Alpine villagers 'see the light'

Source: Daily Telegraph 16 Jan, 2005

Residents of an Austrian mountain village deprived of sunshine for four months of the year have found a way to beat the winter gloom.

Mirrors will be installed in a sunnier spot across the valley, to reflect sunlight back to Rattenberg and eliminate the shadows that make its inhabitants feel so depressed.

From November to February, the sun is low on the horizon and the small community is permanently in the shadow of the Stadtberg Mountain."
From next winter, however, an array of computer-guided solar reflectors known as heliostats will be used to bounce the sun's rays to a rocky outcrop close to Rattenberg, where a second bank of mirrors will direct the light on to the streets and rooftops of the medieval village below.

Villagers agreed to raise the €2 million (£1.4 million) needed to fund the project – helped by EU and Austrian government grants – after a survey found that lack of winter sunlight was the most common reason given by inhabitants for moving away.

Many Alpine villagers suffer from a lack of sunlight in winter, and research has shown that too little sunlight can cause fatigue, weight gain and concentration problems.

Are exams getting easier?

Pupils sitting GCSE maths last year had to achieve about 40 per cent to get a B grade. But with the new exam, designed by the Cambridge-based exam board OCR, those who got as little as 17 per cent were given a B, while those scoring 45 per cent were awarded an A.

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Strange winter weather

From The Times 14 January 2005

Many skiers in Europe are facing a bleak time at the moment. The last decent snows for many resorts fell around Christmas time, and since then temperatures have rocketed, with blazing sunshine adding to a widespread thaw to reveal alarming patches of rock among slushy snow. In fact, resorts are reporting that it feels more like springtime than the depths of winter.

That warmth is being pumped in on mild southwesterly winds from the Atlantic and extends across a vast swath of Europe. In Oslo, the first six days of January were the warmest on record since 1938, and Moscow has been basking in temperatures some 8.5C (15.3F) above normal for January. Wildlife is now getting confused, with bears in Slovakia and the Czech Republic reported to be waking up from hibernation.

Skiers desperate for snowy slopes are advised to head for the US, where phenomenal snowfalls have swamped the Rockies recently. Two gigantic storms in the Sierras delivered the heaviest snowfall in the area since 1916, with over 3.7m (12ft) of snow having fallen since December 21.

However, avalanches are becoming a big risk and a train was derailed on Saturday when it hit a huge snowdrift. Snowstorms have also swept across the East Coast with dumps of up to 40cm (16in) in New York state, Pennsylvania, Indiana and Illinois, and smaller falls in the northeast and eastern Canada.