The European Union has introduced a directive on waste electrical and electronic equipment (WEEE). The directive makes producers responsible for the recycling of the electrical and electronic equipment that they put on the market. The results from a study of refrigerators made by CIT Elektronik, Chalmers Industriteknik in Sweden, indicate that the targets of the WEEE directive can not be achieved with the ordinary shredders used today. The study is based on the situation in Sweden, but it will be muc
Genetic test of ivory source could help thwart elephant poachers
Despite the international ban on selling African elephant ivory, poaching is still widespread. Law enforcers may soon have a new tool for cracking down on elephant poachers: a genetic analysis of ivory can help show which part of Africa it came from.
“[This method] enables determination of where stronger antipoaching efforts are needed and provides the basis for monitoring the extent of the trade,” say Kenine
Keeping predators at bay with flashing lights and loud noises instead of bullets
When wolves and other large carnivores threaten people and livestock, wildlife managers often resort to killing them. But now there’s hope for a non-lethal solution to controlling carnivores. New research shows that movement-activated guards with strobe lights and sound recordings can help keep wolves and bears away.
“High-technology devices are much more expensive, complicated and limited
Labeled “bird-friendly” but may accelerate tropical forest clearing
While shade coffee is promoted as protecting tropical forests and birds, conservationists are split on whether it actually works. The December issue of Conservation Biology has the latest on the debate: one side says shade coffee can give farmers a reason to preserve tropical biodiversity while the other side fears it can actually encourage farmers to clear more forest.
Shade coffee is a traditional farming
Chicago has one of the highest rates of lead poisoning in the United States, an extremely persistent health problem that particularly plagues urban areas. Now a new study by Northwestern University researchers shows that edible plants grown in urban gardens could contain potentially hazardous amounts of lead.
Kimberly A. Gray, associate professor of civil and environmental engineering at Northwestern University, and her team tested a variety of plants cultivated in Chicago residential garde
Enzymes, microbes and fungi are being brought into service to help clean up industrial and urban pollution, minesites, pesticide residues and chemically degraded agricultural areas.
CSIRO’s Dr John Oakeshott says that bioremediation of pesticides and other toxins has the potential to earn significant export dollars, as the work of Australian researchers finds overseas markets. It can also mean huge savings for Australian industry.
CSIRO is hosting an international Bioremediati
The highly endangered North Atlantic right whale population is facing a difficult journey to recovery. That recovery may become even more precarious if North Atlantic climate takes a turn for the worse, according to Cornell University ecologists.
Cornell scientists say that winter atmospheric conditions over the North Atlantic affect the abundance of zooplankton eaten by right whales, one of the most endangered species of marine mammal. New models developed by these scientists can be used
A study published this week in the journal Nature has revealed that even the food chain has cliques
Research by a team at Michigan State University, University of Maryland and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Great Lakes Environmental Research Laboratory examined what ecologists have previously theorized: that plants and animals in a complex network of interconnecting food chains – called a food web — interact more frequently with each other than with species ou
URI marine biologist says CO2 injection in deep sea would alter ocean chemistry, affect numerous creatures
A Bush Administration proposal to mitigate the effects of global warming by capturing carbon dioxide emissions from power plants and injecting it into the deep sea could have disastrous effects on sea life, according to a University of Rhode Island researcher.
Brad Seibel, assistant professor of marine biology at URI, said that while the Administration’s plan is sti
Are rainforests as ’natural’ as they appear? How best to replant large forest areas destroyed by fire? A new consultancy service providing the data needed to answer these and other questions has been established at the University of Oxford.
BioGeoSciences for Conservation’ (BGSC) has been set up to help managers having to make those decisions by providing information about how environments have evolved over long timescales. The consultancy service is backed by a specialist la
Fooling with Mother Nature by fragmenting long-established land parcels can have unanticipated and punishing consequences, leaving lasting damage to the environment.
A report published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (online early edition the week of Nov. 10) by two University of Illinois at Chicago biologists documents such harm caused to a tree native to Tanzania’s East Usambara Mountains where habitat fragmentation has broken a mutual relationship with the bir
As mountains of scrap tires continue to rise above the landscape, researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison have found an environmentally friendly use for them: grind them up and place the rubber bits beneath golf course greens.
In a paper accepted for publication in the journal Waste Management, the researchers show that these ground tires can absorb excess chemicals from fertilizers and pesticides, preventing them from leaching into groundwater and contaminating the surrounding enviro
A computer model developed at Ohio State University is giving researchers a new understanding of how municipal wells at a famous toxic waste site in Woburn, Massachusetts, came to be contaminated, and how much contamination was delivered to residents.
As dramatized in the book and movie A Civil Action, a cluster of childhood leukemia cases in Woburn led to a lengthy court battle in the 1980s, during which three commercial companies were accused of dumping toxic chemicals that entered two o
Wine lovers take note: global warming is already tinkering with your favorite indulgence.
A study of the world’s top 27 wine regions’ temperatures and wine quality over the past 50 years reveals that rising temperatures have already impacted vintage quality. As for the next 50 years, climate modeling for these same wine regions predicts a 2°C temperature rise that is likely to make cool growing regions better producers of some grape varieties, and already warm wine regions
A recent study conducted in eastern Greenland and published in the October 31 issue of the Science magazine provides new understanding of the dynamics of arctic lemming populations. Olivier Gilg and Ilkka Hanski from the University of Helsinki, Finland, and Benoît Sittler from the University of Freiburg, Germany, combined long-term field observations and mathematical modelling of what is probably the simplest vertebrate predator-prey community in the world. In the study area in the Karup Valley, at
The treatment of waste has become a problem of international importance. Concretely, the recycling of plastics from waste electrical and electronic equipment is particularly significant due to use in their manufacture of critical components such as specific bromates or heavy metal additives. Thus the need to find ecological solutions for the treatment of these goods.
This European project arose as a result of the need to continue with the work started in 1998 with the COMBIDENT project, fina
Feedback
