Biology
Breach
March 16, 2012, from Scientific American
In the new report, researchers led by Tufts University's Laura Vandenberg concluded after examining hundreds of studies that health effects "are remarkably common" when people or animals are exposed to low doses of endocrine-disrupting compounds. As examples, they provide evidence for several controversial chemicals, including bisphenol A, found in polycarbonate plastic, canned foods and paper receipts, and the pesticide atrazine, used in large volumes mainly on corn.
The scientists concluded that scientific evidence "clearly indicates that low doses cannot be ignored." They cited evidence of a wide range of health effects in people - from fetuses to aging adults - including links to infertility, cardiovascular disease, obesity, cancer and other disorders.
"Whether low doses of endocrine-disrupting compounds influence human disorders is no longer conjecture, as epidemiological studies show that environmental exposures are associated with human diseases and disabilities," they wrote.
March 16, 2009, from The Oregonian
Tens of thousands of Oregon schoolchildren who ride buses are exposed to potentially harmful fumes because of fuel system defects, according to the state Department of Environmental Quality.
But two bills in the Legislature that aim to help fix the problem may not advance out of committee, state officials and environmental activists said.
"I don't think most parents realize that when they're sending their children off to school, how dangerous it can be," said Dana Kaye, executive director of the American Lung Association of Oregon, which is helping the DEQ encourage school districts to retrofit faulty buses. More than 3,700 diesel-powered buses, including hundreds in the Portland area, leak fumes into buses through a hole in the crankcase or through tailpipe emissions, said Kevin Downing, coordinator of the DEQ's Clean Diesel Initiative, which aims to reduce health risks from diesel exhaust from any engine in the state.
March 16, 2009, from Queen's University, via EurekAlert
A new Queen's University study shows that detergents used to clean up spills of diesel oil actually increase its toxicity to fish, making it more harmful.
"The detergents may be the best way to treat spills in the long term because the dispersed oil is diluted and degraded," says Biology professor Peter Hodson. "But in the short term, they increase the bioavailability and toxicity of the fuel to rainbow trout by 100-fold." ... [The dispersion] increases the transfer of hydrocarbons from oil to water, Dr. Hodson explains. The hydrocarbons pass easily from water into tissues and are deadly to fish in the early stages of life. "This could seriously impair the health of fish populations, resulting in long-term reductions in economic returns to fisheries," he says.
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Climate
Chaos
March 16, 2014, from The Hill
At least 28 Senate Democrats are pulling an all-nighter on Monday to wake up "stubborn" climate change deniers in Congress.
With substantial climate change legislation all but dead in Congress, the senators involved in Monday's climate-fest just want to get to a point where lawmakers can agree that climate change is a scientific fact.
March 16, 2011, from Montreal Gazette
Severe earthquakes in Haiti, Chile and now Japan have experts around the world asking whether the world's tectonic plates are becoming more active -- and what could be causing it.
Some scientists theorize that the sudden melting of glaciers due to man-made climate change is lightening the load on the Earth's surface, allowing its mantle to rebound upwards and causing plates to become unstuck....The surface of the Earth is elastic. A heavy load such as a glacier will cause it to sink, pushing aside the liquid rock underneath.
March 16, 2009, from Telegraph.co.uk
But in their report, the MPs expose the timidity of the Government's response to the crisis, revealing that the £535 million package for low carbon measures announced in the PBR was made up of money brought forward from future budgets.
That means that the Government will either have to cut spending or raise taxes to pay for future measures to "green" the economic recovery.
Tim Yeo, chairman of the committee, said: "The Treasury has announced very little new money for green investments.
"Yet meeting our climate change targets will require a step-change in funding for the low carbon energy sector, especially when the financial crisis has led to a shortage of capital."
