs in a low-carbon future at all I should note that experts from both sides of this debate told me that carbon credit sales should not justify keeping an ethanol plant open or building a new one if the economics of the fuel don’t work on their own she presented real stakes for this rhetorical debate If we call net-emitting processes carbon removal we could develop an inflated sense of how much progress we’ve made toward our overall capacity to remove carbon from the atmosphere which in turn could warp perceptions of how quickly we need to reduce emissions the former director of science and innovation at Carbon180 who is starting a company focused on measurement and verification “When the definition of what it means to remove a ton of CO2 from the air is subjective what happens is you get a bunch of projects that might have quite different climate impacts,” he told me “And you may or may not realize it until after the fact.” There’s also a risk of diverting funding that could go toward scaling up more challenging but truly net-negative solutions such as direct air capture This risk is compounded by the growing pressure on carbon market players like Puro and Carbon Direct to identify new influential groups like the Science Based Targets initiative and corporate sustainability thought leaders like Stripe and Microsoft have decided that old-school carbon credits — the cheaper so-called “offsets” that represent emissions reductions — are not good enough Now companies are expected to buy carbon removal credits to fulfill their climate promises to customers the industry has backed itself into a corner the only thing that is allowed to be used is carbon removal,” he said “So if that's the only thing with economics behind it Everything is now all of a sudden carbon removal Who would have predicted that this could have happened?” on integrity — the industry’s favorite word these days From the companies trying to remove carbon to the carbon credit registries validating those efforts and buyers that want to see the market scale everyone is talking about developing transparent and trustworthy processes for measuring how much carbon is removed from the atmosphere by a given intervention But how good is good measurement if experts don’t agree on what should be measured “There hasn't been a way to standardize the climate impacts that are being promised,” said Minor “And so I think unless we solve that problem I just don't see how we're going to build the trust we need to create the economics that we need and justify an industry that can’t really exist outside of the millions or billions of tons scale.” "We hope that Leonardo's presence in Hanoi can foster a long and fruitful collaboration with this exceptional country which represents a strategic market for global companies" Poland and the United States and operates in 150 countries including through subsidiaries A key player in major international strategic programs it is a technological and industrial partner of governments Leonardo recorded consolidated revenues of €15,3 billion and new orders of €17,9 billion The technology of Leonardo and its subsidiaries and affiliates is already present in Vietnam in various fields such as helicopters and space and saw the company participate in the latest edition of the Vietnam International Defence Expo The opening of the new office in Vietnam represents a further step in strengthening Leonardo's presence in Asia destined to intensify collaboration with local partners foster the development of new technological opportunities and offer concrete support for the development of strategic infrastructures for the country The dates displayed for an article provide information on when various publication milestones were reached at the journal that has published the article activities on preceding journals at which the article was previously under consideration are not shown (for instance submission the peel and seed extracts showed very low α-glucosidase inhibition activities The α-amylase and α-glucosidase inhibition activities of the pulp and edible parts were negligible (Di Sotto et al. 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Take part in our reader survey By 2015-10-29T00:00:00+00:00 an Oxford physics professor previously based at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory has written several books presenting complex scientific concepts to the masses Half-life is a painstakingly researched account of the life of the nuclear scientist Bruno Pontecorvo He had been due to transfer to the University of Liverpool as their new chair of physics This was soon after the confessed Harwell spy Klaus Fuchs had been arrested and four years after the Cambridge experimentalist Nunn May was convicted Pontecorvo’s potential had been recognised early on in his life by the Italian physicist Enrico Fermi in Rome in the 1930s and a scholarship enabled him to work on nuclear science with the Joliot–Curies in Paris he developed well logging technologies for an oil company at the Chalk River pile in 1946 but only left Chalk River in late 1949.  Pontecorvo was a communist who could keep a secret but Close is sceptical about evidence from the former agent Oleg Gordievsky and the science correspondent Chapman Pincher about Pontecorvo passing information to the Russians Pontecorvo’s presence in Russia was revealed five years later having only become a British citizen in 1948 Pontecorvo’s scientific mind and his knowledge of tritium and heavy-water reactors would be valuable in the development of the hydrogen bomb for the Russians he was involved in the study of neutrinos and muon decay in cosmology with excessive archival detail for some readers is muddled by the rigorous control of communications out of the USSR and also by missing or redacted records covering failings by the UK security services and the US Federal Bureau of Investigation.  may have been a potential Nobel prize winner Close’s book seeks to answer this question but perhaps his last sentence says it all: ‘You never can tell.’ Purchase Half-life from Amazon.co.uk Site powered by Webvision Cloud Edward Said said that The Battle of Algiers and Queimada (1969) were the two greatest political films ever made He also said that Pontecorvo's political work for the cinema made it possible for directors such as Costa-Gavras to emerge as well as influencing other film-makers in the Third World Pontecorvo became convinced that the anti-colonialist wars of the time were an important theme for a film he and fellow director Franco Solinas went to Algeria - as its war of independence against France was concluding - armed with false papers and the idea of building a story around a former paratrooper during that war not least since the French extreme right-wing group was planting bombs against those who supported the Algerian cause former Algerian guerrilla Salah Baazi visited Italy in search of a director to make a film on the independence struggle Baazi did not want a film that treated the subject from a European point of view Pontecorvo eventually proposed an alternative scenario offering to work for nothing in case the film did not please the Algerians the then ruling National Liberation Front (FLN) would assist Pontecorvo and Solinas to find and interview activists The writing of the screenplay ("a fiction written under the dictatorship of fact") was long and arduous it was discovered that the script had been left on the roof of a car Two weeks later sections of it appeared in a French rightwing newspaper The Algerian general strike of 1957 was the focus of the black and white film with the exception of Jean Martin (Colonel Mathieu) Pontecorvo co-wrote the score with Ennio Morricone and he continued to write scores for his films maintaining they were structured with music in mind (he regarded The Battle of Algiers as having a "symphonic structure") When The Battle of Algiers was screened at the Venice Film Festival in 1966 Pontecorvo maintained it was the most emotional moment of his life but the French delegation left in protest and the film was not distributed in France until 1971 and it was only through pressure from the director Pontecorvo was born to a wealthy Jewish family in Pisa the fifth of eight children - none of whom had any sense of being Jewish though the family was strongly anti-fascist who had been involved in the British atom programme decamped to the Soviet Union The case forced Gillo Pontecorvo to use a pseudonym for his first film Prewar, Pontecorvo had studied chemistry at the University of Pisa - in between competing in tennis tournaments. Then, with the advent of Mussolini's race laws, his siblings left Italy but Gillo "continued to pretend to be a playboy - granted with the defect of being Jewish" the brothers' social world embraced the Italian anti-fascist movement and Antonio Gramsci where they lived "outside history" Pontecorvo giving tennis lessons to the local bourgeoisie It was here that Pontecorvo and Henriette married by then a clandestine member of the Italian Communist party he went to Milan on courier and news-gathering missions he worked on the party's underground newspaper while Milan suffered constant Allied bombardment Pontecorvo was also involved in organising a youth front where he began to organise young factory workers a journal of combined Communist and Socialist youth then returned to Paris to be the