In fact, in some cases, the landfill disposal of biodegradable materials might be causing more harm than good.
Why might biodegradable products actually harm, rather than help, the environment? If a biodegradable material is placed in a landfill,
it's time for the health sector to get involved Earthquake could threaten California s water supply Tech,
sustainability meet on the robotic marijuana farm Invention may lead to greener power plants Accidental environmentalist designs furniture from invasive species Reuse and recycling, a modest proposal 10 steps toward making your home
The solutions--everything from irrigation systems to grain grinders to medical braces--used design innovations to reduce the cost of current solutions.
and this damage affects every aspect of your life from your water to your food to your medicine.
to protect our future resources of food, textiles, pharmaceuticals, building materials and a host of other products drawn from nature.
The loss of genetic resources affects how we produce new crops, medicines and the creation of novel products in industry.
which offers us hope for medicines and future food stocks. In the second case we need to prioritize areas
The mysterious phenomenon is known as colony collapse disorder and there are many theories about what's contributing to it:
pesticides, stress, Â diesel exhaust, disease and habitat loss. While the impact of CCD might be overblown,
said Dr. Paulo de Souza, who is leading the project, in a press release. And while we don't have data from the study yet,
but has been the subject of the terrifying colony collapse disorder, right? Maybe not as good as you think it is.
A new article in The Biologist by professors at The University of Sussex says that the beekeeping boom in London is actually doing more harm than good to bees.
you have heightened risk for bacterial infections and other diseases in the bees that could require burning entire hives.
Of course, not every area has the beehive density of London. But if your city is also experiencing a beehive boom
As part of the Center for Biodiversity and Conservation (CBC) s Sea turtle Research and Conservation program, our program goals here are to study sea turtle distribution and abundance, focusing on ecological interactions, behavior, conservation, health issues,
Other ecosystem goods and services sustain human health in a variety of ways. Studies have estimated that at least 80%of the world s population relies on compounds obtained mainly from plants as their primary source of health care.
The importance of medicines derived from living things is limited not to the developing world more than half of the most commonly prescribed drugs in the United states come from,
Species belonging to many different taxa are invaluable in biomedical research. Examples of health-related ecosystem services include water filtration,
flood regulation and waste removal. Intact ecosystems can protect humans from natural disasters, such as cyclones.
Also, studies suggest that biodiversity loss is one of the environmental factors associated with disease emergence.
Recent studies suggest that contact with nature can have positive effects on our mental health. How has the UN International Year of Biodiversity helped raise awareness?
wild monkeys with special collars to help track contamination levels in places that are hard for us to reach.
Of course congestion is what we all deal with on the highway. Getting trucks off the road has a small positive benefit to society.
In 2001, a psychologist called the G-spot a gynecologic UFO: much searched for, much discussed,
This time in the form of a study published in the Journal of Sexual Medicine.
Gynecologist Adam Ostrzenki claims, in this paper, to have located finally the elusive structure. He says he found it in a cadaver of an 83 year old woman from Warsaw,
and had died from blunt force  trauma to the head. Right, so back to the autopsy.
Debby Herbenick, a researcher at Indiana University and author of five books on sexuality, put it this way to Discovery News. This study now claims to literally have found this anatomical entity in a single case history of an 83-year old woman
Ostrzenki himself has created a business around plastic surgery on women's genitalia, something the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists condemned in 2007.
And yes G-spotplasty is offered (in fact, it's on Ostrzenki's own website) despite there being no evidence that the G-spot itself even exists.
and that he's working with patients to alter techniques for better gratification in a way that involves switching from tapping to circling.
And until then, the G-spot will probably remain that same gynecological UFO. Via: Eurekalert Photo:
 The social cost of water contamination is already enormous and increases every year.  Although todays announcement is about giving millions more people affordable access to safe water,
percent of bacteria that cause waterborne disease. Â The filter lasts 200 days for a family of five.
Meanwhile, an artist-turned-chef in San francisco, originally from Mexico city, is betting that health-conscious Americans are ready for bug tacos.
and health departments to promote access to healthy food across the city. Shes got a lot of experience working in the Pacific Northwest.
Roy Deitchman, Amtrak vice president of environmental, health and safety, in a statement: Amtrak travel is already more energy efficient than most other forms of intercity transportation.
