-and-trade system to regulate greenhouse gases. The researchers estimate that regardless of whether the Waxman-Markey bill were enacted,
The authors outline several ways of reducing carbon emissions while limiting energy sprawl. These include energy conservation to reduce the need for additional energy and land use;
and a flexible cap-and-trade system that allows for offsets that would provide incentives for low-carbon-emitting activities.
producing electricity and a range of nuclear isotopes, including plutonium. Iran denies that the reactor has a military purpose.
Chemical regulation: The costs of complying with European union legislation on chemical safety (REACH) are much greater than thought,
according to a study released by toxicologists. Industry may have to spend  9. 5 billion (US$13. 6 billion) on toxicity testing six times more than expected
The chemical industry challenged the numbers as worst-case estimates. For more, see pages 1065 and 1080.
although methane waste gas from coal mining was classified also as a renewable-energy source under the bill.
Isotope shortage: A nuclear reactor in Petten, The netherlands, that supplies radioactive isotopes for use in medical imaging reopened last week after a month's scheduled maintenance partly alleviating a global shortage of the isotopes (see Nature 460,312-313;
2009). ) But the reactor is due to shut down again next March for six months of repairs.
Canada's Chalk River, Ontario, reactor whose closure precipitated the isotope crisis will not reopen until 2010.
Julia Bailey-Serres, a molecular geneticist at the University of California, Riverside, says that the Submergence
Nature Newsthe health of the world's forests and their capacity to lock away carbon could be jeopardized by logging
So even though the region could lose a lot of biodiversity and a large proportion of its carbon stock,
which hold the most carbon. In a case study of an evergreen forest in Cambodia, Sasaki and his co-author Francis Putz from the University of Florida in Gainsville use inventory data for plots of trees with trunks wider than 5 centimetres to estimate that the forest
holds 121.2 tonnes of carbon per hectare. Of this, 71.4 tonnes is in trees that have trunks wider than 45 centimetres the trees that loggers are most likely to target.
the carbon stock would be depleted by almost 40, %yet the forest would still be considered a forest under the UNFCCC definition,
and estimate the forest's carbon stock. Burgess says Sasaki's paper has not proven why its proposed definition of a forest would be optimal,
so the more carbon it is retaining. Working out the amount of degradation that would be tolerable in a post-Kyoto agreement would be useful.
That is 75%less than the going price on the European carbon market. Backed by a satellite monitoring system and an increasingly focused enforcement programme
Worldwide, deforestation accounts for as much as 20%of greenhouse-gas emissions and up to 70%of Brazil's emissions.
Climate negotiators in the United nations talks are looking at various ways to link international carbon markets to forest conservation,
cio Lula da Silva urging the country to reconsider its opposition to directly tapping carbon markets for forest conservation.
suggesting that carbon markets could surpass $2 trillion annually by 2020 and $15 trillion in 2050.
Paddy fields account for around 20%of human-related emissions of methane a potent greenhouse gas. Farmers normally flood rice fields throughout the growing season,
however, is that the practice of mid-season drainage has increased the release of nitrous oxide, another potent greenhouse gas,
But overall, the annual reduction in greenhouse gas emissions is equivalent to 270 million tonnes of carbon dioxide,
With global temperatures rising as a result of climate change, the emission of methane which traps about 25 times more of the Sun's heat than carbon dioxide will play a greater part in the global carbon budget than it does now
Methane is an attractive greenhouse gas to target for emission reduction, but the lack of an accurate estimate of the baseline level challenges the use of paddy emissions in carbon trading,
he says.
Irrigation reform needed in Asia: Nature Newsinternational experts have called for urgent changes to the way water is used in farming throughout Asia.
Mystery of missing carbon cracked: Nature Newsmysteriously, Earth has much less carbon in its rocks than would be expected from the amounts of carbon available in the planet-forming regions of our Galaxy.
But a new model suggests that chemical reactions between carbon grains and oxygen could be the explanation.
Planets form from the disks of gas and dust that coalesce around stars. The gas and dust in these disks make up the interstellar medium that forms the space between stars in galaxies,
with the dust containing carbon-rich and silicate-rich grains. But despite the green, carbon-rich surface of our planet
Earth's mantle is remarkably poor in carbon compared with the amount in the interstellar medium.