Italian representative of the Youth World Federation He became a friend of Jean-Paul Sartre and Picasso He became Italian representative of the Communist-backed World Federation of Democratic Youth Living between Italy and France and working as a journalist directed by Roberto Rossellini (who was to become a good friend) which had previously revolved around the films of Eisenstein and Pudovkin he began shooting anything that interested him with a 16mm camera he worked as assistant director to Yves Allegret on I Miracoli Non Si Ripetono (Miracles Only Happen Once) and then he assisted director Giancarlo Menotti on The Medium and Mario Monicelli on Le Infedeli (1953) and Totò e Carolina (1955) which Pontecorvo wanted to shoot in black and white and casting Yves Montand and Alida Valli (obituary even though Pontecorvo thought Montand too sophisticated for the part Pontecorvo was asked to make a film on the Nazi concentration camps in which he concentrated on the systematic destruction of human dignity particularly that of the "kapos" who had the role of keeping their fellow prisoners in order Pontecorvo began his experiments with the negative to produce a grainy newsreel effect that he would use on The Battle of Algiers Kapò failed to capture the degradation of the camps and had no sense of real drama but it received rapturous applause at the Venice Film Festival It was nominated for best foreign film at the Academy Awards his past membership of the Communist party causing problems for US immigration a film based on the character of the adventurer who supports a slave rebellion in the Spanish Caribbean on behalf of British interests to receive a call from Columbia saying that they were interested in hiring him to direct a film with Brando about an event in South Dakota when hundreds of Native Americans occupied Wounded Knee to force the application of the century-old land rights treaty Columbia pulled out after Brando insisted that the Native Americans be given full political control of the film It was 10 years before Pontecorvo made his next film Inspired by the ETA car bomb murder of Carrerro Blanco the prime minister of Spain under Franco in 1973 the film's end was changed because of the impact added to his collection of glass paintings He was always pondering questions of cinema including the defence of European film against US domination he became director of the Venice Film Festival president of Ente cinema - later Cinecitta Holdings - from 1996-99 and in 1996-97 Danza della fata Confetto and Nostalgia di protezione he went to Genoa to film the G8 demonstrations which fed into the film Another World Is Possible The Battle of Algiers began to be screened again in festivals and Queimada was screened at the Locarno Film Festival in 2004 Pontecorvo is survived by Picci and three sons born November 19 1919; died October 12 2006 The Battle of Algiers was the sold-out opening-night attraction at the New York Film Festival in September of 1967 But Gillo Pontecorvo’s reconstruction of the pivotal showdown of Algeria’s 1954-1962 rebellion against French colonial rule only got a U.S theatrical release in the tumultuous spring of 1968 It is a testament to the time’s confusions and Pontecorvo’s genius alike that liberals could embrace The Battle of Algiers for being rhapsodically affirmative—somebody else’s revolution is always a pleasure to cheer for—while radicals saw it as prescriptive If Kubrick’s 2001 was the movie that the counterculture’s trippier heads doted on Pontecorvo’s was the one New Left politicos swore by who used the movie’s recreation of the tactics adopted by the Algerian National Liberation Front (NLF) as both a recruiting tool and a training film the movie’s artistic achievement is impossible to judge separately from your susceptibility to its agit-prop fervor The Battle of Algiers is “probably the only film that has ever made middle-class audiences believe in the necessity of bombing innocent people—perhaps because Pontecorvo made it a tragic necessity.” Americans and most Europeans couldn’t imagine themselves as a terror campaign’s targets They still thought they were its ultimate judges liberal audiences then were used to identifying with insurrectionists This preconception held fast through all sorts of postwar fables of national liberation and making similar use of pseudo-documentary locations to lionize the same Free French who resurfaced in Pontecorvo’s docudrama as Algeria’s Darth Vaders His movie was in a different league cinematically but not that big a leap ideologically—or so it seemed plough their truck into a crowded sidewalk surely provokes more emotions today than the poetry of desperation Pontecorvo had in mind who were screening his masterpiece for training purposes Counterinsurgency trainers drew heavily on The Battle of Algiers to show the U.S military just what it was up against in Afghanistan and Iraq that’s partly because its politics feel peculiarly untainted that’s partly because its politics feel peculiarly untainted—at least to the extent that revulsion at the FLN’s tactics would have seemed equally legitimate in 1968 The radical attitudinizing in Jean-Luc Godard’s films of the same period often comes off as inhumanly glib—that is But nobody could accuse Pontecorvo or screenwriter Franco Solinas of glibness because “by any means necessary” is no mere slogan here If you’re thrilled by the Algerians’ revolutionary cause and then balk at the FLN’s methods and makeup to pass for Europeans while they plant bombs in a café Pontecorvo crams the screen with close-ups of the people the explosions will kill and maim: pleasant middle-aged folk Other than being French nationals in Algeria and it would have been a cop-out to show them behaving in pettily objectionable ways turning them reassuringly culpable in viewers’ eyes Yet we also don’t want the Algerian women to be caught or thwarted We’re even aware of how adopting Western fashions violates their modesty The overall effect is so at odds with how most movies manipulate sympathies that you hardly know whether to praise Pontecorvo or vow you’ll never forgive him The latter option amounts to praise as well Another way he doesn’t cheat the viewer of the messiness of history is that The Battle of Algiers is the story of a defeat the French bid to crush the insurrection succeeded destroying the FLN’s Algiers network and killing or jailing its leaders Only the coda shows us the mass demonstrations three years later that helped turn the tide of French public opinion with the further information that Algeria only won independence two years later—a bracing postscript that reduces everything we’ve watched to a bleak episode in a much larger struggle The movie even gets under way by telling us something this world’s Glenn Greenwalds don’t want to hear: torture works It’s how the French paras learn the whereabouts of Ali la Pointe (Brahim Hadjadj) the Algiers FLN’s last leader still at liberty The rest of his story—and that of the overall Algiers insurrection—unfolds in flashback before he lets himself get blown up to avoid capture Ali’s metamorphosis from illiterate street hoodlum to dedicated revolutionary is Frantz Fanonism in a nutshell and only Hadjadj’s harrowing immediacy as a screen presence offsets how schematic the conception is The Battle of Algiers is the story of a defeat Pontecorvo wasn’t especially concerned with concealing the more schematic elements of his story He just knew the value of harrowing immediacy like the other Algerian nonprofessionals in the cast Hadjadj is too obviously cast for his photogenic appeal (The charming street urchin named in the credits as only “le petit Omar” is really a bit much.) By contrast apart from the bombing victims—who are sympathetically photographed to maximize their vulnerability—the French in Algiers are a seedy crew The formidable exception is Colonel Mathieu (Jean Martin) who’s basically a screenwriting conceit disguised as a neorealist portrait of a military man Acerbically explaining the FLN’s methods and goals for our benefit—he’s in charge of combating both so he should know—he’s a figure out of Brecht by way of Jean Genet if not leftist cinema’s nearest equivalent to All About Eve’s Addison DeWitt too; I can remember posters for 1970s campus screenings of Battle of Algiers that announced Roberto Rossellini’s Open City—obviously Pontecorvo’s key influence—isn’t free of similar (but clumsier) dramaturgy Rossellini might have most envied the resources his disciple commanded Since the victorious FLN was backing the movie Pontecorvo had the run of Algiers and thousands of extras who’d lived through the real thing to help him restage events Both are fundamental to the electrifying results piano-jangled ratonnades (“rat hunts”) through the Casbah’s twisty streets and claustrophobic multi-family dwellings to the defiant crowds at the end prints of the film included a disclaimer that no newsreel footage was included No doubt the notice was aimed at innocent viewers who wouldn’t see how Pontecorvo and cinematographer Marcello Gatti exulted in the contrast between the European quarter’s open sunny horizontal vistas and the Arab precincts’ shabby Mistake The Battle of Algiers for a documentary and you’re underrating the movie’s aesthetic bravura You’re also paying its director the ultimate compliment Separating political art from its era’s politics