In the past two years the rivers flowing down to Goa on India's west coast have teemed with barges carrying iron ore bound for China.

ECONOMIST: India and China

It was only later, when upon the white flash of another high sea hurling itself amidships, Jukes had a vision of two pairs of davits leaping black and empty out of the solid blackness, with one overhauled fall flying and an iron-bound block capering in the air, that he became aware of what had happened within about three yards of his back.

FORBES: Has Sandy Capsized Your Life? Here's One Thing To Be Thankful For

"Typically the concentrations are small in red mud and what is present is tightly bound to the particles of iron oxide, " he says.

BBC: How toxic is Hungary's red sludge?

It involves taking oxygen to the fuel not as a gas, but bound to a metal such as iron or calcium, and should in principle make combustion more efficient.

BBC: Whatever happened to carbon capture?

If anything, the soil seemed inimical to life: there was so much iron in it that any whiff of oxygen was quickly bound into rust.

NEWYORKER: The Martian Chroniclers