Meteorites, thought to be the building blocks of our planet, also have missing carbon, whereas comets,
which are formed farther away from the Sun, do not. Conversely, silicon seems to make it from the interstellar medium, from
which planets form, into the bulk material of the planet. Astronomers have struggled to fully account for the carbon shortfall in Earth's mantle and in meteorites.
Now Ted Bergin at the University of Michigan, Ann arbor, has come up with a model that could explain what happened to the carbon.
He presented his ideas at the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry congress in Glasgow
UK, last week. Previous theories to explain why all the interstellar-medium carbon didn't make it into the material that formed Earth include the evaporation of primordial carbon-rich grains from the disk.
But for this model to work, temperatures would have to have been at least 1, 000 kelvin,
and their colleagues, modelled the chemical processes that could have been occurring in the disk, to see how hot the oxygen there might have been,
although nowhere near as hot as the 1, 200 kelvin needed to evaporate carbon. Here, oxygen atoms exist,
he says, that react with the tiny carbon grains but not with silicates. These grains are about one-tenth of a micrometre in diameter.
Because of this reaction, the middle part of the disk, where planets are formed, would become depleted in carbon.
The reaction is oxygen hitting the carbon grain and sputtering carbon off says Bergin. And this can happen at around 500 kelvin,
he says. Farther out from the heat source, the reaction between oxygen and carbon would have been much slower,
which explains why planets such as Mars don't seem to have the carbon deficit. Mike Jura at the University of California, Los angeles, says that the model is very plausible.
In random scoops of interstellar matter one would expect a lot of carbon, he says. Jura agrees that the model suggesting evaporation of carbon is flawed,
We're nowhere near 1, 200 kelvin. That takes a lot of heating he says. Bergin's chemical model helps to take away the need for that heat,
he says. If the new model is correct, one would expect to see lots of extra carbon in the gassy part of the disk from which planets are formed.
He's now working out how this carbon might be detected astronomically, and hopes eventually to be able to test this.
And all the extra gas-phase carbon that the model releases might have helped life to form,
Jura suggests. It's abundantly clear that if the Earth had got all of the carbon that was available,
I guess that would have presented a bit of a problem for forming life, Bergin says. We would have had way too much of a greenhouse
and the water would have boiled.
GM crop lures pest killers: Nature Newsresearchers have created transgenic maize plants that fight off pests by emitting a chemical to attract insect-killing nematode worms. 1the method,
demonstrated in agricultural field trials at the University of Missouri's Bradford Research and Extension Center in Columbia, could help farmers to control crop pests by luring natural parasites or predators.
European and US researchers, headed by Theodoor Turlings, a chemical ecologist from the University of Neuch ¢tel in Switzerland
which release volatile organic compounds to attract pest enemies when their tissues are damaged. Many maize varieties already contain a gene to make this compound.
But most of the varieties that have emerged from commercial selective breeding particularly in North america have lost the ability to express it.
The main problem is that researchers don't know the key compounds to target in most plants.
Identifying more compounds that act as chemical signals is crucial, says Turlings. And the approach could be combined with other transgenic pest control methods such as using genetically modified crops that carry toxins.
Guy Poppy, a chemical ecologist from the University of Southampton, UK, agrees that the method should allow farmers to reduce crop damage without eradicating the entire population of pests in a field's ecosystem-allowing biodiversity to remain mostly unchanged.
future studies should address the effects that enhancing natural chemical signals might have on a whole ecosystem including the resident populations of insect-killing nematodes.
since the volatile chemical would diffuse away, or be washed away by rain, if it were not being emitted continually by the plants it would be better to guide the nematodes to the plants most in need of protection,
His team's next step is to work out ways of making plants emit the compound only when under attack by pests.
and production from a possible carbon fertilization effect increased carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere may be beneficial to some crops,
Taking carbon fertilization into account could give a more optimistic outcome, he says. But Goulding adds that the models also do not include loss of land to bioenergy crops
The US Environmental protection agency has announced its nationwide reporting system for greenhouse-gas emissions. Large facilities will have to disclose their emissions every year,
The chemical was approved for agricultural use by the US Environmental protection agency in October 2007, prompting protests from activists and scientists.
Carbon market confusion: The European commission exceeded its authority in imposing tighter-than-requested caps for greenhouse-gas emissions on Poland and Estonia in the second period of the Emission Trading System, a court ruled last week.
