Earthwitness » for a better now.: January 2010

Pesticides most important barrier for the recovery of biodiversity on farmland

Since the early nineties the EU has implemented policies to reduce the dramatic negative effects of the use of pesticides on farmland. Nevertheless, a Europe wide study showed that insecticides and fungicides still had major negative effects on wild plant and animal species on arable farms.

The Nature Conservation and Plant Ecology Group of Wageningen University, part of Wageningen UR - together with eight other universities in West and Eastern Europe - investigated the effects of intensive farming on wild plant and animal species and the potential for biological pest control.

Stain repellent chemical linked to thyroid disease in adults

A study by the University of Exeter and the Peninsula Medical School for the first time links thyroid disease with human exposure to perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA). PFOA is a persistent organic chemical used in industrial and consumer goods including nonstick cookware and stain- and water-resistant coatings for carpets and fabrics.

Published in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives, The study revealed that people with higher concentrations of PFOA in their blood have higher rates of thyroid disease. The researchers analysed samples from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s nationally representative National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES).

Reducing salt in the American diet by as little as one-half teaspoon (or three grams) per day could prevent nearly 100,000 heart attacks and 92,000 deaths each year, according to a new study. Such benefits are on par with the benefits from reductions in smoking and could save the United States about USD24 billion in healthcare costs, the researchers add.

A team from the University of California, San Francisco, Stanford University Medical Center and Columbia University Medical Center conducted the study. The findings appear January 20 in online publication by the New England Journal of Medicine and also will be reported in the February 18 print issue of the journal.

How to prevent toxic exposures in the environment

University of California, San Francisco has launched online and print resources designed to help consumers make smarter decisions about substances that can harm general and reproductive health. A new brochure and web page include specific tips on reducing exposure to metals and synthetic chemicals in everyday life – at home, at work, and in the community – and provide links to other sources with more detailed information.

A brochure titled Toxic Matters, created by an alliance of partners led by the UCSF Program on Reproductive Health and the Environment (PRHE), offers practical recommendations for women, men and children that apply to everyone regardless of whether a person is pregnant or planning to have children in the future. It also covers how to become a conscientious shopper when purchasing household products and how to support public policies to stop chemical pollution before it happens.

Genetic analysis gives hope that extinct tortoise species may live again

Thanks to genetic data gleaned from the bones found in a several museum collections, an international team of researchers led by scientists from Yale believes it may be possible to resurrect a tortoise species hunted to extinction by whalers visiting the Galapagos Islands during the early 19th century, before Charles Darwin made his famous visit.

A genetic analysis of 156 tortoises living in captivity and the DNA taken from remains of specimens of the now-extinct Chelonoidis elephantopus revealed that nine are descendants of the vanished species, which once made its home on Floreana Island in the Galapagos. Over a few generations, a selective breeding program among these tortoises should be able to revive the C. elephantopus species, said Adalgisa Caccone, senior research scientist in the department of ecology and evolutionary biology at Yale and senior author of the piece published this week in the online journal PLoS ONE.

Tree planting in Kenya's Mau Complex signals new beginnings for a critical ecosystem

Kenya took a step to restore its diminishing water towers and address rapid environmental degradation when it launched a tree planting drive in the Kiptunga area of the Mau Forest Complex on Friday.

20,000 tree seedlings were planted on 20 hectares at a ceremony attended by Kenya's Prime Minister Raila Odinga and United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) Deputy Executive Director, Angela Cropper.

Mau, the largest indigenous forest in East Africa and Kenya's most vital water tower, covers some 270,000 hectares. After Mau, restoration will also take place in Mt. Kenya, Aberdares, Mt. Elgon and the rest of Kenya's forests and water catchment areas with the aim of increasing the forest cover from the current 1.7 percent to 10 percent by the year 2020.

New theory on the origin of primates

A new model for primate origins is presented in Zoologica Scripta, published by the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters and The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. The paper argues that the distributions of the major primate groups are correlated with Mesozoic tectonic features and that their respective ranges are congruent with each evolving locally from a widespread ancestor on the supercontinent of Pangea about 185 million years ago.