A former speech language pathologist, Countryman has worked at the center for more than a decade. We talked about mice
Weve worked with Amgen, Bristol-myers squibb, usually biotech or pharmaceutical companies. Weve also worked with companies in the forestry industry.
There is an Amgen bone-loss experiment with a mouse; There is a microbe experiment; One is looking at virulents of salmonella to develop a salmonella vaccine;
And one looks at the jatropha plant, which is important in the development of biofuel,
Fungal disease and habitat destruction have endangered the bats and modern buildings pose new problems for bats pushed out of rural habitats to urban areas because of development.
China While guidelines for designs that don't harm birds have been published in the US, a library in China takes the idea one step further.
 she says. caption id=attachment 7063 align=alignright width=300 caption=Some Acacia wattle seeds contain toxins
So now, rather than crawling the beaches for little hunks of whale vomit, researchers could manufacture a similar compound in the lab. Ambergris in a bowl Before you go check your perfume bottles,
Can bees be trained to prevent plant disease? Dr. Andrew Sutherland, a researcher with the UC Davis Plant pathology Department is training honey bees to detect plant disease in agricultural crops.
Bees have excellent chemosensors on their antennae, so they're able to detect organic molecules.
Dr. Robert M. Wingo; Los alamos National Laboratory Chemistry Division, Dr. W. Douglas Gubler; UC Davis Plant pathology and Dr. Kirsten J. Mccabe;
Los alamos National Laboratory Bioscience Division. video=427650
Can designers fix America's suburban foreclosure problems? A rendering of an abandoned factory in Cicero, Illinous, re-made as a garden, by Studio Gang NEW YORK--On a brisk Saturday afternoon in late February, a small,
tucked-away gallery on the third floor of the Museum of Modern Art is crowded with visitors and abuzz with animated conversation.
which is getting squeezed by drug wars to the north and to the south. So very few countries meet your criteria?
and the financial stress on the household goes up, the violence decreases. So were making a leap of faith there.
health and environmental concerns; and new product materials such as soy, corn and mushrooms. Moderator Lance Hosey, president and CEO of Greenblue (a nonprofit focused on sustainable design and production in business and industry) started off the discussion by telling us that we produce some 300 billion pounds of plastic a year
, in highly toxic and dangerous petrochemical plants. Less than 5 percent of plastic is recycled, he said;
Dr. Wool from the University Delaware said the industry is moving like gangbusters toward a time
But bringing dung into their city house had Shekhawats conservative mother in hysterics. They, afterall, are the descendants of Rajput kings.
the development of nitrogen-based fertilizer at the close of the 19th century by chemists Carl Bosch and Fritz Haber.
A subsequent major development was the development of disease-resistant strains of wheat that could handle artificial fertilizer and produce higher yields.
Citrus surgery? Doctors refine their craft on clementinesyou know what s a great tool for practicing minimally invasive surgery?
Citrus fruit, according to Pamela Andreatta of the University of Michigan Medical school. NPR reports. Laparoscopic surgery is performed with a camera
and surgical instruments inserted through tiny incisions in the body. The traditional model of learning by watching then doing is putting young doctors in operating rooms before they've mastered basic skills,
Andreatta says. And while there are surgical simulators on the market oe including high-tech digital systems offering a virtual reality oe she believes the skills crucial to laparoscopic surgery might be taught better with something simple  something like a clementine.
The pelvic anatomy for example, consists of a mix of substantial and delicate tissue. So does a clementine:
sturdy outer peel, fragile pith, and a white spongy layer under the skin. So she set up an opaque box with holes on the top where you can insert a camera, scissors,
and a grasper. Over 40 doctors and doctors-to-be had to dissect the fruit oe take off the peel in as few pieces as possible,
remove the pith, separate the segments, and then put everything back together and suture the peel closed.
The minimally invasive surgery specialists scored the highest, by far. Residents and nonsurgical faculty scored significantly lower.
with little or no surgical experience, fared the worst. Check out the difference at NPR. You can find clementines or setsumas or tangerine variations all over the world,
The clementine is one of several dozen low-cost simulations Andreatta has developed for teaching minimally invasive surgery.
and foam pieces can be placed in offices and hospital rooms for doctors to practice on during a free moment.
The company, formed two years ago by industrial enzyme maker Novozymes and Cleanstar Ventures, is tackling an economic, environmental and public health problem in Africa.