The price of carbon credits fell following the news, because traders thought the commission might have to grant additional allowances to Poland,
Estonia and to six other countries that are also appealing against their caps. The ruling,
however and its long-term effect on European carbon emissions is unclear. Events Thousands of students
The plant, not yet in operation, is thought to be big enough to hold around 3, 000 gas centrifuges,
The drug company Abbott laboratories in Abbott Park, Illinois, is to buy Solvay Group's pharmaceutical business for  4. 5 billion (US$6. 6 billion.
which includes Solvay's vaccines business, based in Belgium. The acquisition will also see Abbott increase its annual US$2. 7-billion pharmaceutical research and development investment by $500 million.
A123systems, which makes rechargeable lithium-ion batteries, raised US$380 million at $13. 50 a share at its initial public offering,
The compound is more stable than the lithium metal oxides used in today's laptops and mobile phones,
The week ahead 5-7 october The 2009 Nobel prizes for physiology or medicine, physics and chemistry are announced. http://nobelprize. org 5-7 october Singapore hosts the Stem Cells
because it produces fewer greenhouse-gas emissions and does not compete with food-supply needs.
raising protein production levels and optimizing process design, says global biomass business development manager Cynthia Bryant.
relies on gasification to turn biomass into hydrogen and carbon monoxide. Proprietary bacteria then ingest the gases and produce ethanol
says chief marketing officer Wesley Bolsen. Mascoma, a start-up based in Lebanon, New hampshire, that announced a partnership with Chevron Technology Ventures on 14 september,
and later collaborated closely with Monsanto, the leading producer of genetically engineered seed, on transgenic crops.
The Danforth Center was founded with grants from Monsanto's philanthropic arm among others, and the president and chief executive of Monsanto is on the centre's board of trustees.
It was also Bill Danforth, the centre's founder, who originally proposed NIFA in 2004 when he was chair of a USDA task force;
At issue is a set of apparently conflicting assessments of the chemical's health hazard. In 2007, the EPA concluded that health standards could be met by proper use of masks and procedures,
The compound is used to fumigate soils, and is a replacement for methyl bromide a chemical that has been found to eat away at the ozone layer,
and which is being phased out under the Montreal Protocol. Although ozone-friendly, methyl iodide is carcinogenic and neurotoxic,
All chemical soil fumigants are among the nastiest of the 1 200 substances registered for agricultural use,
The EPA approved methyl iodide in October 2007, prompting protest at the time including from a group of chemists familiar with the toxic properties of the chemical in the lab
. I have read enough papers with cautions around the use of the chemical that it made
Alternatives to chemical fumigants are available including rotating strawberries with crops such as broccoli that contain natural pest deterrents,
says study co-author JÃ rg Bohlmann, a chemical ecologist at the University of British columbia in Vancouver, Canada,
The goal, says Dezene Huber, a chemical ecologist at the University of Northern British columbia in Prince George
says Pushpito Ghosh, director of the Central Salt and Marine Chemicals Research Institute in Bhavnagar.
Nature Newsthe Obama administration released new automobile standards on Tuesday, proposing regulations that would curb greenhouse-gas emissions and ratchet up fuel-efficiency standards beginning in 2012.
which effectively means that the greenhouse gas standards take over, says Jim Kliesch, a senior engineer in the Union of Concerned Scientists'clean vehicles programme in WASHINGTON DC.
and opt for new chemical refrigerants that contribute less to global warming. Other improvements will focus on a host of technologies for improving engines and transmissions
The US Environmental protection agency (EPA) has agreed to set new rules governing emissions of mercury and other toxic chemicals from power plants by November 2011,
& the Press News maker Large Hadron Collider Physicists last week injected particles into the accelerator for the first time
The GM brinjal variety was developed by Mahyco Monsanto Biotech, a joint venture between Jalna-based Maharashtra Hybrid Seed Company and US seed giant Monsanto.
The decision to seek further input has angered some crop scientists. The minister has set a bad precedent by ignoring the recommendation of the GEAC a statutory body consisting of scientists,
and caused the plants to produce a protein inducing resistance to the antibiotic kanamycin. However, an expert committee dismissed these concerns,
Tomasini says that one alternative would be to identify the services provided by forests, such as carbon sequestration,
On the same day, the US Environmental protection agency proposed a rule that would require major industrial facilities to use best available technologies to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions.
Chemical regulation: The US Environmental protection agency (EPA) laid out White house-backed principles for a radical reform of US legislation regulating toxic chemicals, at present controlled by the 1976 Toxic Substances Control Act.
