Forest debris that drains into lakes is important to freshwater food chainsresearch shows forest debris that drains into lakes is an important contributor to freshwater food chains--bolstering fish diets to the extent that increased forest
Debris from forests that washes into freshwater lakes supplements the diets of microscopic zooplankton and the fish that feed off them--creating larger and stronger fish new research shows.
Carbon from forest debris has a different elemental mass than carbon produced by algae in the aquatic food chain.
When these fast-moving streams--full of detritus from forest foliage--hit the slow-moving lake the debris falls out of suspension
Debris is broken down by bacteria which is consumed in turn by zooplankton: tiny translucent creatures that also feed on algae.
That's a terrible waste of energy. Rice graduate student Chih-Chau Hwang lead author of the paper first tried to combine amines with porous carbon.
But such simple steps as leaving slash--the plant waste left over after crop production--on fields after harvests so it could be incorporated into the soil could reintroduce between 0. 4 and 1. 1 gigatons of carbon annually to soil the study says.
It contributes significantly to global environmental change with a recently estimated 14.5%of anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions attributable to the sector as well as through environmental problems associated with manure management and disruption of the nitrogen cycle in the soil water and air.
environmentsetting strong standards for climate-changing carbon emissions from power plants would provide an added bonus--reductions in other air pollutants that can make people sick;
air pollutants: fine particulate matter nitrogen oxides sulfur dioxide and mercury. The scientists compared the model results with a business-as usual reference case for the year 2020.
and other pollutants said Dr. Charles Driscoll of Syracuse University. One of the policy options we analyzed cut emissions of these non-carbon pollutants by approximately 75000 tons per year by 2020 Driscoll said.
We know that these other pollutants contribute to increased risk of premature death and heart attacks as well as increased incidence and severity of asthma and other health effects.
They also contribute to acid rain ozone damage to trees and crops and the accumulation of toxic mercury in fish added Driscoll.
#Wood-waste biofuel to cut greenhouse gas, transform shipping industrya sustainable biofuel made from Norwegian forest wood waste could help transform the shipping industry
or vegetable with their lunch a good intention that might easily go to the garbage. To get answers about
--but not as rapidly as the cost of junk food An said. Overall food is more accessible and affordable than ever in the United states
and belowground carbon loss from selective logging and ground level forest fires in the tropics based on data from 70000 sampled trees and thousands of soil litter and dead wood samples from 225 sites
#Composting program with used coffee groundsan interdisciplinary Kansas State university research group is turning garbage into gourmet food.
--or about 30 percent of the coffee shop's total waste--has been diverted from landfills. Natalie Mladenov assistant professor of civil engineering and Rhonda Janke associate professor of horticulture forestry and recreation resources are the faculty leaders of the project
and composting program that diverts waste from landfills and produce a beneficial product Mladenov said.
Among the technologies evaluated in situ are floor type in cattle housing use of additives in slurry storage manure turning flexible lagoons for collective slurry storage biowashers for gases at the outlet of air ducts of the sheds
So the problems in managing livestock waste are shared by all the regions involved in the project.
In this respect the members of the BATFARM project have developed software (BATFARM) to select the best farm waste technologies
The procedure revealed all microbes in the fecal matter including some that were known not Johnson said.
The crossbreeding protocol produces four different strains within the same litter--Omega mice that express both fat-1 and fat-2 strains that express only one of the c. elegans genes
and volatile organic compounds (VOC) in their urine and this may increase their risk for cancer
and the Center for Tobacco Control Research and Education at the University of California San francisco. After a single evening of water pipe smoking in a hookah bar young men and women had in their urine a 73-fold increase
At the end of this period they provided a before urine sample and smoked water pipes at a hookah bar of their choice in the San francisco bay area.