The World health organization says inhaling charcoal smoke has the health impact of smoking packs of cigarettes a day.
but minutes after its birth the calf died of lung abnormalities (which have been cloned common among animals to date).
but you have to realize that with the BP-Transocean oil spill we just poisoned half the food chain down there in the Gulf of mexico.
and disease while producing higher yields. The joint research project is designed to improve on the cocoa growing process to create a sustainable supply
and farming is good occupational therapy. Image credits: Lufa Farms) Tomato plants grow over 20'high within the greenhouse (s). It's like a jungle in there,
He also is recognized for being among the first to introduce ideas like employee stock ownership, health coverage and pensions for farm workers.
while reducing risks to human health. There has been some wonderful coverage of sustainable agriculture recently including this great opinion piece from the New york times,
and nerdy round spectacles, specializes in vertigo-inducing towers of steel and concrete that exceed 1,
an unlikely group of stakeholders is testing technology in a Northern Arizona forest that could improve forest health, bolster a small and struggling local timber industry,
The 2003 photo shows a dense thicket of trees vulnerable to drought, disease, and the type of high severity fire that can wipe out swaths of forest
and potato crops across the U s.--even attacking genetically resistant potatoes that have been bred to fend off infection.
That ability helps the pathogen to outsmart its plant hosts. Now discovered it may clue researchers into unlocking ways to control it.
This pathogen has an exquisite ability to adapt and change, and that's what makes it so dangerous,
As the team sequences additional strains and close relatives of the pathogen they'll be able to develop a more comprehensive understanding of the blight's adaptation.
tomatoes and related plants, causing a late blight disease that can destroy entire crops in days.
The findings reveal the pathogen's unusual strategy to support the rapid evolution of critical genes, known as effector genes,
On the other hand, some effector genes can also trigger plants'immune responses--making them prime targets for combating P. infestans infection.
and death of genes that are key to plant infection. As a result, these critical genes may be gained
Further study should yield a deeper understanding of plant infection and help identify potential targets for fighting back.
Potato blight and flu have much in common
Dell, HP vie for spotlight again. This time, on environmental leadership. It being climate week
director of global environmental health and safety for Dell, says that this reduction was encouraged by grassroots, volunteer green teams at 25 of the company's office locations.
Two studies in one day, on items vital to our daily lives, show them to in fact be major pollution sources threatening our health
Drugs-on-the-cob: growing new meds in cornscientists have found a way to use maize to produce an expensive drug.
Specifically, it's a drug for a rare and life-threatening lysosomal disease that could previously only be manufactured by expensive cell culture techniques.
People who have this inherited disease endure progressive damage to the heart, brain, and other organs,
which if left untreated, results in death in early childhood. Right now, the enzyme used to treat it can only be made by culturing mammalian cells â oe they're the only ones capable of performing the biochemical tweaks required to make the enzyme function.
The enzyme-replacement therapy costs $300 000 to $500, 000 per year for children and much higher for adults.
To help decrease the costs, a team led by Allison Kermode at Simon Fraser University in Burnaby,
which could prompt a dangerous immune reaction if injected into patients, Nature explains. The team tweaked the protein-producing genes,
not to alter the sequence of the human protein, but to ensure that, once made, the proteins would not be moved through the cell's Golgi complex,
the enzyme used to treat the rare lysosomal storage disease mucopolysaccharidosis I. Other plants are already being used to make biopharmaceuticals.
In May, the US Food and Drug Administration approved the first ever drug produced in a genetically engineered plant cell:
Elelyso for the lysosomal storage disorder Gaucher disease, produced in carrot cells. Drugs made in duckweed, safflower,
and tobacco have progressed as far as clinical trials â oe but their sugar patterns have been problematic too.
If all goes well, however, maize may one day become the go-to way to make complex protein drugs.
