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Pollution Is Leading to Atmospheric Warming, Larger Clouds and Bigger Storms

via DOE/Pacific Northwest National Laboratory

Thunder cloud. Photo by Tony CyphertPollution is warming the atmosphere through summer thunderstorm clouds, according to a computational study published May 10 in Geophysical Research Letters. How much the warming effect of these clouds offsets the cooling that other clouds provide is not yet clear. To find out, researchers need to incorporate this new-found warming into global climate models.

Pollution strengthens thunderstorm clouds, causing their anvil-shaped tops to spread out high in the atmosphere and capture heat -- especially at night, said lead author and climate researcher Jiwen Fan of the Department of Energy's Pacific Northwest National Laboratory.

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Multiple Studies Find Wild Salmon Endangered by Farmed Salmon

Farm raised salmonA newly published collection of more than 20 studies by leading university scientists and government fishery researchers in Alaska, British Columbia, Washington, Oregon, California, Russia and Japan provides mounting evidence that salmon raised in man-made hatcheries can harm wild salmon through competition for food and habitat.

"The genetic effects of mixing hatchery fish with wild populations have been well-documented," says journal editor David Noakes from Oregon State University. "But until now the ecological effects were largely hypothetical. Now we know the problems are real and warrant more attention from fisheries managers."

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Recyclable “Fold Your Own” Furniture Made from Cardboard

A Paperpedic bedroomThe Karton Group in Australia has a new take on cardboard packaging. Instead of shipping furniture in cardboard, their furniture IS the cardboard. Imagine picking up a bedroom set for the cost of a typical end table—0r drawers, desks, chairs, even a children's play set. Aside from being appropriately inexpensive, all of Karton's products are completely recyclable.

Check out the video below of the assembly instructions for Karton's Paperpedic Bed—a system of cleverly folded cardboard panels which connect to form an incredibly strong and beautiful bed base. The Paperpedic Bed can morph from a cute single to a mega king-sized affair in minutes. With a load capacity of close to a ton, this paper bed sleeps 1-10 comfortably.

Perfect for students or people who frequently move, if this furniture gets too beat up, you can just fold it up, toss it in the recycle bin and get a new set.

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The Rise of ‘Adult Onset’ Diabetes in Children

by Mark Hyman, MD, via The Huffington Post

OreosNever before in human history have we seen "adult onset" or Type 2 diabetes in children. There has been a more than 1,000 percent increase in Type 2 diabetes in children over the last two decades.  Fifteen years ago 3 percent of new cases of diabetes in children were Type 2 diabetes. Now it is 50 percent.  Forty percent of children are now overweight and 2 million are morbidly obese, exceeding the 99th percentile for weight.

Scientists say that we have only 3,600 cases of Type 2 diabetes in children. Nonsense. Almost all of those 2 million morbidly-obese kids have either pre-diabetes or diabetes or what we should call "diabesity." In adults, 25 percent of diabetics and 90 percent of pre-diabetics are not diagnosed. In children, most of the cases are missed.

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Have Corporations Hijacked Academic Research?

by Jill Richardson, via AlterNet.org

Corporate influence of academic researchHere’s what happens when corporations begin to control education.

"When I approached professors to discuss research projects addressing organic agriculture in farmer's markets, the first one told me that 'no one cares about people selling food in parking lots on the other side of the train tracks,’” said a PhD student at a large land-grant university who did not wish to be identified. “My academic adviser told me my best bet was to write a grant for Monsanto or the Department of Homeland Security to fund my research on why farmer's markets were stocked with 'black market vegetables' that 'are a bioterrorism threat waiting to happen.' It was communicated to me on more than one occasion throughout my education that I should just study something Monsanto would fund rather than ideas to which I was deeply committed. I ended up studying what I wanted, but received no financial support, and paid for my education out of pocket."

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UCLA Study Finds Sugar and High Fructose Corn Syrup Can Hamper Learning

Another sweet surprise: UCLA Study Finds Sugar and High Fructose Corn Syrup Can Hamper LearningAttention, college students cramming between midterms and finals: Binging on soda and sweets for as little as six weeks may make you stupid.

A new UCLA rat study is the first to show how a diet steadily high in fructose slows the brain, hampering memory and learning—and how omega-3 fatty acids can counteract the disruption. The peer-reviewed Journal of Physiology publishes the findings in its May 15 edition.