Soon after the visit they provided the after urine sample and filled a form to provide detailed information on their smoking session including total time spent smoking number of bowls smoked
They also provided a first-voided urine sample the next morning which helped researchers estimate the clearance of the tobacco-related chemicals of interest.
and NNAL which were detected immediately after the water pipe-smoking session remained significantly elevated in the next-day urine samples compared with the before samples:
Water pipe-smoking duration correlated significantly with the increase in post-exposure urine nicotine levels and number of bowls smoked per person significantly correlated with the increase in post-exposure
and next-day urine cotinine levels respectively. The average increase in nicotine levels was obtained comparable to levels after smoking at least one cigarette explained St helen.
or human activity or they form from precursors emitted originally as gaseous pollutants. The transformation of gas molecules into clusters and then into particles a process called nucleation produces more than half of the particles that seed cloud formation around the world today.
and oil that emit more carbon dioxide and local air pollutants. But extracting processing and transporting the fuel can result in emissions of methane--itself a potent greenhouse gas.
some species consider skatole a compound occurring in faeces part of the bouquet. Story Source: The above story is provided based on materials by Ruhr-Universitaet-Bochum.
--but it is unfortunately also a dangerous pollutant says Benjamin Bodirsky lead-author of the study.
While the biggest source of nitrates in the Mississippi river network are industrial fertilizers nitrates also come from animal manure urban areas wastewater treatment
Tobacco waste products contain the same toxins nicotine pesticides and carcinogens found in cigarettes and cigars and can contaminate the environment and water sources.
or to take back all discarded tobacco waste products. Tobacco waste products are ubiquitous environmentally hazardous and a significant community nuisance says Novotny.
With two-thirds of all smoked cigarettes numbering in the trillions globally being discarded into the environment each year it is critical to consider the potential toxicity and remediation of these waste products.
Story Source: The above story is provided based on materials by Springer. Note: Materials may be edited for content and length.
When minerals are rare in the soil animals sometimes gather salt and other rare minerals and proteins from sweat tears urine and even blood.
and poultry farms as well as wastewater treatment facilities that collect waste from multiple sources including hospitals.
and compared them to the bacteria present in the animal feces and wastewater. We found these insects carry the same bacteria found in the animal manure Zurek said.
Then we started sampling insects found in surrounding urban areas including fast food restaurants and again we found house flies with multi-drug resistant bacteria.
The house flies collected from the wastewater treatment plants likewise carried the same bacteria found in the waste itself he said.
Wild birds can pick up the antibiotic resistant bacteria from fields where animal manure was used as a fertilizer he said.
A conventional plastic container and nine types of biocontainers (bioplastic coir manure peat bioplastic sleeve slotted rice hull solid rice hull straw and wood fiber) were included in the life cycle
As liver cirrhosis progresses excessive inflammation triggers the garbage-mediated stress response and Hrd1 becomes very abundant
Why what we eat mattersa new report quantifies for the first time how much our food choices affect pollutant nitrogen emissions climate change and land-use across Europe.
which food production--and other services such as carbon storage flood mitigation and locking up pollutants--depends.
Abandoned fields with dry grasses provide the detritus that can fuel an out of control blaze with a single spark.
and bacteria in hospitals we wanted to know what kind of bacteria are released into the environment via this route of manure fertilization says Fabienne Wichmann lead study author and former postdoctoral researcher at Yale university in New haven Connecticut.
which could lead to a scenario where residual manure bacteria might cling to produce and they or their genes might move to the human ecosystem.
which AR genes are present in cow manure. Handelsman's team used a powerful screening-plus-sequencing approach to identify 80 unique and functional AR genes.
considering the small set of five manure samples says Handelsman who is also a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Professor.
Some manure bacteria might be pathogenic to humans so if they acquire antibiotic resistance they could pose a problem.
Alternatively benign bacteria in manure might transfer resistance genes to pathogens at any point along the path--in manure soil food or humans.
So woody debris management is important for conservation but it requires baseline measurements of relatively undisturbed mature forests
According to a study in the July 2013 issue of Natural Areas Journal researchers sought to characterize the volume of coarse and fine woody debris present in old-growth beech forests in the Caspian Hyrcanian mixed
and volume of different forms of coarse woody debris such as logs snags or stumps and correlate the understory coarse woody debris volume to the overstory forest structure.
These research objectives are given very timely the documented loss and degradation of Iranian Hyrcanian forests due to illegal logging fuel wood cutting expansion of agricultural fields
measured course woody debris including snags logs and stumps; and noted degree of decay. Oriental beech was the dominant species in the layer of foliage in the forest canopy known as the overstory
and made up 80 percent of course woody debris and 74 percent of fine woody debris. Most of the dead Oriental beech was advanced in an state of decay the article reports.