is no problem for students—if there still are any—of but The Battle of Algiers is more like the left-wing Birth of A Nation Pontecorvo’s movie never feels irrelevant or remote In a media environment that tolerates tail-chasing The Baffler is a rare publication willing to shake the pundit class free of their own worst impulses But running a charitable organization of this magnitude requires serious dough and subscriptions only cover a fraction of our costs we rely on the good will of generous readers like you So if you like the article you just read—or hate it so you can ridicule us online for years to come—please consider making a one-time donation to The Baffler Tom Carson is a freelance critic and the author of Gilligan’s Wake and Daisy Buchanan’s Daughter Bucket Hat / $30 A practical guide to using the climate law to get cheaper solar panels Today marks the one year anniversary of the Inflation Reduction Act, the biggest investment in tackling climate change the United States has ever made. The law consists of dozens of subsidies to help individuals, households, and businesses adopt clean energy technologies. Many of these solutions will also help people save money on their energy bills, reduce pollution, and improve their resilience to disasters suggesting not much has changed since then Get one great climate story in your inbox every day: There’s funding for almost every solution you can think of to make your home more energy efficient and reduce your fossil fuel use If you need new wiring or an electrical panel upgrade before you can get heat pumps or solar panels The IRA created two types of incentives for home energy efficiency improvements: Unlimited tax credits that will lower the amount you owe when you file your taxes and $8.8 billion in rebates that function as up-front discounts or post-installation refunds on equipment and services which must apply for funding and create programs before the money can go out The Biden administration began accepting applications at the end of July and expects states to begin rolling out their programs later this year or early next The home tax credits are available to everyone that owes taxes will have income restrictions (more on this later) “The Inflation Reduction Act is not a limited time offer,” according to Ari Matusiak the CEO of the nonprofit advocacy group Rewiring America The rebate programs will only be available until the money runs out there’s no limit on how many people can claim the tax credits and they’ll be available for at least the next decade That means you don’t need to rush and replace your hot water heater if you have one that works fine You might want to hold off on buying new appliances or getting insulation — basically any improvements inside your house There are tax credits available for a lot of this stuff right now but you’ll likely be able to stack them with rebates in the future if you’re thinking of installing solar panels on your roof or getting a backup battery system The rebates will not cover those technologies A few other caveats: There’s a good chance your state or utility already offers rebates or other incentives for many of these solutions Check with your state’s energy office or your utility to find out what’s available it can take months to get quotes and line up contractors to get this kind of work done If you want to be ready when the rebates hit it’s probably a good idea to do some of the legwork now consider getting a professional home energy audit but you’ll be able to get 30% off or up to $150 back under the IRA’s home improvement tax credit Doing an audit will help you figure out which solutions will give you the biggest bang for your buck and how to prioritize them once more funding becomes available The auditor might even be able to explain all of the existing local rebate programs you’re eligible for The Internal Revenue Service will allow you to work with any home energy auditor until the end of this year, but beginning in 2024, you must hire an auditor with specific qualifications in order to claim the credit Let’s start with what’s inside your home. In addition to an energy audit, the Energy Efficiency Home Improvement Credit offers consumers 30% off the cost (after any other subsidies and excluding labor) of Energy Star-rated windows and doors There’s a maximum amount you can claim for each type of equipment each year: $600 for windows$500 for doors$1,200 for air sealing and insulation The Energy Efficiency Home Improvement Credit also covers heat pumps including the cost of installation for those systems $2,000 for heat pumps$600 for a new electrical panel homeowners can only claim up to $3,200 per year under this program until 2032 one downside to the Energy Efficiency Home Improvement Credit is that it does not carry over If you spend enough on efficiency to qualify for the full $3,200 in a given year but you only owe the federal government $2,000 for the year your bill will go to zero and you will miss out on the remaining $1,200 credit So it could be worth your while to spread the work out The other big consumer-oriented tax credit, the Residential Clean Energy Credit, offers homeowners 30% off the cost of solar panels and solar water heaters which store energy from the grid or from your solar panels that you can use when there’s a blackout or sell back to your utility when the grid needs more power so if you spend $35,000 on solar panels and battery storage you’ll be eligible for the full 30% refund so if your tax liability that year is only $5,000 you’ll be able to claim more of it the following year and continue doing so until you’ve received the full value Geothermal heating systems are also covered under this credit. (Geothermal heat pumps work similarly to regular heat pumps but they use the ground as a source and sink for heat known as the Home Energy Performance-Based Whole House Rebates will provide discounts to homeowners and landlords based on the amount of energy a home upgrade is predicted to save Congress did not specify which energy-saving measures qualify — that’s something state energy offices will decide when they design their programs But it did cap the total amount each household could receive if your household earns under 80% of the area median income and you make improvements that cut your energy use by 35% There’s also the High-Efficiency Electric Home Rebate Program which will provide discounts on specific electric appliances like heat pumps as well as a new electrical panel and wiring Individual households can get up to $14,000 in discounts under this program although there are caps on how much is available for each piece of equipment This money will only be available to low- and moderate-income households or those earning under 150% of the area median income Renters with a household income below 150% of the area median income qualify for rebates on appliances that they should be able to install without permission from their landlords and that they can take with them if they move portable appliances like tabletop induction burners and window-unit heat pumps are all eligible for rebates It’s also worth noting that there is a lot of funding available for multifamily building owners If you have a good relationship with your landlord you might want to talk to them about the opportunity to make lasting investments in their property Under the performance-based rebates program apartment building owners can get up to $400,000 for energy efficiency projects But the calculus gets tricky when it comes to heat pumps Experts generally agree that no matter where you live switching from an oil or propane-burning heating system or electric resistance heaters to heat pumps will lower your energy bills Not so if you’re switching over from natural gas Electric heat pumps are three to four times more efficient than natural gas heating systems but electricity is so much more expensive than gas in some parts of the country that switching from gas to a heat pump can increase your overall bills a bit Especially if you also electrify your water heater Rewiring America estimates that switching from gas to a heat pump will lower bills for about 60% of households Many utilities offer tools that will help you calculate your bills if you make the switch The good news is that all the measures I’ve discussed in this article are expected to cut carbon emissions and pollution even if most of your region’s electricity still comes from fossil fuels Tax Credit #1 offers 30% off the cost of energy audits with a $3200-per-year allowance and individual item limits Tax Credit #2 offers 30% off the cost of solar panels Rebate Program #1 will offer discounts on whole-home efficiency upgrades depending on how much they reduce your energy use with an $8,000 cap for lower-income families and a $4,000 cap for everyone else Rebate Program #2 is only for low- and moderate- income households and will offer discounts on specific electric appliances Read more about the Inflation Reduction Act: A Car Buyer's Guide to the EV Tax Credit Unfortunately, your version of Internet Explorer is outdated and it doesn't support some of the technologies used on this site. 