EPA administrator Lisa Jackson said the act had proved to be an inadequate tool for protecting the public.
She wants to strengthen the EPA's authority to clamp down on dangerous chemicals, and for chemical manufacturers routinely to give the agency toxicity data.
The American Chemistry Council, which represents US chemical manufacturers, says it welcomes the reform. A congressional bill is expected soon.
Biosecurity: The US government should grade microorganisms and toxins according to their risk as potential biothreat agents,
and regulate them accordingly. That was the recommendation of a National Research Council report released last week, entitled Responsible Research with Biological Select Agents and Toxins.
Business watch In September, French company Arkema became the latest carbon-nanotube manufacturer this year to announce plans for a drastic scaling up of production.
Despite the materials'present reliance on the mixed fortunes of the automobile industry, the market for carbon nanotubes as raw materials looks set to grow rapidly.
Belgium process them into intermediate products for antistatic coatings, for example, sensors for gas detection and electrode material for batteries and,
Carbon cuts: Carbon dioxide emissions could fall by 3%worldwide this year because of the global economic crisis,
The chemistry prize was yet to be awarded as Nature went to press. See page 706 and www. nature. com/news for more.
including incentives for natural gas and nuclear power, but leaves many of the biggest issues including how to structure the initial allocation of emissions permits,
and how to regulate carbon trading largely unanswered. Who is running the show? And where do we go from here?
and to a lesser extent the natural-gas industry, see opportunities in the push toward low-carbon energy. Similarly, major companies such as The Dow chemical Company and General electric are pushing for legislation as part of the US Climate Action Partnership.
Could President Barack Obama still act through the Environmental protection agency (EPA? Yes, and he has opened already the door to direct regulation under the Clean Air Act.
and use the best available control technologies to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions. The agency limited the rule to new facilities that produce more than 25
000 tonnes of greenhouse gases a year; existing facilities would be affected if they propose major modifications.
but it could also roll out its own regulatory programme to reduce greenhouse gases if lawmakers fail to act.
Nature Newsmany strategies for reining in greenhouse gases come with substantial health benefits, according to a new study.
But the actions with the most dramatic impact on greenhouse gases aren't necessarily the biggest winners for health.
Twelve days before the United nations climate summit kicks off in Copenhagen, an international task force has published five research papers exploring the impact that strategies for tackling greenhouse gas emissions would have on public health.
and Tropical Medicine, modelled a number of scenarios for reducing greenhouse gases. For each case study, the authors calculated the reductions of disability-adjusted life-years (DALYS
Although the effects of cutting greenhouse gases are long term and global, she says, the health benefits are immediate and more localized,
In the past month, Monsanto and Dow Agrisciences have received government permission to plant transgenic maize across 24 plots,
where Monsanto has begun planting, transgenic maize is kept 500 metres away from conventional maize fields, says Eduardo Perez Pico, the firm's chief of research and regulatory affairs for the Latin american region.
The 2. 3-billion-base sequence the largest genetic blueprint yet worked out for any plant species includes more than 32,000 protein-coding genes spread across maize's 10 chromosomes.
a molecular biologist who studies maize at Stanford university in Palo alto, California, and is an author of one of the Public library of Science Genetics papers3.
Australia's national science agency has sought to defuse accusations that it is gagging scientists by allowing the publication, after some rewording, of a paper critical of the effectiveness of cap-and-trade schemes in controlling carbon emissions.
and so contain a record of the Solar system's chemistry and evolution because material that falls in freezes, becoming trapped.
and Sensing Satellite could have reached the Moon through impacts with comets rich in organic compounds. See go. nature. com/odk7he for more.
Carbon cutters: Brazil has pledged to reduce its projected carbon dioxide emissions in 2020 by 36-39%below business-as usual levels, increasing pressure on other countries less than a month before the United nations climate summit in Copenhagen.
Business watch One of the questions facing climate negotiators in Copenhagen next month is how to handle surplus carbon allowances in Russia
The Oslo-based consultancy Point Carbon projects that surplus carbon allowances will add up to the equivalent of 9 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide during the period 2008-12.
Point Carbon also analysed a 2013-20 scenario that takes into account the economic downturn and current commitments by developed countries.
however, because they do not represent new greenhouse-gas reductions. European union officials would like to eliminate them altogether in a new global-warming treaty,
scientists and politicians will release findings on the public-health effects of policies to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions. go. nature. com/4vfwwo 25-27 november Planetary scientists will discuss observations
If those chemicals are being sprayed in those areas, then it is quite possible that you will get concentrations that cause toxicity,
or by soil adsorption that takes the compounds out of solution. That's the sticking point, he says.
or Ruppy, that has red fluorescent protein that makes its nose, paw pads and claws red, even to the visible eye).