But in terms of volume the course woody debris in the section of the Kheyrud Experimental Forest is significantly less than in the Kheiroud Forest also in northern Iran
which Sefidi and Marvie Mohadjer had studied also and about half of the volume in old-growth beech forests in Turkey and Albania
Most of the coarse wood debris in the forest was advanced in an state of decay meaning the trees mostly now in the form of rotting logs had been dead 12 to 59 years
Almost 40 percent of the total volume of dead wood was fine woody debris--a size class that has received little attention.
Fine woody debris is important to predicting fire behavior the researchers note. Some old-growth characteristics may be desirable for managers to incorporate into managed stands such as increasing coarse woody debris to levels consistent with natural stands in order to increase habitat potential and biodiversity.
However as with the findings of lower than natural volume of course woody material at the Kheyrud Experimental Forest site it is important to understand all of the influences on a stand's condition before using it as a reference for restoration
The results published in the journal Ecology in April 2014 show that pollutants that accumulate at the Poles can indeed cause a decline in bird populations.
This could be due to the fact that in Adã lie Land the more severe environmental conditions combined with the increasing presence of other pollutants (pesticides PCBS) magnify the impact of mercury contamination.
These findings show that pollutants that accumulate in the Polar regions are an important threat to biodiversity.
In addition they are carrying out similar studies to measure the effects on bird populations of'conventional'pollutants such as pesticides
 Run the air conditioner and air purifier to remove pollutants.  Leave outdoor-exposed gear such as shoes and backpacks on the porch steps to preserve interior air.
and creating fewer environmental pollutants. One of the largest impediments for the pulp and paper industry as well as the emerging biofuel industry is a polymer found in wood known as lignin says Shawn Mansfield a professor of Wood Science at the University of British columbia.
Currently the lignin must be removed a process that requires significant chemicals and energy and causes undesirable waste.
Researchers will measure tree litter dry weight depth of flooding tree height and diameter and stand density.
Manure from livestock and fertilizer for crops release ammonia to the atmosphere. In the air ammonia mixes with other emissions to form microscopic airborne particles or particulates.
As such the particles are on the list of six common air pollutants regulated by EPA's National Ambient Air Quality Standards.
The waste can be up to 70 per cent and much of the fungicide ends up in the soil.
or contact with contaminated feces Jeong said. Further some antibiotics used to treat humans and animals kill good and bad bacteria.
or on the way there--often leaving the seeds protected by the litter layer. Under the leaf litter the seeds were less likely to be detected by rodents
when in the spring of 2012 Wilder along with a lab mate and his Seri collaborators made an incidental discovery of a 1500-1600-year-old urine-cemented dung mat on the floor of a small cave in the Sierra
The resulting buildup of dry loose detritus is a wildfire hazard that poses the threat of spreading radioactivity from the Chernobyl area.
This litter accumulation that we measured which is likely a direct consequence of reduced microbial decomposing activity is like kindling.
Fusarium spores exist during winter in the plant debris. Even plowing the stubble under does not eliminate the problem
and other cellular detritus pulling them in through one ring which closes like the shutter of a camera and traps the proteins.
& Melinda Gates Foundation has the capability of heating human waste to a high enough temperature to sterilize human waste
The project is part of the Gates Foundation's Reinvent the Toilet Challenge an effort to develop a next-generation toilet that can be used to disinfect liquid and solid waste
According to the Gates Foundation the awards recognize researchers who are developing ways to manage human waste that will help improve the health and lives of people around the world.
and treat human waste result in serious health problems and death--food and water tainted with pathogens from fecal matter results in the deaths of roughly 700000 children each year.
Linden's team is one of 16 around the world funded by the Gates Reinvent the Toilet Challenge since 2011.
and transferred to the fiber-optic cable system--similar in some ways to a data transmission line--can heat up the reaction chamber to over 600 degrees Fahrenheit to treat the waste material disinfect pathogens in both feces and urine and produce char.
and effectively carbonize solid waste. While the current toilet has been created to serve four to six people a day a larger facility that could serve several households simultaneously is under design with the target of meeting a cost level of five cents a day per user set by the Gates Foundation.
and other forest debris. Woodland salamanders are the most common vertebrate species in American forests;
consequently these small seldom-seen animals may play a significant role in regulating the capture of carbon from leaf litter in forest soils.
and carbon are captured at the litter-soil interface. The objective of the study was to investigate the role of salamanders in regulating invertebrate abundances
and how that influenced leaf litter retention. The study included soil moisture as a covariate and field enclosures on the forest floor to quantify the effects of woodland salamanders.
and found that woodland salamander predation on invertebrates suppressed some populations of invertebrates and released others with the overall result of increased litter retention and carbon capture in the soil.