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Please upgrade your browser and get all benefits of browsing the new JINR site You can also use the previous version of the JINR site and in other projects significant for world science Bruno Pontecorvo also gave the world a method of oil and gas exploration Pontecorvo found himself in the Soviet Union and in Dubna due to his communist political views he already had a big name in scientific circles: he was a student of Enrico Fermi at the University of Rome.Working in his group Pontecorvo co-authored the discovery of the neutron deceleration effect Then he worked at the Radium Institute in the Laboratory of Irène and Frédéric Joliot-Curie in France and studied nuclear isomerism for which he received the Carnegie-Curie Prize Pontecorvo developed a geophysical method for studying oil wells using a neutron generator Bruno Pontecorvo became the creator of the Soviet school of experiment in the fields of elementary particle physics three Nobel Prizes have been awarded for works performed using the ideas of Bruno Maksimovich Being a tennis champion of Italy in his adolescence he continued to practise this sport in Dubna and was also an avid cyclist He was fond of water skiing and spearfishing Bruno Pontecorvo had the great gift of charm according to the memories of those who knew him “every debate or seminar with his participation turned into a lively conversation.” A Pontecorvo’s colleague the well-known theoretical physicist Semyon Gershtein intolerance of any falsehood and especially of profanation of science his willingness to give every support to new and interesting experimental research” The JINR International Neutrino Physics School, the Prize for scientists from different countries engaged in the fields of neutrino physics, and the scholarship for young researchers of the Institute are named after Bruno Pontecorvo One of the streets of Dubna is named in his honour There is a memorial office of the scientist in the DLNP JINR main building and personal belongings are carefully preserved Website dedicated to Bruno Pontecorvo a professor of economics who taught at Columbia University for four decades and served as an advisor to the U.S including the U.N.’s Food and Agriculture Organization was an engineer who worked for Westinghouse during the First World War and his mother expressed her love of fine art by opening an antique shop in Montclair Margaret Pontecorvo passed away at the age of 99 on Friday and went on to attend Oregon State College in Corvallis At home during a summer break from college Margaret and her friends attended USO events at Camp Abbot the military training center where newly enlisted recruits were in basic training Giulio was the replacement for her intended date who had been forced to cancel at the last minute due to disciplinary action The event led to the marriage of Giulio and Margaret in 1947 Margaret returned to school and earned her master’s degree in library science which led to a position as the librarian for Spring Valley Elementary School during a time when many roles were closed to women where she read to the children and introduced them to new books and ideas She continued to commute to New City after moving to New York City in the mid-’80s and caring friend who had the courage to think for herself and stand by her convictions Although she put the needs of her family and husband first her independent spirit supported a rich social life full of enduring friendships and meaningful pursuits Pontecorvo’s attendance at Dartmouth College was interrupted by his volunteer service in World War II where he served as a combat engineer in the Trailblazer’s 70th Division seeing action against the desperate German defense of Saarbrucken and the invasion of Germany he completed his undergraduate and master’s degrees in economics in economics at the University of California Pontecorvo served as an assistant professor at the University of Colorado in Boulder It was at Bowdoin College where his interest started to focus on the economics of fishing and mentor began to emerge as the central theme of his life In 1964 he was invited to the University of Buenos Aires as a guest lecturer to advise on Argentina’s fishing industry followed by an evaluation of anchovy production in Peru and a stint as Fulbright guest lecturer at the University of Bergen in Norway in 1967 That led to appointments to many advisory positions for governmental agencies including the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration State Department for Law of the Sea negotiations His contributions in the public sector complimented his work as a professor at Columbia’s Graduate Business School It is here where he excelled as a teacher and mentor Quoting his students: “Your quiet but unstinting support and encouragement were decisive in helping me see my way through the obstacle course of the doctoral program … In a world of conflicting and sometimes contradicting and unrealistic expectations and encouraging demands … Thank you for having been who you were and having done what you did You set a distinct and worthy example which deserves replication presidents and whose work led to desegregating the U.S “You have been a major contributor to the efforts of trying to keep the faculty and [Columbia Business School] in an intellectual orbit that respected quality and made sense.” Although none of them made the best-seller list he found time to support his local community library — he was responsible for a new library building in New City and a fourfold increase in the library budget Giulio and Margaret first brought their family to Chilmark on the Vineyard for a month in the mid-1960s followed soon after by building a house in Aquinnah Summers on the Vineyard have become a treasured family experience that is being passed down to younger generations Giulio and Margaret are survived by their four sons Margaret and Giulio will be buried together on Saturday Charitable donations in Margaret and Giulio’s name can be sent in the form of a check to Wampanoag Tribe of Gay Head (Aquinnah) The MV Times comment policy requires first and last name for all comments NATURE :  You’ve produced a number of films for NATURE now including the mini-series Bears of the Last Frontier, Snow Monkeys, The Last Orangutan Eden, and now Yosemite How did that relationship with NATURE develop and how did you get into wildlife filmmaking in the first place I got into wildlife filmmaking in kind of an odd way I was actually doing commercial work and I’ve always loved the outdoors but in the Pacific Northwest where I’m from it’s mostly salmon and ancient forest and we don’t have a lot of sexy megafauna that would get me out there filming wildlife I actually met some folks from the Hornocker Wildlife Institute and they said we’ve got this Siberian tiger project and we’d like to know if you’d be interested in working with us to produce a film.” Initially it was going to be a film for the project itself and it ended up turning out to be an hour film that aired on Discovery Channel Bears of the Last Frontier was really the first series that we did with NATURE We were at the Montana Wildlife Film Festival and Chris Morgan was up on stage talking and we started a conversation And then at that point we started talking about what can we do with bears so that’s how Bears of the Last Frontier came to be NATURE :  Yosemite is beautifully filmed and really captures the magnificence of the park There were a number of shots that really left me wondering where you’re filming the geologists who are dangling by ropes off the face of El Capitan or the botanist climbing up the giant sequoia trees Part of the film had this kind of adventure sports aspect of it and we wanted to show Yosemite is different than Yellowstone Yellowstone is about North America’s megafauna but Yosemite is really about how people interact with the natural world and it’s a rock climbing mecca You couldn’t make a film about Yosemite without going on El Cap But in this case we had to have an expert rock climber and cinematographer so we got Jonathan Byers on board and he did a lot of the most technical aspects of the climbing But then I of course wanted to micromanage the whole thing so I also went up an easier route through the East ledges and then did a pitch down 3,000 feet filming and swinging out  to show them sitting in their portaledge We climbed giant sequoias to film Anthony Ambrose and his team taking measurements of the health of the giant sequoias and I have to say that climbing the giant sequoias more than anything else that was the most awe-inspiring experience because you’re climbing a living organism the limbs are like eight feet in diameter and you’re walking out on them and you can feel the whole thing swaying and you can feel that it’s alive You are climbing through this living organism and at the same time you’re climbing through time because at the base of tree you’re talking about something maybe 3,000 years old and the top of the tree you’re talking about vegetation that might have grown yesterday It’s like this time-travel experience that you get while you’re climbing the sequoia NATURE :  And that’s the only place in the world that has those types of trees They are endangered and there’s small groves scattered through the Sierras and these groves are holding the world’s largest living tree I think California is full of superlatives It’s got the world’s largest tree one of the most iconic monoliths in the world NATURE:  It must have been amazing for the explorers that initially came across the giant sequoias