Michael Heads, a Research Associate of the Buffalo Museum of Science, arrived at these conclusions by incorporating, for the first time, spatial patterns of primate diversity and distribution as historical evidence for primate evolution. Models had previously been limited to interpretations of the fossil record and molecular clocks.

Wilder weather exerts a stronger influence on biodiversity than steadily changing conditions

An increase in the variability of local conditions could do more to harm biodiversity than slower shifts in climate, a new study has found.

Climate scientists predict more frequent storms, droughts, floods and heat waves as the Earth warms. Although extreme weather would seem to challenge ecosystems, the effect of fluctuating conditions on biodiversity actually could go either way. Species able to tolerate only a narrow range of temperatures, for example, may be eliminated, but instability in the environment can also prevent dominant species from squeezing out competitors.

"Imagine species that have different optimal temperatures for growth. In a fluctuating world, neither can get the upper hand and the two coexist," said Jonathan Shurin, an ecologist at the University of California, San Diego who led the project. Ecologists have observed similar positive effects on populations of organisms as different as herbacious plants, desert rodents, and microscopic animals called zooplankton.

Amy Townsend-Small, Earth system science postdoctoral researcher, found that management of urban "green" spaces emits more greenhouse gases than the plots take in and store. | Photo by Steve Zylius / University CommunicationsUniversity of California, Irvine study finds Turfgrass management creates more greenhouse gas than plants remove from atmosphere

Dispelling the notion that urban “green” spaces help counteract greenhouse gas emissions, new research has found – in Southern California at least – that total emissions would be lower if lawns did not exist.

Turfgrass lawns help remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere through photosynthesis and store it as organic carbon in soil, making them important “carbon sinks.” However, greenhouse gas emissions from fertiliser production, mowing, leaf blowing and other lawn management practices are four times greater than the amount of carbon stored by ornamental grass in parks, a UC Irvine study shows. These emissions include nitrous oxide released from soil after fertilisation. Nitrous oxide is a greenhouse gas that’s 300 times more powerful than carbon dioxide, the Earth’s most problematic climate warmer.

Measuring carbon dioxide over the ocean

Reliable measurements of the air-sea flux of carbon dioxide – an important greenhouse gas – are needed for a better understanding of the impact of ocean-atmosphere interactions on climate. A new method developed by researchers at the National Oceanography Centre, Southampton (NOCS) working in collaboration with colleagues at the Bjerknes Center for Climate Research (Bergen, Norway) promises to make this task considerably easier.

Infrared gas sensors measure carbon dioxide based on its characteristic absorption spectra and are used to evaluate the air-sea flux of the gas. So-called closed-path sensors precondition air before measurements are made, while open-path sensors can be used to measure the air in situ.

Oil from the Exxon Valdez spill continues to be found in the beaches along Alaska's Prince William Sound. Temple University researchers have found that the low concentrations of oxygen and nutrients in the beaches, along with the water flow in the beach's lower layer, have hindered the aerobic biodegradation of the remaining oil. | Credit: Michel Boufadel/Temple universityThe combination of low concentrations of oxygen and nutrients in the lower layers of the beaches of Alaska's Prince William Sound is slowing the aerobic biodegradation of oil remaining from the 1989 Exxon Valdez spill, according to researchers at Temple University.

Considered one of the worst environmental disasters in history, the Exxon Valdez spilled more than 11 million gallons of crude oil into Alaska's Prince William Sound, contaminating some 1,300 miles of shoreline, killing thousands of wildlife and severely impacting Alaska's fishing industry and economy.

In the first five years after the accident, the oil was disappearing at a rate of about 70 percent and calculations showed the oil would be gone within the next few years. However, about seven or eight years ago it was discovered that the oil had in fact slipped to a disappearance rate of around four percent a year and it is estimated that nearly 20,000 gallons of oil remains in the beaches.

Since the time of the earliest humans, people have attempted to understand the natural environment. We have observed our surroundings and searched for explanations for natural phenomena. Yet despite our persistence over thousands of years, many basic questions remain to be answered. Although we understand core processes such as photosynthesis, we do not have a full understanding of issues such as how plants maximize their photosynthetic capacity.