As humans burn fossil fuels dose crops with chemical fertilizers and dispose of manure from livestock they introduce extra nitrogen and other nutrients into the soil air and water.
A cow produces up to 70 kg of manure per day providing enough fertilizer in a year for one hectare of wheat equivalent to 128 kg of synthetic nitrogen that might
To find out about tobacco exposure researchers based themselves on urine samples collected during the medical check-up in the third trimester of pregnancy
They studied 1783 women after rejecting another 480 who had displayed signs of being smokers according to their urine samples and the results of the surveys.
To supplement the information gathered from these questions the researchers measured the cotinine in the urine samples.
or urine it indicates that there has been significant consumption of tobacco or passive exposure to it explained Aurrekoetxea. 55%of the nonsmoking women admitted they had been under the effect of tobacco smoke:
Even though the exposure caused by members of the household was not the most common one the cotinine level analysed in the urine revealed that the home was the main source of exposure
This indicates that increasing the intake of foods associated with a prudent dietary pattern is more important than totally excluding processed food fast food junk food
and students that the regulations were causing an increase in waste due to both larger portion sizes
In goats the researchers already knew it is the hair of males not the urine that shows male effect pheromone activity.
A waste product in this process is used at the same time to produce animal feed with the resulting cost-cutting for farmers and greater efficiency in the emission of greenhouse gases.
and deforestation caused by expansion of agriculture as well as methane released by the animals themselves with a lesser amount coming from manure management and feed production.
and Earth System Sciences journal intensive organic matter using composted manure prior to planting resulted in significantly higher groundwater pollution rates compared with liquid fertilization techniques through drip irrigation.
Why when someone is in a bad mood will they choose to eat junk food
Plastic waste pervades the global landscape said Macivor. Although researchers have shown adverse impacts of the material on species
Also promoting and prolonging food stability with quality after harvest means less waste which is a big issue in terms of food security.
Sometimes that river is polluted with industrial waste such as lead which can cause detrimental effects on local sheep and goats via the water supply.
The goats with lead intoxication show signs of kidney and liver damage so we had hypothesized this damage would inhibit the excretion of amoxicillin leading to higher drug concentrations in these animals.
Blood and urine samples were collected over a period of 10 weeks to measure serum protein and amoxicillin concentrations.
This natural process for producing methane forms the basis for treating municipal and industrial wastes helps reduce pollution
#Excrement collected worldwide shows co-evolution of herbivores, their gut microbesan extensive study by Radboud University Nijmegen on excrement and rumen fluids in plant-eating mammals from all over
By investigating ciliates in excrement and gut fluids the researchers in Nijmegen have been able to shed light on the evolution of two sorts of herbivores:'
Excrement from all over the world For this investigation excrement and rumen fluids were collected worldwide. The sources included Nijmegen goats French deer sheep from Poland and Utrecht an Indian elephant from Burger's Zoo in Arnhem and zebras and an African elephant from Tanzania.
So from the evolutionary point of view the oldest animals have the oldest ciliates in their excrement.
'In hindgut fermenters transmission occurs via coprophagy (eating excrement) and that happens almost exclusively in extremely young offspring.
Researchers from Oxford and Sheffield Universities have found that temperatures affect the thickness of the leaf litter
The overall objective of the workshop was to improve the irrigation efficiency by reducing water wastes.
and cover the pile with leaf litter. Then it's back up the tree in an achingly sluggish climb.
of human exposure to pollutants emitted by transportation sources. The group agreed that vegetation barriers are a form of green infrastructure that can provide environmental economic and social benefits to their surrounding areas.
because plants naturally capture some of the pollutants emitted by traffic. Properly designed and managed roadside vegetation can help us breathe a little easier said Dr. Greg Mcpherson research forester at the U s. Forest Service's Pacific Southwest Research Station.