I can’t imagine what it must have been like to enter Yosemite Valley for the first time to come in there and see this incredible geology That must have taken their breath away and then as they got closer and closer realizing just how massive it was  Yosemite’s kind of a place that makes you feel really small and I think whether it’s at the base of a giant sequoia or the base of El Cap you have that feeling constantly when you’re there You feel like kind of an ant in this much larger world NATURE :  I’m sure a lot of people who have watched the film will feel like they need to visit now I think that’s really the motivation behind the film I really want people to get excited about going out there and participating in nature I think the more time you spend in the natural world the more empathy you develop and the more you care about it Until you make that connection it’s just an abstract photograph or idea and I think a lot of natural history films are inspiring you to go out there and make contact NATURE : I understand filming the bighorn sheep who live on these very sheer crumbly rock cliffs was especially challenging Can you talk a little bit about that experience Sierra bighorn sheep only live in the California Sierra Nevada and right now there’s only 600 animals in the entire range so you’re talking about 600 animals across 400 square miles It’s a massive area and one of the biggest challenges was just finding them We did have help from California Fish and Wildlife and they have some sheep with radio collars but even so they’re incredibly shy so they’re very hard to get close to and difficult to find It’s not like being in a place like Yellowstone where you can just kind of walk up and film That was a real challenge and you could go days and days without finding them and even if you did trying to get close enough to film them was really challenging There was probably one time we were out there We had planned this trip to only be so many days out there but we extended it because we weren’t having any luck but we  didn’t bring enough food to last us the entire duration so we ended up trying to make stew out of bits of beef jerky We had these dehydrated peas and beef jerky That was our entire food supply and so we tried to come up with a stew I’m here to testify that it’s possible all it took was one more day and then “bam” they show up and there’s this incredible event unfolding in front of us and we were able to capture it NATURE :  Your film seems to be about two things It’s kind of a visual love letter to Yosemite and also a warning shot about the threats to Yosemite presented by climate change How did you weave those two themes together and were there any challenges in doing that We had a number of things going on in the film One is we had this sort of sports adventure aspect to try to capture the feeling of Yosemite At the same time we began in the middle of a drought and so we couldn’t ignore probably the most important aspect of Yosemite which was water We wanted to look at the natural world through the lens of water Yosemite is famous for its countless waterfalls and also the snow pack in the Sierra provides 30 to 40 percent of California’s water and 60 percent of California’s water comes from the Sierra Nevada in total from all of the precipitation and snow combined It’s clearly a really important component of the ecosystem and even though droughts are are a natural part of the cycle it was the temperatures that really pushed this drought over the edge And things happened that had never happened before over 100 million trees died across California They’re really entering uncharted territory at that point and I think it’s easy with all the rain and snow that California’s been getting Let’s go back to business as usual.” But this is all part of this larger climate change picture You really can’t look at climate change on a season-by-season basis You have to really be thinking about it over the long term NATURE :  So this extended drought in California that basically went from 2011 to 2017 perhaps gave us a  glimpse of what might happen if the climate continues warm the film was really using this drought as sort of the snapshot into the future and that’s really the way that a lot of the ecologists that I worked with also were viewing this drought They were both heartbroken because they love forests and devastated by what happened but excited because they got this glimpse of this is what may be coming down the road and we really need to know what’s happening so we can start thinking about management differently One of the things we were really trying to explore in the film was the impact of this drought and how the composition of this forest might be changing over time  100 million trees aren’t coming back from the dead And then we also looked at another aspect: which places could serve as refugia places for species to hold out in a warming world if snow pack is going to continue to decline are there going to be places that are going to be more resilient than others should we be focusing our efforts to make sure we can preserve those locations Giant sequoia forests turns out to be one of those places They seems to have this rather consistent water supply that we don’t quite understand yet and the giant sequoias as well as all the other trees that were in that grove seemed to survive the drought and even thrive That indicates that there may be something going on hydrologically under the soil So I think that the film really serves as not only an introduction to Yosemite and Sequoia National Park but by using water as a lens in which we look at the natural world we’re able to talk about how that ecosystem may be changing over time and as temperatures rise and as the climate begins to shift and as Yosemite changes from this sort of snow-based ecosystem to a rain-based ecosystem how is that going to change the composition of not only the forest but the species that live there There are a lot of questions on the table and as one pika expert told me the reason we don’t have the answer to these questions is that we just haven’t been asking them long enough to find them © 2025 WNET PBS is a 501(c)(3) not-for-profit organization Interviews CARTAGENA, Colombia — “Too much Coke and lime juice,” Gillo Pontecorvo said gingerly pressing his fingertips against his stomach “We were out in the sun all day and we My little boy is mal all day today; I must see him before he goes to sleep.” And now it appeared that Brando’s skin rash was associated not with his temperament but with amoebic dysentery Pontecorvo was met at the door of his apartment by a small blond-headed boy wearing Have you been sick?” He lifted the child into his arms and cooed to him in Italian came in from the bedroom with a small pair of pants The room had the look of a graduate student’s furnished apartment A heavy old wooden table of Spanish design was surrounded There was a painting of Picci in green and chalky and on the table a dozen bottles of sauces shooting an action picture which he says will subtly transform itself into a call for revolution he looks ten years younger; South America has tanned his face a dark brown “I used to be able to wait for years between pictures,” he said “but now I am married with two small children and here I am at work again only three years after ‘The Battle of Algiers.’ Before ‘Battle,’ my writer and I waited six years and turned down 33 scripts – including three we wrote ourselves we didn’t like them any more.” not sounding particularly surprised by Breslin’s statement The film champions everyone who is deprived of his rights But it is an analogy for many situations: Vietnam “What I would prefer for people to discover is something that is in all my films an affection which grows from the fragility of the human condition as Picci appeared with a plate of brown bread and bowls of minestrone “Soup over all.” His wife took the sleepy Marco from his lap “So many critics see ‘The Battle of Algiers’ as propaganda,” he said “but in the scenes of death the same religious music accompanies both the French and Arab bombings but I feel compassion for the French even if historically they were at fault But Fanon is so important; he clarifies the Third World The scene of the Arab woman cutting her hair to pass as European and plant a bomb – we borrowed that from Fanon My subject is the sadness and laceration that the birth of a nation means in our time “A lot has been written about the film’s realistic style The most difficult point in the staging of the film came at the very end when the Arab woman danced in front of the police Until this moment we had not moved one millimeter from reality but then at the end we remained in the same style but moved to a lyric subject nobody dances in front of policemen.” He grinned “Did you not discover that last summer in Chicago But the problem was to keep the appearance of reality even though it is a lyric dance And there perhaps the smoke helped…a little smoke always helps such a scene.” From the bedroom came the sound of a record being played: “Peter and the Wolf.” Pontecorvo finished his soup and his wife served a sausage and vegetable casserole and Pontecorvo got up to lead him back to bed He felt his son’s forehead with the back of his hand “He isn’t warm,” he said He started “Peter and the Wolf” again from the beginning and sat down to finish