Specific leaf area, or SLA, plays a prominent role in ecological theories that attempt to provide explanations for plant and ecosystem function. SLA, a measurement of the total leaf area to dry mass, has been found to correlate with the potential for light-resource use, the relative growth rate of a plant, and differences in essential nutrient demand and habitat preference.

Heat and moisture from Himalayas could be a key cause of the South Asian monsoon

Harvard climate scientists suggest that the Tibetan Plateau—thought to be the primary source of heat that drives the South Asian monsoon—may have far less of an effect than the Himalayas and other surrounding mountains. As the monsoon brings needed rainfall and water to billions of people each year, understanding its proper origin, especially in the context of global climate change, is crucial for the future sustainability of the region.

The researchers say the their findings, published in the January 14th issue of Nature, have broad implications for how the Asian climate may have responded to mountain uplift in the past, and for how it might respond to surface changes in the coming decades.

Masdar, a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Mubadala Development Company focused on renewable energy and sustainability, and 1Malaysia Development Berhad (“1MDB”) have signed a cooperation agreement to explore clean technology projects and investments, including the possibility of building Malaysia’s first carbon-neutral city.

Masdar and 1MDB also intend to cooperate and invest in carbon reduction projects, under the Kyoto Protocol’s Clean Development Mechanism (“CDM”) and clean technology venture capital. If fully implemented the cooperation agreement would lead to the development of new catalytic projects, with an estimated value of USD100 million.

Masdar, Abu Dhabi’s multifaceted renewable energy initiative, the Masdar Institute of Science and Technology, Japan’s Cosmo Oil Company and the Tokyo Institute of Technology have launched an advanced concentrated solar power (CSP) Central Tower research and development project at Masdar City.

The state-of-the-art, collaborative research project will test an innovative ‘beam down’ technology, which has the potential to convert solar irradiation into electricity in a more efficient way than other technologies - producing a commercially viable ‘beam down’ process would represent a significant breakthrough in (CSP) technology.

eSolar, a global provider of reliable and cost-effective concentrating solar power (CSP) plants, and Penglai Electric, a privately-owned Chinese electrical power equipment manufacturer, today announced a master licensing agreement to build at least 2 gigawatts(GW) of solar thermal power plants in China over the next 10 years.

The deal was signed in the Chinese State Council building with government officials in attendance and represents the country's largest CSP project. Groundbreaking of the first 92 megawatts (MW) will take place in 2010.

The SMart Wind consortium, led by Mainstream Renewable Power and Siemens Project Ventures (SPV), a division company of Siemens Financial Services, has been awarded a contract to develop 4GW of wind farms by 2020 as part of The Crown Estate’s Round 3 offshore wind farm programme.

SMart Wind will develop projects in the “Hornsea” zone, comprising 4,735 square kilometres off the UK’s Yorkshire coast. Hornsea is one of nine zones to be developed in the seas around Great Britain as part of The Crown Estate’s Round 3 programme, and with a total planned installed capacity of 32GW this is enough to meet a quarter of the UK's electricity needs.

The crops on this small farm in rural Benin are watered by a solar-powered drip irrigation system. Photo: Marshall BurkeSun-powered pumps installed in remote villages in Benin provide a cost-effective way of delivering irrigation water, particularly during the long dry season.

Solar-powered drip irrigation systems significantly enhance household incomes and nutritional intake of villagers in arid sub-Saharan Africa, according to a new Stanford University study to be published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). The study found that solar-powered pumps installed in remote villages in the West African nation of Benin provide a cost-effective way of delivering much-needed irrigation water, particularly during the long dry season. The results are scheduled to be published the week of Jan. 4 in the online edition of PNAS.

Results from the first detailed analysis of the lowest ever temperature recorded on the Earth’s surface can explain why it got so cold and how cold it could possibly get.

During the Antarctic winter of 1983 (July) temperatures plunged to a record-breaking −89.2°C at the Russian Vostok research station - more than 30°C lower than the average winter temperature. Until this study scientists did not understand why or how the temperature on the vast East Antarctic plateau could hit such an extreme low.

Arctic TernNew information on bird migration is revealed by an international team of scientists who have confirmed that the Arctic tern flies more than 70,000 km on its annual migration trip from pole to pole — the equivalent of three trips to the moon and back over its lifetime.