Besides reducing pollutants in the air these buffers can protect water quality store carbon cool urban heat islands
Scientists in the group have conducted research using field studies air quality modeling of pollutant transport and deposition in roadside vegetative barriers and tree performance studies.
Their research indicates that vegetative barriers will reduce pollutant concentrations in carefully designed sites however under certain circumstances concentrations can be increased.
next prefers fresh airoff the west coast of Peru seabirds deposit thick layers of guano that accumulates on the ground because of the lack of rain.
Guano has played historically a key role in agriculture worldwide because it is rich in plant nutrients such as nitrogen and phosphorous.
Now researchers from Wageningen University and Southern Illinois University revealed the effects of guano on the native trees of the arid coasts of South america.
Nutrients are limiting in the desert so this input from the sea through the nitrogen-rich guano has a positive effect for trees that cannot fix nitrogen.
Tittel said smaller QEPAS device will be added this year to the mobile monitoring van currently carrying out a Rice university of Houston survey of pollutants in the city.
The researchers found that the electrostatic properties of the glue that coats spider webs causes them to reach out to grab all charged particles from pollen and pollutants to flying insects.
According to the researchers common garden spider webs around the world could be used for environmental monitoring as they actively filter airborne pollutants with an efficiency comparable to expensive industrial sensors.'
'The elegant physics of these webs make them perfect active filters of airborne pollutants including aerosols
It's a great bonus for us that this also causes them to attract pollutants making them a cheap and natural way of tracking pesticides and air quality around the world.'
#Oceanographer examines pollutants in Antarctic seal milkan oceanographer from the University of Rhode island is analyzing the milk from Antarctic fur seals to determine the type
and quantity of pollutants the seals are accumulating and passing on to their pups. Rainer Lohmann a professor at the URI Graduate school of Oceanography is collaborating with a researcher at the Southwest Fisheries science Center in California to learn about the health and ecology of fur seals that winter in different locations in the South Pacific.
What we're trying to learn is where the pollutants come from and how those pollutants vary by where the seals feed said Lohmann who has conducted studies of marine pollutants around the world.
Fur seals that have given birth have lower pollutant levels than those that have not because they pass their pollutants on to their pups in their milk.
All of the seals the researchers are studying breed on the South Shetland islands of Antarctica but some spend the winter off the coast of Argentina while others winter off Chile.
The two groups are thought to be exposed to different pollutants in the food they eat at their wintering grounds.
Lohmann's lab is analyzing 60 samples of seal milk collected between 2000 and 2010.
He expects to find a wide variety of pollutants in the samples including mercury pesticides flame retardants PCBS and other organic pollutants.
These are all pollutants that degrade very slowly so some may have been in the environment for decades
Few studies of marine pollutants have been conducted in Antarctica in part because there are greater concerns about pollutant levels in the northern hemisphere than in the southern hemisphere.
The two hemispheres don't mix very well which is why the northern hemisphere is contaminated more than the southernmost of the pollutants have been released in the northern hemisphere
and the air doesn't flow to the south very often. So Antarctica is much cleaner Lohmann explained.
whether the pollutants down there are the result of a slow infiltration from the north or whether it's a slower accumulation of pollutants used
and released in the south. According to Lohmann seal milk is about 50 percent fat enabling young seals to grow rapidly.
if their mother's milk is contaminated with pollutants the pups will quickly accumulate pollutants in their bodies as well.
And due to the pups'smaller size the researchers speculate that the young seals are effected more seriously by the pollutants than are older and larger seals.
The seals can't avoid the pollutants so the best we can hope for is that the concentration of pollutants will decrease in their system over time
But some data suggests that pollutant concentrations haven't declined in the last ten years
Lohmann also speculates that some older pollutants that had been frozen in glaciers may be released again as the glaciers melt due to climate change.
The waste that was examined included collections from drains as well as 10 latrines and cesspits which yielded mineralized
and charred food waste coming from kitchens and excrement. Ellis says among the discoveries in the drains was an abundance of the remains of fully-processed foods especially grains.
Waste from neighboring drains would also turn up less of a variety of foods revealing a socioeconomic distinction between neighbors.
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