his dinner If Pontecorvo was worried by anything else but his son’s illness perhaps representing his last chance at major money backing; the film is budgeted at around $3,000,000 “We made ‘The Battle of Algiers’ for $800,000,” he said “and already it has earned $1,800,000 but I needed the money and I sold my share for nothing.” He shrugged In “The Battle of Algiers,” he used unknowns most of whom were appearing in a film for the first time In “Quemada,” Brando co-stars with Evaristo Marques an illiterate peasant who was living with two wives when Pontecorvo found him during a tour of Colombian agricultural villages He says he prefers inexperienced actors that he can keep under his complete directorial control Would his disciplinary style inspire a vintage performance from Brando “I said before and I still believe that Marlon is best for this role When Solinas and I began to construct the script we decided that the only one who could do this role was Brando There are many moments when there is no time for dialogue and then we need the synthesis of Brando’s acting and his face Brando plays a British adventurer sent to a Spanish-held Caribbean island early in the 19th century with orders to break the Spanish domination He decides that the only way to accomplish this is to incite a revolution among the natives staying in the background himself as theorist and mastermind “We are trying to make a meeting of two kinds of film,” Pontecorvo said “We want to join the romantic adventure and the film of ideas music and dialogue that belong to the classic manner of the adventure film The audience forgets it is watching a period film and has the impression this is a theme of today Even the costumes gradually become more modern the Gregorian Chant of the Kyrie and the Hosanna but by a black chorus with a drum accompaniment the music in my films is so important to me that when I go in the morning to shoot I know I can linger on this face or that face I cannot understand how some directors do films and then the music is added later…” Pontecorvo’s decision to use a peasant as Brando’s co-star has led to many of the film’s production delays a look of irony is a lot to ask of a sugar-cane cutter on the second day we will simply inspire a look that to us appears ironic So we found an overhead camera angle that if Evaristo had his head down and then looked it would appear ironic.” Pontecorvo demonstrated and then he kicked Evaristo from off-camera Or we would shoot over Brando’s shoulder and Brando would say the line of dialogue and then make the face that Evaristo was supposed Evaristo can handle scenes of great difficulty His warriors had to applaud him the other day and then he was to give a sad little smile to these people who trust him For a while we thought we would have to abandon our plan and bring in a professional actor miming everything for him-what a drama coach!” that “Quemada” fell well behind in its 17-week shooting schedule in Cartagena even before Brando’s departure for Los Angeles And although the film already in the can is satisfying to Pontecorvo “My producer, Alberto Grimaldi, is also producing ‘Fellini Satyricon,'” Pontecorvo said “And Fellini has the custom of finishing half his film and then telling the producer he needs twice as much money So we are joking here in Cartagena that we hope we finish ‘Quemada’ before Fellini spends all the money.” Pontecorvo was just putting the instant coffee into hot water when the doorbell rang His wife came back to the table with a cablegram “Perhaps this tells us no more money,” Pontecorvo said “But probably it is from Marlon.” It was, instead, from Mort Engelbert of United Artists: “Congratulations on your Academy Award nomination for best director for ‘The Battle of Algiers.’ We are all pulling for you.” “But how can this be?” he said ‘The Battle of Algiers’ was already nominated for best foreign film “perhaps it is just what we need.” He stirred his Nescafe into the hot water and added some orange marmalade for sweetness counting aloud as she lined up a row of pill bottles in front of his place “My medicine,” Pontecorvo explained He shook up a can of Redi-Whip and put a layer of whipped cream on top of his coffee Then he immediately spilled the whole cup into his lap “after all I am a little excited.” (This interview originally appeared in The New York Times on April 13 Roger Ebert was the film critic of the Chicago Sun-Times from 1967 until his death in 2013 he won the Pulitzer Prize for distinguished criticism Metrics details Bruno Pontecorvo's defection to the Soviet Union in 1950 is one of the more singular events in the history of Cold War science A talented physicist who had been involved in wartime nuclear research his abrupt decision to flee behind the Iron Curtain with his family is shrouded in mystery Was Pontecorvo a Soviet spy or an idealist looking to escape anti-communist hysteria in the West Prices may be subject to local taxes which are calculated during checkout Reprints and permissions Download citation Anyone you share the following link with will be able to read this content: a shareable link is not currently available for this article Sign up for the Nature Briefing newsletter — what matters in science On 30 July 2018, Gil Brunovich Pontecorvo, Advisor to the Directorate of the Dzhelepov Laboratory of Nuclear Problems Gil Brunovich Pontecorvo has been working in the Dzhelepov Laboratory of Nuclear Problems since 1962 he has participated in a number of scientific and methodological studies As a result of many years of conducting scientific and methodological research Pontecorvo defended his dissertation to obtain the degree of Doctor of Physics and Maths While carrying out his scientific activities Gil Pontecorvo published more than 140 scientific papers repeatedly reported on the results obtained at international scientific conferences with his participation charm and sincere friendliness are all about reputation that Gil Pontecorvo earned at the Institute and beyond A.G Matveev standing next to the memorial room of B.M own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment University of Liverpool provides funding as a founding partner of The Conversation UK View all partners The Battle of Algiers was filmed in 1965 as a co-production between an Italian creative team and the new Algerian FLN (Front de Libération Nationale) government whose representative Yacef produced the film and stars as the character of Jaffar One of the most extraordinary films ever made, The Battle of Algiers is an emotionally devastating account of the anticolonial struggle of the Algerian people and a brutally candid exposé of the French colonial mindset. Many French people were unhappy with the representation of their army and country in the film. It was not officially censored in France but the general public and all cinemas boycotted it In later years, the film was screened to groups classed as revolutionaries and terrorists, apparently becoming a “documentary guidebook” in the Palestinian struggle, and for organisations such as the Irish Republican Army and the Black Panthers who examined its detailed representation of guerrilla tactics It was also shown in the Pentagon in 2003, in the middle of the Iraq War. US Counterterrorism experts Richard Clarke and Mike Sheehan suggest that the film showed how a country can win militarily but still lose the battle for “hearts and minds” What relevance does The Battle of Algiers hold today The message of the film is ultimately one of hope: the oppressed multitude will eventually triumph because their cause is just. The images of revolutionary crowds in the film recall the jerky, grainy footage that has emerged from a wave of recent protests in the last decade, from the Black Lives Matter movement to Extinction Rebellion Pontecorvo thrillingly captures the power and possibility of large gatherings of citizens putting their bodies at risk to create social and political change Additionally, the film refuses to condemn any of the agents in this conflict. As Pontecorvo has stated both do horrendous things when they are in battle The collective aspect of the film’s creation, and the socialist ideals that inspired it, link it to what’s called Third Cinema that was designed to overthrow the systems of colonialism and capitalism The Battle of Algiers is also an example of Italian neorealism a major film movement coming out of mid-twentieth century Italy The neorealists made films that opposed Mussolini’s fascist regime and they focused on the hardships of the working class in Italy Neorealism was a moral and aesthetic system: it brought art and politics together to expose the ills of society and bring about social change The Battle of Algiers was shot entirely on location in Algiers and Colonel Mathieu was the only professional on set Pontocorvo selected the other actors from the local population based on their faces and expressions Other elements of the neorealist style was the use of techniques that create a documentary aesthetic such as the hand-held camera Pontecorvo also uses extracts from real-life FLN and police communiqués but also added to the sense of verisimilitude in the film Although he believed the Algerians cause to be just, Pontecorvo wanted to create a nuanced and fair account of the war. Therefore, he sets up a series of contrasts to reflect this opposition between French