The work was published in Nature Communications this week. Via Nature News Image by Waytru via Flickr
Binetti, theã Â president of Dupont's Nutrition & Health and Applied Biosciences divisions, says he sees large potential market opportunities for his group that will lead to 7 percent annual growth
which includes the company's Bio-PDFO, Sorona, Omega-3, biosurfaces and biomedical products; and biofuels,
According to a new Harvard School of Public health study, Â yes. People often say that healthier foods are more expensive,
On the other hand, this price difference is very small in comparison to the economic costs of diet-related chronic diseases,
The work was published in British Medical Journal Open last week. Â Via New Scientist Image:
in large part due to increased electronic forms of news. Home-monitoring of patients is leading to fewer emergency room visits and readmissions,
while reducing the air pollution associated with some home visits by nurses. This is good stuff. What's also needed now is a bigger-picture study on the degree of power consumption that IT is helping us to avoid as well.
And this is what drives Eben Bayer crazy. Cofounder and CEO of Ecovative Design, Bayer is on a mission to replace all packaging foam with a new material made from agricultural byproducts and mushrooms.
Bayer and his cofounder invented Mycobond a patent-pending technology that uses a growing organism and byproducts from food production (oat hulls from New york, cotton hulls from Texas and rice hulls from Arkansas) to create a strong composite material.
The material is currently being used for shipping and insulating, but in the future you may see it on your TV or in your car.
Click here to see Bayer s TED Talk last summer. I called Bayer Monday at his office in Green Island, NY.
Excerpts of our conversation are below. Where is Green Island? It sounds very peaceful and, well, green.
Ecovative COO Ed Browka, CEO Eben Bayer and Chief Scientist Gavin Mcintyre after winning the Picnic Green Challenge in The netherlands.
Garden on the go is a partnership between Indiana University Health and Green B. E. A n. Delivery,
which is funded by IU Health, is intended to help change local eating habits with the aim of showcasing demand for healthy food alternatives in neighborhoods that have few other alternatives.
IU Health plans to fund the program for approximately one year, and the two partners hope to create a model for other communities to replicate the effort.
But if I were a restaurant, hotel, school or hospital in D c, . I could just pick up the phone and call Envirelation,
and foster technologies to protect public health and the environment. The website also includes a downloadable fact sheet(.
and to take decisive action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, with integrated health, environmental and climate change policies,
Finally, some (sort of) good news about honeybeessadly, bees are dying in large swaths from a mysterious affliction called colony collapse disorder (CCD.
the media may have made exaggerated claims about the impacts of the disorder. Calm down, there s no beepocalypse, Quartz reports.
the herbicide and GM seeds maker) is developing a new weapon to battle the disorder:
--which are critically important for tracking sources of contamination. We take our responsibility in the food supply chain seriously,
Sometime this summer or soon after, the federal Food and Drug Administration may finally approve the first-ever genetically modified animal for human consumption--a fast-growing Atlantic salmon that has taken 17 years to reach the threshold of American consensus. The man to thank
that this genetically engineered fish might cause unique allergic reactions in humans; that it might escape
says Dr. Helen Sang, a geneticist at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland, who has studied the issues on both sides of the Atlantic.
and mouth disease and pigs that contain heart-healthy omega 3 fatty acids. In the meantime, crucial research work in the United states is now going begging overseas.
so their milk contains high levels of an antimicrobial enzyme to help infants ward off stomach infections, a problem that plagues the developing world's children.
an abnormality in the chromosomes that stop female fish from reproducing. plans to sterilize embryos in Canada before shipping them to Panama,
and arteries clean and functioning, has boomed in recent years as Americans face an obesity and heart-disease epidemic.
The measures have been a major setback to seed giants like Monsanto who argue that GMOS--like those that produce crops resistant to disease--are feed necessary to a growing planet and pose no harm to humans or the environment.
But it's not against toxins and corporate greed. It's against America's rising tide of food waste,
she worked at a day spa on the side. Her manager there quickly recognized her knack for making sales
and fallen branches might also affect soil health, biodiversity and wildlife habitat. The study, conducted over four years, covers 80 forest types within 19 different eco-regions,
But the architects downplayed the headaches that the opposition presented for their design and were quick to highlight the calm,
and devotees of the gin and tonic are staring down a disease that threatens to obliterate their classic hot weather elixir.