March 16, 2009, from Nature
In 2007, scientists scouting the icy waters of the Arctic Ocean began to notice some troubling signs. In about half of their seawater chemistry samples, the concentration of dissolved methane was two to ten times higher than in samples taken during previous years from the same locations. Then, last summer, they observed large rings of gas — sometimes as wide as 30 centimetres in diameter — trapped in ice, as well as methane plumes bubbling to the surface over hundreds of square kilometres of the shallow waters along the Siberian Shelf.... large quantities of methane are becoming destabilized as the planet — and the ocean — heat up. Researchers have long speculated that warming could unleash vast stores of the greenhouse gas from where it lies frozen beneath the sea floor and locked up in Arctic soils. If those deposits were to melt, it would almost certainly trigger abrupt climate change. Methane heats the atmosphere with an efficiency 25 times that of carbon dioxide, and its release could put in motion a positive feedback loop in which warming releases methane, causing further warming, which liberates even more of the gas. Whether that's already happening is anyone's guess.
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Resource
Depletion
March 16, 2009, from Inter Press Service
In 2008, the United Nations (U.N.) International Year of Sanitation, it is estimated that 2.16 billion people in developing countries lack that most basic of amenities - a proper toilet. They do not have water conveniently pumped in and out of their homes for use in flush toilets. Many have no choice but to relieve themselves in ditches, behind the house, down the road, or at any other 'convenient' location.
The result: "widespread damage to human health and child survival prospects; social misery especially for women, the elderly and infirm; depressed economic productivity and human development; pollution to the living environment and water resources," according to the U.N. report 'Tackling a global crisis'.
Of course, water is not only a question of sanitation. This year is also part of the U.N's international decade for water, titled 'Water for Life'. Some more statistics: about 700 million people in 43 countries are affected by water scarcity, according to the U.N. In 2025 the number could be 3 billion. Around 1.1 billion people are said to have no access to safe drinking water.
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Recovery
March 16, 2011, from New York Times
The Environmental Protection Agency proposed the first national standard for emissions of mercury and other toxins from coal-burning power plants on Wednesday, a rule that could lead to the early closing of dozens of generating stations and is certain to be challenged by the utility industry and Republicans in Congress. Lisa P. Jackson, the agency's administrator, unveiled the new rule with fanfare at agency headquarters, saying control of dozens of poisonous substances emitted by power plants was two decades overdue and would prevent thousands of deaths and tens of thousands of cases of disease a year.
March 16, 2011, from EnvironmentalResearchWeb
Using consolidated bioprocessing, a team led by James Liao of the University of California at Los Angeles for the first time produced isobutanol directly from cellulose. The team's work, published online in Applied and Environmental Microbiology, represents across-the-board savings in processing costs and time, plus isobutanol is a higher grade of alcohol than ethanol.
"Unlike ethanol, isobutanol can be blended at any ratio with gasoline and should eliminate the need for dedicated infrastructure in tanks or vehicles," said Liao....
"Plus, it may be possible to use isobutanol directly in current engines without modification."...
While cellulosic biomass like corn stover and switchgrass is abundant and cheap, it is much more difficult to utilize than corn and sugar cane. This is due in large part because of recalcitrance, or a plant's natural defenses to being chemically dismantled....
The researchers noted that their strategy exploits the host's natural cellulolytic activity and the amino acid biosynthetic pathway and diverts its intermediates to produce higher alcohol than ethanol.
March 16, 2009, from AP News
With the recession in full swing, many Americans are returning to their roots -- literally -- cultivating vegetables in their backyards to squeeze every penny out of their food budget.
Industry surveys show double-digit growth in the number of home gardeners this year and mail-order companies report such a tremendous demand that some have run out of seeds for basic vegetables such as onions, tomatoes and peppers.
"People's home grocery budget got absolutely shredded and now we've seen just this dramatic increase in the demand for our vegetable seeds. We're selling out," said George Ball, CEO of Burpee Seeds, the largest mail-order seed company in the U.S. "I've never seen anything like it."
March 16, 2009, from CBC (Canada)
The Nova Scotia government plans to revise rules that bar Nova Scotia Power from investing in wind power companies, in hopes of helping the utility reach its green energy goals.
Currently, Nova Scotia Power is forbidden from investing in wind turbine companies, but Energy Minister Barry Barnet said the province wants that to change.
"I think there was kind of a mutual coming-of-the-minds that this is the way we can meet each other's objectives," Barnet said. "It's imbedded within the regulation and I'm not sure why it was put in there in the first place. The idea was to have the independent producers have the ability to operate separately from Nova Scotia Power."
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