and Algerian. This is present in the original musical score by Ennio Morricone: while groups of French soldiers rampage through the Casbah to the sound of jaunty military drums and horns a haunting flute theme accompanies sequences which feature Algerian civilians Contrast is also evident in the use of light and shadow: there are strong chiaroscuro effects perhaps reflecting the themes of right and wrong in the film Pontecorvo also uses shadow to highlight the covert operations of the Algerians: Ali La Pointe’s face is filmed with deep shadows and the face of Colonel Mathieu is always brightly lit Space provides another important contrast in the film. Frantz Fanon, a famous theorist of the Algerian revolution, describes the colonial world as a world “cut in two” because of the stark divide between the coloniser and the colonised the wide boulevards of the European quarter are juxtaposed to the narrow Space is also divided vertically and horizontally – the European quarter is flat This opposition of space highlights the gap between rich and poor The biggest contrast in the film is of course between the French and Algerians The embodiment of French and European values in the film is Colonel Mathieu stylish sunglasses and slick speech – he has more dialogue than other characters in the film A number of critics have argued that Mathieu is far ‘too cool’ given that he is a practitioner and a proponent of torture Yet Colonel Mathieu is not depicted as an ogre: above all We see this in his statements about the use of torture when he uses solid rhetorical devices to justify it …do you think France should stay in Algeria you have to accept the necessary consequences This is persuasive as a logical argument – if you want French Algeria you have to accept the actions that result in this outcome – torture visceral emotion and the power of the group The victory at the end of the film is a victory of the masses embodied in two figures – the martyr Ali La Pointe the illiterate everyman who becomes a hero for the revolution whose gaze outwards to the future closes the film This takes me to the final point about what the Algerians have on their side – the power of historical right We see this through Pontecorvo’s use of chronology – the narrative proceeds as a flashback until we leap forward in time to the euphoria and mania of the end of the war and the triumph of the revolutionaries Pontecorvo here glosses over the fact that the real Battle of Algiers was lost by the Algerians and jumps into a future of eventual victory in the war This is how he views the process of history – the masses Why the grid of the future might hinge on these 10 projects Editor’s note: This story has been updated to correct a typographical error in the amount of private investment Project Cypress has received Matthew Zeitlin The Rocky Mountains are one of the longest mountain ranges on Earth stretching some 2,000 miles from central New Mexico to the northern edge of Canada Wildlife filmmakers Joseph and Nimmida Pontecorvo journeyed deep into the Rockies to capture some of its most unique and extraordinary moments Audience Engagement Specialist Chelsey Saatkamp spoke with Joe and Nim about their experience working on the film Nimmida Pontecorvo is an experienced cinematographer and sound recordist NATURE’s two-part special Born in the Rockies premieres Wednesdays, November 10 and 17, 2021, on PBS (check local listings), pbs.org/nature and the PBS Video app Joe Pontecorvo is an award- winning producer Joe: We were working and traveling from a camper van for most of the shoot But as things got worse campgrounds began shutting off services and some parks began closing down Certain areas of Yellowstone and Glacier were both closed off and that meant we lost access to some of the animals we were following and figure out alternative locations and species At times it was quite eerie because there would be no one on the road One of the most impactful consequences was the Canadian border closing we were unable to spend time in the Canadian Rockies which was really disappointing Nim: This question reminds me of when we had to film Bear 399 She is one of the Teton’s most famous bears and very popular among tourists and photographers So large groups would gather along the side of the road It just made me very nervous to be among a big group At that time there were different opinions about masks and that just made things more difficult The bottom line was we needed to keep filming and just couldn’t afford to get sick and we had a number of species to cover at different locations So traveling to different points to cover certain events was the most challenging especially in early spring when everything happens at the same time So you find yourself checking on sandhill crane eggs one day and then the next day driving 6 hours to go film a mother bear and cubs it’s really rewarding; we got to explore so many beautiful places and meet interesting people Joe: There were a lot of rewarding moments during this shoot I had not spent much time filming sandhill cranes before this and I just became addicted to these beautiful birds They are so fascinating to watch because their behavior is so complex and they choose lifelong partners – just super interesting animals Cranes are also extremely dedicated parents and are just tough as nails I watched a family group chase off two coyotes – just aggressively going after them It really surprised me to see that kind of aggression I think it’s that bold attitude that has made them so successful as a species and it gives you hope that they will persist one of the biggest struggles was covering so many species over such a great distance but by far the toughest was the mountain goats We attempted to film them in the dead of winter and each time it was a major endeavor Mountain goats live in some of the toughest-to-access terrains making them a very challenging species to film in winter you are constantly battling high winds and harsh weather It gives you a lot of respect for an animal that can live at such high elevations all year long The Rockies are a massive series of mountains that range from New Mexico all the way up to the edge of the Yukon You could spend several lifetimes exploring the Rockies and never see it all there are remote peaks that remain unnamed to this day I think what surprised me the most was the sheer diversity of the Rockies – here is a place that has massive sand dunes that look like the Sahara desert (albeit a small one) and at the same time these massive all within just a few hundred miles of each other you also have this diverse cast of characters And all of this smack in the middle of North America and much of it within reach of major cities So you have this dense population surrounding the Rockies with these pockets of wildlife scattered across it and stretches of really dramatic and wild mountains Nim: Of course Yellowstone National Park and Grand Teton National Park would be high on that list as it’s a remarkable place to see wildlife I think Rocky Mountain National Park is another great place to see wildlife such as bighorn sheep and elk especially great to be camping and hear bull elk bugle Glacier National Park is probably one of the most visually impressive places to go hiking You can easily access very high elevation terrain and it’s a stunning landscape Great Sand Dunes is another really spectacular place to go hiking It’s just really unique to have these inland dunes at the base of snow-capped mountains Joe: I’ve been lucky enough to spend a lot of time with some fascinating researchers and one of the reoccurring themes discussed is always habitat fragmentation How can we re-connect fragmented habitats across the Rockies to keep species from blinking out – especially in the face of climate change So a real effort needs to be made to create wildlife corridors that connect one protected area to the next We have this amazing network of public lands it makes you realize what an incredible asset this is How can we manage these lands to support the greatest biodiversity in the face of changing climate The answer to that question could determine the fate of many Rocky Mountain species we need to recognize the value of these protected areas and provide the conservation funding needed So I guess one of the best things we can do is support our public lands and at the same time support private conservation efforts the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research celebrates birthday of the founder of experimental neutrino physics Bruno Maksimovich Pontecorvo (1913 – 1993) Metrics details Sharon Weinberger ponders a chronicle claiming that fresh evidence has cracked the 'Pontecorvo affair' Sharon Weinberger is a journalist specializing in national-security issues She is currently writing a history of the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. Reprints and permissions Download citation Celebrating the unstoppable entrepreneurs whose ambitions transform our world 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Ernst & Young LLP (EY US) today announced that Daniel Pontecorvo of Camber Spine Technologies was named an Entrepreneur Of The Year® 2020 Greater Philadelphia Award finalist the Entrepreneur Of The Year program honors entrepreneurial business leaders whose ambitions deliver innovation growth and prosperity as they build and sustain successful businesses that transform our world.  