Even if British utilities were to hit a 2020 goal of generating more electricity from renewable sources, consumers compulsion to view screens, click mice,
Our obsession with devices that for the most part didn t even exist 20 or 30 years ago is driving up electricity consumption and CO2 emissions through sheer volume,
Now, we're able to extract contaminants from the wastewater--for example salt, which can then be used for road salt here in the Northeast.
delivering the news like an unexpected pregnancy test the crop developed genes that are resistant Monsanto's Roundup or Bayer's Liberty Link herbicide.
and abusing arsenic for everything from mining to medicine to murder. But a gene found in an ancient plant,
a fern, might lead to solutions to sponge the toxin from contaminated areas. Arsenic and its compounds occur naturally in many places,
where most of the toxin is stored. Study authors Jody Banks and David Salt in a statement:
in compliance with Google's famed Red List that focuses on removing toxic ingredients of materials.
cultivated by inmates as part of a job-readiness program. Then, they're transferred to community gardens for full growth.
which were buried in the 1800s to minimize health risks from polluted water. Now that raw sewage is dumped no longer into the river
and energy-intensive process, explained Dr. Sultan al-Jaber, managing director and CEO of Masdar City.
Dr. Sultan al-Jaber said at a press conference. Three pilot projects will be built over the next three years in Abu dhabi,
media coverage of climate change, public service campaigns about recycling all that information and more has made people turn increasingly to organic products as the look for the health, environmental and social benefits,
Health concerns spur organic gardening in Indian homesritu Mathur in her organic garden GURGAON-Ritu Mathur poked the soil in the potted plants
especially as cancer and other chronic illnesses are being linked the huge quantities of pesticides used in agricultural production.
which discussed the health hazards of pesticides, and suggested subsidizing organic farming as an alternative. Priya V. K. Singh, a government officer, has taken Mathur s help over the past three years to do organic farming in her garden in Gurgaon.
We can t control the toxins in our environment. But at least we can control it in our food,
They are aware that pesticides are causing sickness said Vikas, a cashier at a local organic store in Gurgaon who didn't want to reveal his last name.
It found contamination of banned pesticides heptachlor and chlordane which affects the liver, in spinach and bitter gourd.
The National Cancer Control Program estimates that there  are 2 to 2. 5 million cancer patients at any given point of time in India with about 0. 7 million new cases coming every year
According to The Lancet, by 2020,70%of the world's cancer cases will be in poor countries
pesticides are being linked to cancer especially in the state of Punjab, the bread basket of India,
But now the Malwa region of the state, called the cancer belt of India, has 136 cancer patients for 100,000 people.
Overall, Punjab has 90 per 100,000, which is higher than the national average of 80 per 100,
and remarked that many families she knows have diagnosed a member with cancer. Ten years ago, one would only hear about cancer in the movies...
This is really scary. Photos: Betwa Sharma
High oil prices: Fortunately and unfortunatelyhigh oil prices are changing our world in many ways;
But there are other reasons too, like lower costs and less stress. Bus and train ridership increased by 2. 3 percent in 2011 over 2010
MIT professor and supply chain expert Dr. David Simchi-Levi analyzed the historical impact of diesel prices on supply chains.
Coined the colony collapse disorder (CCD), researchers are still trying to figure out if pesticides or viruses or something else is the cause for the colony decline.
maybe we've got a new disease we haven't identified before. We fell into that category.
each pulling large packages filled with mostly health and food products, like diapers and bottled drinks.
when formula was found to be tainted with the toxic substance melamine. Hong kong has held long the title of having the freest economy in the world, with few taxes and trade regulations.
but in Hong kong, a frightening outbreak of the SARS virus 10 years ago awakened an interest in living more healthfully.
Especially after SARS, more people started going out to the countryside, Chan said. More people started to think about death â
But the capital's newest watering hole takes its water very seriously and purports to offer the purest drink around.
they're left with clean water and something called sewer sludge that's packed with human waste, toxins,
and particulates removed, health impact, effect on building heating/cooling costs, and hydrology. i-Tree,
Or do you want our dietitians to develop a menu based on your preferences? On International Space station, they get'preference bonus containers,
after it became clear that their father couldn't handle the stress of single fatherhood.
she was diagnosed with breast cancer (something else she shares with her grandmother. She could have neglected her new role,
and went public with her illness--something that wasn't done in the early 1990s.
Having cancer is a scary thing, there's no doubt about it, Bartz recalls. It takes a good three
I'm not going to minimize the impact of cancer on a person and their families and friends.
Lifelong learning Aside from gardening and her lead director role at Cisco, much of Bartz's time these days is devoted to quietly volunteering for various organizations with a focus on cancer support,
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