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Taiwan News Quick Take

■ FOOD

Grain stocks sufficient

The nation has adequate supplies of food, as the stocks-to-use ratio for grain is 40,000 tonnes more than recommendations set by the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), a Council of Agriculture official said yesterday. The FAO recommends that world grain reserves should be between 17 percent and 18 percent of annual consumption. This reserve is the quantity that should be on hand when inventories are at their lowest level before new crops are harvested and is equivalent to 1.5 months of food consumption. Using the FAO’s suggested figure for Taiwan and assuming that Taiwan’s annual grain consumption is 1.3 million tonnes, Taiwan should maintain a reserve target of 210,000 tonnes, said Yu Sheng-feng (游勝鋒), deputy director of the Agriculture and Food Agency. At the end of last year, Taiwan had 290,000 tonnes in stock.



■ SCIENCE

Kaohsiung students awarded

A team of high school students from Kaohsiung won a “future entrepreneurship” award on Saturday with a set of batteries made using a malabar chestnut tree and a cactus plant as electrodes. The team, from Kaohisung Municipal Kaohisung Industrial High School, presented its achievement at a contest held by the Ministry of Education in Taipei, the culmination of a series of courses on creative thinking and creativity implementation held on campuses around the country earlier this semester. The contest received entries from 17 teams from universities and high schools in northern, central and southern Taiwan competing for five awards. The idea for making the plant batteries came from online reports concerning a fruit battery experiment that demonstrates how an electrical current can be generated using citrus fruit that is strong enough to power a small light bulb, said Chen Hau-wen (陳顥文), a member of the team.



■ TRANSPORTATION

Jingmei Bridge coming down

The Taipei City Government said yesterday the 45-year-old Jingmei Bridge (景美橋) would be dismantled beginning on Wednesday morning and reminded drivers to use alternative routes to travel between Jingmei and Taipei County’s Xindian (新店). The replacement bridge is scheduled to be complete within one year. The city government said vehicles traveling toward Xindian, Jhonghe (中和) and Yonghe (永和) could take Xindian’s Jianguo Road (建國路) or Shunan Street (順安街), and then take Mingyuan Bridge (鳴遠橋) on Beixin Road Sec 3 (北新路), or take Xindian’s Baoqing Street (寶慶街) and the Wanshan Bridge (萬善橋) to connect to Muzha Road Sec 1 (木柵路). Scooters and bikes can use a temporary bridge constructed alongside the old bridge, the city government said.
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