Rolex Seeks Entries To 12th Worldwide Awards For Innovative Projects

Argentine palaeontologist and geologist Teresa Manera de Bianco is struggling to save a unique collection of animal footprints made 12,000 years ago. The three-kilometre-long site is now part of the Atlantic coastline near Manera’s home, but 12,000 years ago it was an inland pond teeming with birds and mammals. Covered for thousands of years by sediment, the site is today under threat from rising sea levels and thousands of tourists. Confronting technical challenges and government bureaucracy, Manera is racing against time to preserve the footprints in latex casts that will provide scientists with important clues about the life of animals that once roamed the pampas.

Kikuo Morimoto: Reviving traditional silk fabrication in Cambodia

Moved by the failure of the Cambodian countryside to recover from decades of war, silk expert Kikuo Morimoto left a job in Thailand in the 1990s to build silk-fabrication workshops in the hinterland of Cambodia. His goal was to help impoverished Cambodians resurrect traditional silk production. His vision has grown, and he is now replanting trees needed to produce silk, reviving traditional weaving and providing profitable work to hundreds of people making heritage-class textiles. The next step is the establishment of a “silk village” as a model to help revitalise rural Cambodia.