Yeakel analysed the ratios of carbon isotopes in the lions'tissues, which should reflect the isotope ratios of their prey.
Browsing animals, such as giraffes and antelopes, have different ratios of carbon isotopes to grazers because their food shrubs and trees versus grasses carries out different types of photosynthesis. The team characterized the humans'isotope ratios by taking advantage of a fluke of history,
says team leader Nathaniel Dominy, also at the University of California, Santa cruz. In the early twentieth century,
an archaeologist took more than 100 Taita skulls from Kenyan shrines and shipped them to England.
and found that the Taita's ratio of nitrogen isotopes was distinct from the herbivores.
and the lifetime average in bone collagen. He then modelled which prey combinations were most likely to produce the lions'isotope ratios.
The results show that for most of their lives, the maneaters'diets consisted primarily of grazing animals.
Extrapolating from their isotope ratios, the authors conclude that, over the 9 month period, the lions probably consumed around 10.5 and 24. 2 humans, respectively,
The different prey possibilities have similar isotope ratios, he says. As a result, a wide range of proportions of available prey items could account for the lions'isotope ratios,
including many or no people, even during the period before they became maneaters. Yeakel acknowledges that there are many possible combinations the model shows that humans could have made up 4-56%of the dominant maneater's diet
Developing countries are focusing on policies to reduce emissions growth and set up low-carbon development.
scientists and government officials have been updating the nation's greenhouse-gas inventories and quantifying potential reductions.
The government is also rethinking its position on the role of forest carbon in a future climate treaty.
cio Lula da Silva appointed a task force to study the issue after nine governors representing Amazon states urged him in June to reconsider Brazil's policy on carbon markets,
That panel has proposed allowing nations to offset up to 10%of their commitment by purchasing carbon credits for avoided deforestation.
if successful, would reduce the need to use chemical insecticides. Patients at the last chance clinic In February, artist Dunham Aurelius and accountant Sally Massagee got a thorough check-up at the US National institutes of health (NIH) in Bethesda, Maryland.
and characterize them at a molecular level (see'Last Chance Clinic').'Massagee, whose symptoms hinted at a novel condition involving genes that control muscle formation,
a build up of protein in the walls of her blood vessels, on 19 june, and says she is still recovering, albeit slowly.
which patients have high Vitamin d levels and calcification in parts of their kidneys. William Gahl
So far, one new disease with a genetic underpinning has been discovered in a family with blood-vessel calcification below the waist.
was known not to be associated with ectopic calcification. I think it's important. A handful of patients, like Massagee, were diagnosed with known conditions.
Orbiting Carbon Observatory plan re-emerges after splashdown On 24 february a payload shroud stayed stuck to a Taurus booster rocket,
and NASA's US$280 million Orbiting Carbon Observatory (OCO) crashed into the sea, dashing the hopes of scientists who wanted to use the satellite to measure sources
leaving behind a scaffold of collagen onto which the rabbits'own muscle and skin cells were grown.
and the carbon they contain. But just how much carbon is at stake? Researchers at the meeting have given their best answer yet:
the first satellite-based estimates of the biomass contained in the world's tropical forests. Current biomass estimates for the tropics are gathered based on data by the Food and agriculture organization of the united nations (FAO),
recently estimated to be around 15%of global carbon emissions (G r. van der Werf et al. Nature Geosci. 2, 737-738;
and other scientists to estimate how much carbon is locked within trees, vegetation and soils on a given patch of land rather than relying on rough averages that are calculated across a forest.
Sassan Saatchi, an environmental scientist at NASA's Jet propulsion laboratory in Pasadena, California, worked on one study with researchers at the carbon consulting firm Winrock International in Arlington, Virginia.
South america comes in with about 145 gigatonnes of carbon in vegetation and soils about 26%higher than what has been reported by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC.
a geographer at the World bank in WASHINGTON DC, is to produce better estimates for carbon emissions from deforestation.
if forests are going to be linked to international carbon markets. The new pantropical biomass maps from Saatchi and Woods Hole won't accomplish that goal,
but they can provide scientists and policy-makers with a better understanding of carbon trends. For example
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