Scientists from British Antarctic Survey (BAS), Greenland, Denmark, the United States and Iceland, successfully mapped the migratory movements using a tiny tracking instrument known as a geolocater. Weighing just 1.4g this highly specialised device was developed by BAS scientists specifically for tracking animal migration. Already used on other animals such as albatross, penguins and seals, they regularly record light intensity, which can be used to generate two geographical positions per day.

The poster child for sustainable fish farming—the tilapia—is actually a problematic invasive species for the native fish of the islands of Fiji, according to a new study by the Wildlife Conservation Society and other groups.

Scientists suspect that tilapia introduced to the waterways of the Fiji Islands may be gobbling up the larvae and juvenile fish of several native species of goby, fish that live in both fresh and salt water and begin their lives in island streams.

As agricultural land becomes increasingly valuable, the need to maximize its utilization increases and decisions about what crops to plant and where, become paramount.

The sunflower family includes a number of valuable food crops, with sunflower seed production alone valued at about $14 billion annually. Yet the sunflower family is the only one of a handful of economically important plant families where a reference genome is not available to enable the breeding of crops better suited to their growing environment or consumers tastes.

MangoThe cancer fighting properties of Mango have been revealed in a new study by Texas AgriLife Research food scientists, who examined the five varieties most common in the U.S.: Kent, Francine, Ataulfo, Tommy/Atkins and Haden.

Though the mango is an ancient fruit heavily consumed in many parts of the world, little has been known about its health aspects. The National Mango Board commissioned a variety of studies with several U.S. researchers to help determine its nutritional value.

Contaminated house dust linked to parking lots with coal tar sealant

Coal-tar-based sealcoat—the black, shiny substance sprayed or painted on many parking lots, driveways, and playgrounds—has been linked to elevated concentrations of the contaminants polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) in house dust. Apartments with adjacent parking lots treated with the coal-tar based sealcoat contained house dust with much higher concentrations of PAHs than apartments next to other types of parking lots according to new research released today on-line by Environmental Science and Technology (ES&T).

The study was conducted in Austin, Texas, by scientists at the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS).

One of the poorest countries in the world, Haiti, has been hit by a 7.0-magnitude Earthquake. Initial reports talk about big number of dead and injured in the streets of Haiti's capital Port-au-Prince. The highly impoverished country is not in a position to provide basic emergency services to help the injured. The quake struck at 4:53pm on Tuesday, and as night fell people were out in the streets - screaming and crying for help.

Francisco Suarez presented a portion of his solar pond research last month at the annual Fall AGU (American Geophysical Union) Conference in San Francisco. Photo by Mike Wolterbeek.Ecosystems of terminus lakes around the world could benefit from a new system being developed at the University of Nevada, Reno to desalinate water using a specialized low-cost solar pond and patented membrane distillation system powered by renewable energy.

“These lakes – hundreds worldwide – such as the Great Salt Lake, the Salton Sea, the Aral Sea and Walker Lake here in Nevada, see a decline in water levels and an increase in salinity from both human and natural processes,” Francisco Suarez, a doctoral student in hydrological sciences at the University, said. “The high levels of salinity are dangerous and unsustainable for aquatic life.”

Credit: NOAANOAA’s Fisheries Service has announced that it will consider listing Atlantic sturgeon as threatened or endangered under the federal Endangered Species Act. The agency received a petition from the Natural Resources Defense Council in October 2009, requesting that the species be listed throughout its range.

NOAA has been evaluating the need to list the species since 2007, when a formal status review was completed for the species by a team of biologists from NOAA, the U.S. Geological Survey, and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

Second warmest year on record warrants action

New figures showing that Australia experienced its second hottest year on record in 2009 should prompt politicians to take urgent action to cut carbon pollution.

The figures also show that average temperatures in 2009 were 0.9 degrees above the 1961-1990 average, and average temperatures for the whole decade were 0.48 degrees higher.

Camera traps yield first-time film of tigress and cubs

Camera traps deep in the Sumatran jungle have captured first-time images of a rare female tiger and her cubs, giving researchers unique insight into the elusive tiger’s behaviour.

