Solar photovoltaics is growing rapidly, albeit from a small base, to a total global capacity of 40,000 MW at the end of 2010. More than 100 countries use solar PV. Installations may be ground-mounted (and sometimes integrated with farming and grazing) or built into the roof or walls of a building ( building-integrated photovoltaics).

Driven by advances in technology and increases in manufacturing scale and sophistication, the cost of photovoltaics has declined steadily since the first solar cells were manufactured. Net metering and financial incentives, such as preferential feed-in tariffs for solar-generated electricity, have supported solar PV installations in many countries.

• The Power of Community: How Cuba Survived Peak Oil is a documentary film which details Cuba's efforts to recover from the 1990s economic crisis known as the Special Period?

• The Geysers (pictured), north of San Francisco, California, is the largest geothermal power development in the world?

• The International Energy Agency was founded in 1974 by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) in the wake of the 1973 oil crisis?

• Indian Railways has started to use Jatropha oil, blended with diesel fuel in various ratios, to power its Diesel locomotives?

• The South Wales Gas Pipeline is the largest high pressure gas pipeline in the United Kingdom?

• The Presbyterian Church (USA) was the first major religious denomination in the world to call on its followers to become carbon neutral?

• There was partial meltdown at the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant in 1979?

• A hybrid electric vehicle achieves better fuel economy than a conventional vehicle without being hampered by the limited range of an electric vehicle?

Fermi was well-known for his simplicity in solving problems. Whenever possible, he avoided complicated mathematics and obtained quick results based on order of magnitude estimates. Fermi also meticulously recorded his calculations in notebooks, and later used to solve many new problems that he encountered based on these earlier known problems.

After accepting the 1938 Nobel Prize in Stockholm, Fermi immigrated to New York with his family to escape the anti-Semitic laws of Fascist Italy, as his wife Laura was Jewish.

After working at Columbia University, Fermi went to the University of Chicago and began studies that led to the construction of the world's first nuclear reactor Chicago Pile-1 (CP-1). The first artificial, self-sustaining, nuclear chain reaction was initiated within CP-1, on December 2, 1942.