Award winners will be announced through a special virtual event in early October and will join a lifelong community of esteemed Entrepreneur Of The Year alumni from around the world unstoppable entrepreneurs who have provided extraordinary support for their communities employees and others during the COVID-19 crisis will also be recognized for their courage Entrepreneur Of The Year is one of the preeminent competitive award programs for entrepreneurs and leaders of high-growth companies The nominees are evaluated based on six criteria: overcoming adversity; financial performance; societal impact and commitment to building a values-based company; innovation; and talent management the program has expanded to recognize business leaders in more than 145 cities in over 60 countries around the world "I am humbled to learn today of my nomination as a finalist for EY's 2020 Philadelphia market Entrepreneur of the Year Program" said Daniel Pontecorvo when I began assembling with my partners the building blocks that would be the foundation for an innovative medical devices company oriented around solving physician frustrations that produce better outcomes for patients we would be where we are today as a recognized growing middle market life sciences enterprise in the exciting Philly metro life sciences corridor Surrounded by and supported by not only my partners but also an extremely talented group of people I accept this nomination with profound thanks to our people customers and stakeholders who have helped Camber Spine to grow to where we are today and will help us get to next." Camber Spine is dedicated to creating surgeon designed solutions in MIS and minimally disruptive access for the treatment of complex spinal pathology Incorporating state-of-the-art manufacturing and an acute sensitivity to patient anatomy Camber Spine is making quantum leaps in the spinal fusion market As of 2020 Camber has twenty 510(k) clearances and over twenty-six active or issued patents including two highly innovative and IP protected device platforms that support faster spinal fusion and recovery - ENZA® (MIS integrated Interbody) spinal fusion implants and SPIRA® OA (Open Architecture 3D printed) spinal fusion and orthopedic implants Camber Spine is an ISO 13485 certified medical device manufacturer Regional award winners are eligible for consideration for the Entrepreneur Of The Year National Awards to be announced in November during a virtual awards gala The Entrepreneur Of The Year National Overall Award winner will then move on to compete for the EY World Entrepreneur Of The Year™ Award in June 2021 Entrepreneur Of The Year Award winners become lifetime members of a global insight and wisdom of program alumni and other ecosystem members in over 60 countries — all supported by vast EY resources SponsorsFounded and produced by Ernst & Young LLP the Entrepreneur Of The Year Awards are nationally sponsored by SAP America and the Kauffman Foundation Murray Devine & Company and Pepper Troutman LLP About EYEY is a global leader in assurance The insights and quality services we deliver help build trust and confidence in the capital markets and in economies the world over We develop outstanding leaders who team to deliver on our promises to all of our stakeholders we play a critical role in building a better working world for our people of the member firms of Ernst & Young Global Limited Information about how EY collects and uses personal data and a description of the rights individuals have under data protection legislation are available via ey.com/privacy For more information about our organization Do not sell or share my personal information: This episode of Shift Key is sponsored by… Robinson Meyer leading to a potentially wet Kentucky Derby on Saturday at Churchill Downs The House Natural Resources Committee released its portion of Republicans’ budget package on Thursday evening. The proposal goes to markup next week but includes several significant measures across its 96 pages The BLM additionally released a draft environmental review of a separate solar project “The fact BLM is willing to admit other solar projects could advance later on is significant after the sputtering seen in the earliest days of the Trump administration.” Her caveat is that it’s unclear if this means solar permitting is a beneficiary of the president’s “energy dominance” agenda a news cycle or disgruntled legislator could steal the president’s ear and make him angry at solar power.” in 2024 after Hurricane Milton.Joe Raedle/Getty Images The major reinsurance company Swiss Re has released a lengthy report about the upward trend of insured losses in the United States Read more of Swiss Re’s findings in the report here The Trump administration has ordered the National Science Foundation to stop awarding new grants or supplying funds for existing grants “until further notice,” according to an email reviewed by Nature NSF leadership had recently directed its staffers to return grant proposals concerning “topics or activities” not “in alignment with agency priorities” to their applicants including funding the first major ice core drilling project in Greenland in 1980 to study historical carbon dioxide data using advanced climate modeling to predict extreme weather events better analysis and opinion from Cancer Research UK This year’s Pontecorvo prize for Best PhD Thesis has been awarded to Dr Nicholas McGranahan an outstanding young scientist at University College London and the Francis Crick Institute The Pontecorvo prize is awarded to CRUK-funded students who have produced outstanding PhD theses and made the greatest contribution to scientific knowledge in their field Nicholas is now a postdoc with Professor Charles Swanton, who describes him as a ‘rare breed’ due to the interdisciplinary nature of his work. With parallel interests in Mathematics and Cancer Biology, he completed his PhD in Cancer Bioinformatics at UCL’s centre for interdisciplinary research in the medical and life sciences – the Centre for Mathematics, Physics and Engineering in the Life Sciences and Experimental Biology (CoMPLEX) We recognise that new and innovative ideas emerge when researchers ideas and methods from disparate fields come together to tackle a question and we aim to support more researchers like Nicholas who develop a multidisciplinary approach to their research Nicky is a truly remarkable individual with a stellar career ahead of him The judging panel were extremely impressed when they saw the impact that Nicholas has had In five years he has delivered work that has led to a total of 25 papers and two patents He has co-authored in journals such as Cancer Discovery Nature Genetics and Science Translational Medicine with several first author papers resulting from his PhD Nicholas’s most striking contributions have been through his development of major new insights into mechanisms of cancer branched evolution and genomic instability He has helped to set novel directions for TRACERx – a multi-million pound programme and our largest single investment in lung cancer research Read more about the TRACERx Programme I felt very privileged to be nominated for this prestigious prize and it was therefore a great honour and pleasant surprise to be selected as the winner I had a fantastic and rewarding experience working in Charlie Swanton’s group during my PhD and was fortunate to be involved in a great deal of exciting work There is no doubt this work would not have been possible without the generous support from CRUK and I hope I can build upon this research in the future Lung cancer is the most common cause of cancer mortality in the UK accounting for more than 1 in 5 cancer deaths While the overall cancer survival rate has doubled to 1 in 2 since the 1970s which is why we have made tackling it a strategic priority We’ve made big strides in lung cancer research doubling our spend since the launch of our research strategy in 2014 but there is a lack of fundamental research into the mechanisms of how lung cancer develops and we know it is not being detected and diagnosed early enough in a clinical setting Work like Nicholas’s is key to moving us forward to achieve our ambition of improving survival rates in lung cancer but we need to do more which is why we want more researchers to focus their expertise on cancers with low survival rates such as lung We’d like to congratulate Nicholas on his prize and look forward to seeing what his future career brings Between 2015 and 2020 the diplomat was Ambassador of Italy to Pakistan was a NATO Senior Civilian Representative to Afghanistan closely following developments within the country Pontecorvo coordinated the evacuation of 124 people Stefano Pontecorvo entered the diplomatic career in 1985 From 2013 to 2015 he worked as diplomatic adviser to the Italian defense minister operating on NATO political-military issues while between 2015 and 2020 he was Ambassador of Italy in Pakistan Among the prominent roles held by Pontecorvo there is that of Deputy Head of Mission at the Italian Embassy in London Deputy Director General for Sub-Saharan Africa at the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Deputy Head of Mission at the Italian Embassy in Moscow Ambassador Pontecorvo has been appointed Commander of the Order of Merit of the Italian Republic