After a month in operation, specially designed video cameras installed by WWF-Indonesia’s researchers seeking to record tigers in the Sumatran jungle caught the mother tiger and her cubs on film as they stopped to sniff and check out the camera trap.

HRH Princess Haya Bint Al Hussein with school children at a school in Mathare, Nairobi. (Copyright: WFP/Lionello Boscardi)HRH Princess Haya Al Hussein, a UN Messenger of Peace, took a turn serving bowls of maize and beans to school children in a Nairobi slum on Friday. For many of the kids, this meal was the only food they would receive throughout the day.

HRH Princess Haya Bint Al Hussein was moved to tears after she had finished speaking to Elizabeth Wanjira, one of the children she met at the Valley View School in Mathare, a Nairobi slum. Elizabeth told the Princess how her mother struggles daily to feed her at home, and that sometimes the meal she has in school is the only food that she eats in a day.

In a bid to curb the unprecedented loss of the world's species due to human activity - at a rate some experts put at 1,000 times the natural progression - the United Nations is marking 2010 as the International Year of Biodiversity, with a slew of events highlighting the vital role the phenomenon plays in maintaining the life support system on Planet Earth.

"Humans are part of nature's rich diversity and have the power to protect or destroy it," the Secretariat of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), which is hosted by the UN Environment Programme (UNEP), said in summarizing the Year's main message, with its focus on raising awareness to generate public pressure for action by the world's decision makers.

First Earth-like planet spotted outside solar system likely a volcanic wasteland

When scientists confirmed in October that they had detected the first rocky planet outside our solar system, it advanced the longtime quest to find an Earth-like planet hospitable to life.

Rocky planets - Earth, Mercury, Venus and Mars - make up half the planets in our solar system. Rocky planets are considered better environments to support life than planets that are mainly gaseous, like the other half of the planets in our system: Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune.

The rocky planet CoRoT-7 b was discovered circling a star some 480 light years from Earth. It is, however, a forbidding place and unlikely to harbor life. That's because it is so close to its star that temperatures might be above 4,000 degrees F (2,200 C) on the surface lit by its star and as low as minus 350 F (minus 210 C) on its dark side.

Organic feed influences gene expression in chickens

Organically fed chickens develop a different process of gene expression in their small intestines than that of chickens which get conventional feed. The organic chickens have higher expressed genes involved in the creation of cholesterol, but do not have raised cholesterol levels in their blood. This surprising conclusion was drawn by Wageningen animal researchers last month in the British Journal of Nutrition.

"We had not expected much difference in gene expression between the two groups of chickens because the same ingredients were found in both types of feed, and these differed only in the way they are cultivated," says researcher Astrid de Greeff of Livestock Research in Lelystad. "But it appears that another cultivation method can result in significant differences at the expression level. Much to our surprise, 49 genes seemed to be regulated differently."

Study sheds new light on key to life on earth

University of Manchester scientists have discovered exactly how plants obtain energy from sunlight through chlorophyll production in a study that helps to explain the design and activity of all enzymes

Professor Nigel Scrutton and his team at the Faculty of Life Sciences have not only gained a more detailed understanding of the production of the most abundant and life sustaining chemical on Earth, they also expect to apply their findings to all enzymes thus allowing the design of novel clinical and industrial processes.

The study, published in the latest edition of the Journal of Biological Chemistry (JBC), also takes in quantum tunnelling, a newly discovered enzyme mechanism where they use energy to blast through rather than climb a chemical reaction.

Valuable rare-earth raw materials extracted from industrial waste stream

Fierce competition over raw materials for new green technologies could become a thing of the past, thanks to a discovery by scientists from the University of Leeds.

Researchers from Leeds' Faculty of Engineering have discovered how to recover significant quantities of rare-earth oxides, present in titanium dioxide minerals. The rare-earth oxides, which are indispensable for the manufacture of wind turbines, energy-efficient lighting, and hybrid and electric cars, are extracted or reclaimed simply and cheaply from the waste materials of another industrial process.

EPA Proposes Science-Based Standards to Protect Public Health, Environment from Ozone "Smog"

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) today proposed a new science-based nationwide air quality standard for ozone "smog" to protect human health. "EPA's proposed standards promise clean air protections that reach from the nation's urban neighborhoods and communities to our rural forests and croplands," said Cal Baier-Anderson, Ph.D., a toxicologist with Environmental Defense Fund. "Children are especially vulnerable to ozone air pollution. For millions of children, high pollution days make it difficult to attend school, to play outside and to simply breathe."

The Agency's new action reverses a 2008 decision under the Bush EPA and follows the recommendations of expert scientists. EPA is scheduled to issue final standards in August 2010.

Closed Bering Strait and global climate. Scientists are unraveling a chain of events that led to large-scale warmings and coolings across the Northern Hemisphere during past ice ages. As ice sheets expanded, water levels dropped in the narrow Bering Strait (left) and cut off the flow of relatively fresh water from the northern Pacific through the Arctic into the saltier Atlantic. This altered ocean currents, increasing the flow of Atlantic water northward from the tropics and producing warming in the north Atlantic (right, shown in dark red) that melted ice sheets and affected climate patterns and sea levels across much of the world. (Courtesy Nature, modified by UCAR.)In a vivid example of how a small geographic feature can have far-reaching impacts on climate, new research shows that water levels in the Bering Strait helped drive global climate patterns during ice age episodes dating back more than 100,000 years.

The international study, led by scientists at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), found that the repeated opening and closing of the narrow strait due to fluctuating sea levels affected currents that transported heat and salinity in the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. As a result, summer temperatures in parts of North America and Greenland oscillated between warmer and colder phases, causing ice sheets to alternate between expansion and retreat and affecting sea levels worldwide.

A study by the University of Exeter provides the first evidence that coral reefs can recover from the devastating effects of climate change. Published Monday 11 January in the journal PLOS One, the research shows for the first time that coral reefs located in marine reserves can recover from the impacts of global warming.

Scientists and environmentalists have warned that coral reefs may not be able to recover from the damage caused by climate change and that these unique environments could soon be lost forever. Now, this research adds weight to the argument that reducing levels of fishing is a viable way of protecting the world's most delicate aquatic ecosystems.

Echinoderms contribute to global carbon sink

The impact on levels of carbon dioxide in the Earth's atmosphere by the decaying remains of a group of marine creatures that includes starfish and sea urchin has been significantly underestimated.

"Climate models must take this carbon sink into account," says Mario Lebrato, lead author of the study. The work was done when he was at the National Oceanography Centre, Southampton (NOCS) and affiliated with the University of Southampton's School of Ocean and Earth Science (SOES); he is now at the Leibniz Institute of Marine Science in Germany.

How plants 'feel' the temperature rise

Plants are incredibly temperature sensitive and can perceive changes of as little as one degree Celsius. A report in the January 8th issue of the journal Cell shows how they not only 'feel' the temperature rise, but also coordinate an appropriate response - activating hundreds of genes and deactivating others; it turns out it's all about the way that their DNA is packaged.

The findings may help to explain how plants will respond in the face of climate change and offer scientists new leads in the quest to create crop plants better able to withstand high temperature stress, the researchers say.

Eminent group of scientists call for moratorium on issuance of mountaintop mining permits

Based on a comprehensive analysis of the latest scientific findings and new data, a group of the nation's leading environmental scientists are calling on the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the U.S Army Corps of Engineers to stay all new mountaintop mining permits. In today's edition of the journal Science, they argue that peer-reviewed research unequivocally documents irreversible environmental impacts from this form of mining which also exposes local residents to a higher risk of serious health problems.

The authors – hydrologists, ecologists and engineers – are internationally recognized scientists, including several members of the National Academy of Sciences. They argue that the U.S. should take a global leadership role on the issue, as surface mining in many developing countries is expected to grow extensively in the next decade.

Coal from China's Xuan Wei County, widely used for cooking and heating, may contribute to unusually high rates of lung cancer among women in the region.Coal from mass extinction era linked to lung cancer mystery.

The volcanic eruptions thought responsible for Earth's largest mass extinction — which killed more than 70 percent of plants and animals 250 million years ago — is still taking lives today. That's the conclusion of a new study showing, for the first time, that the high silica content of coal in one region of China may be interacting with volatile substances in the coal to cause unusually high rates of lung cancer. The study, which helps solve this cancer mystery, appears in ACS' Environmental Science & Technology, a semi-monthly publication.

Adult rootworms feed on corn silks, while their larvae attack the roots. Photo by Joseph Spencer, INHS. The western corn rootworm beetle, a pest that feasts on corn roots and corn silk and costs growers more than $1 billion annually in the U.S., also can survive on the perennial grass Miscanthus x giganteus, a potential biofuels crop that would likely be grown alongside corn, researchers report.

Rootworm beetle larvae can survive to adulthood on Miscanthus rhizomes, and adult beetles will lay their eggs at the base of Miscanthus plants grown near cornfields, the researchers found. Their study, in the Public Library of Science journal PLoS ONE, is the first to identify Miscanthus as a host of the corn rootworm.

US biofuels policies flawed

The United States needs to fundamentally rethink its policy of promoting ethanol to diversify its energy sources and increase energy security, according to a new policy paper by Rice University’s Baker Institute for Public Policy.

The paper, "Fundamentals of a Sustainable U.S. Biofuels Policy," questions the economic, environmental and logistical basis for the billions of dollars in federal subsidies and protectionist tariffs that go to domestic ethanol producers every year. "We need to set realistic targets for ethanol in the United States instead of just throwing taxpayer money out the window," said Amy Myers Jaffe, one of the report's authors.

Solar-powered irrigation significantly improves diet and income in rural sub-Saharan Africa

Solar-powered drip irrigation systems significantly enhance household incomes and nutritional intake of villagers in arid sub-Saharan Africa, according to a new Stanford University study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). The two-year study found that solar-powered pumps installed in remote villages in the West African nation of Benin were a cost-effective way of delivering much-needed irrigation water, particularly during the long dry season. The results are published in the Jan. 4, 2010, online edition of PNAS.

"Significant fractions of sub-Saharan Africa's population are considered food insecure," wrote lead author Jennifer Burney, a postdoctoral scholar with the Program on Food Security and the Environment and the Department of Environmental Earth System Science at Stanford. "Across the region, these food-insecure populations are predominantly rural, they frequently survive on less than $1 per person per day, and whereas most are engaged in agricultural production as their main livelihood, they still spend 50 to 80 percent of their income on food, and are often net consumers of food."

Head-to-head studies identify best treatment regimen for hep C

In patients with chronic hepatitis C, treatment with peginterferon alpha-2a (PegIFNα2a) plus ribavirin (RBV) better suppresses the virus to undetectable levels in the blood than treatment with peginterferon alpha-2b (PegIFNα2b) plus RBV, according to two new head-to-head studies in Gastroenterology, the official journal of the American Gastroenterological Association (AGA) Institute.

Patients with chronic hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection are frequently treated with a combination of peginterferon, either PegIFNα2a or PegIFNα2b, and RBV. In fact, this combination, which is the treatment of choice, has increased sustained virological response (SVR) rates from less than 20 percent to more than 60 percent. Obtaining complete SVR is the goal of treatment for HCV; patients who experience SVR for more than six months often do not experience disease relapse.

Yellow River, ChinaChinese News Agency Xinhua has reported a diesel spill from a ruptured pipeline in northwestern China, seriously contaminating two rivers that finally flow into the Yellow River.

According to a local official, the Chishui and Weihe rivers were seriously contaminated after some 150 cubic meters of diesel leaked early Wednesday from a ruptured pipeline belonging to the China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC).

On the 5th anniversary of the Indian Ocean Tsunami, an international scientific team has cautioned against claims that 'bioshields' – belts of coastal trees – offer protection from tsunami or storm surges.

In fact, planting alien trees along exposed coastlines will do more harm than good, by destroying local ecosystems, displacing people and taking money away from more effective coastal defence projects, according to the scientists.

Different mutants of Arabidopsis thaliana. Image: Detlef WeigelUS-German team measures how quickly genomes change

Mutations are the raw material of evolution. Charles Darwin already recognised that evolution depends on heritable differences between individuals: those who are better adapted to the environment have better chances to pass on their genes to the next generation. A species can only evolve if the genome changes through new mutations, with the best new variants surviving the sieve of selection.