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A New Documentary Calls Out Drinking Water’s Impending Demise

by Tara Lohan, via AlaterNet.org

Water level in Lake Mead. Photographer: Brandy RolinThe first voice you hear in the new documentary Last Call at the Oasis is Erin Brockovich's—the famed water justice advocate whom Julia Roberts portrayed on the big screen.

"Water is everything. The single most necessary element for any of us to sustain and live and thrive is water," says Brockovich as her voice plays over clips of water abundance—gushing rivers and streams. "I grew up in the midwest and I have a father who actually worked for industry ... he promised me in my lifetime that we would see water become more valuable than oil because there will be so little of it. I think that time is here."

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Conservation Hero, Lawrence Anthony—Saving the animals

Lawrence Anthony (right)[One of the early editions of Organic Connections, published in August of 2007 carried this article on the late Lawrence Anthony. With the enchanting story appearing in various outlets about the elephants he cared for in Africa standing vigil after his death, we have reposted this piece in his honor.]

The date is March 20, 2003. Spurred on by intelligence reports of hidden weapons of mass destruction, U.S. armed forces, accompanied by those of Britain, Poland and Denmark, begin the invasion of Iraq. Along with the entire world, a man named Lawrence Anthony watches from his South African home.

But Anthony’s viewpoint is not the same as ours—he is greatly concerned over the fates of hundreds of animals trapped inside the Baghdad Zoo. Knowing what became of zoos in other war-torn areas such as Afghanistan, Kuwait and Yugoslavia—where the animals were annihilated or died from abandonment and starvation—he is particularly concerned because this zoo is the largest in the Middle East.

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HBO Takes on the Weight of the Nation

by Sarah Henry, via Grist.org

The Weight of the NationHBO has a history of tackling important American healthcare crises. In recent years, the cable network has taken on addiction and Alzheimer’s to much critical acclaim. And now the network has turned its attention to another huge health problem: Obesity and its enormous economic, emotional, social, and health cost on individuals, families, communities, and the country at large.

As Americans have gained weight in recent years, rates of diabetes, heart disease, stroke, and other obesity-related health problems have also skyrocketed. Type 2 diabetes (once known as “adult-onset diabetes”) rates are soaring among kids. And this is a generation that may well die at a younger age than their parents, largely because of medical concerns associated with excess weight.

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Solar Windows: Turning Buildings into Energy Producers

by Dave Levitan, via Yale Environment 360

Imagine if all these glass surfaces were solar panelsIf you picture the glittering glass skyscrapers that dot America’s cities, it becomes clear why the idea of using that vast window space to generate solar power is gaining traction. In 2009 alone, 437 million square feet of windows were installed in non-residential buildings in the United States. That many square feet of standard solar panels would generate around 4 gigawatts of power, roughly the total installed solar capacity in the U.S. today.

Such potential is leading engineers and entrepreneurs to more intensively explore the idea of turning windows into solar-power producers. Solar windows, a subset of the growing field known as building-integrated photovoltaics, are based on the concept that a window doesn’t need to be 100 percent transparent, and a solar panel doesn’t need to be 100 percent opaque. Several ways currently exist to turn a window into a power-generating device, from thin-film silicon, to dye-sensitized solar cells, to tiny organic cells.

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Is the Chesapeake Bay Environment Henpecked by the Chicken Industry?

by Tom Laskaway, via Grist.org

Chesapeake Bay dead zoneThe Gulf of Mexico dead zone seems to get all the attention. Yes, this low-oxygen area that forms every year in the waters surrounding the Mississippi Delta is the largest dead zone—currently around the size of Massachusetts—but it’s not the only one in U.S. waters.

The Chesapeake Bay has a dead zone, too. In fact, it covered a third of the Chesapeake last year and continues to grow. And last month, the University of Maryland’s Center for Environmental Science gave the Bay a D+ in its annual “health report card.”

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Vermont Legislature Votes to Ban Fracking

via Environmental News Service

Fracking operation in North Dakota (Photo by Robert Johnson) MONTPELIER, Vermont, May 8, 2012 (ENS) — Vermont is about to become the first U.S. state to ban hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, for natural gas.

The Vermont House of Representatives voted 103-36 Friday [May 4, 2012] to approve a conference committee report calling for the ban. The report reconciles differences with a bill banning the practice passed by the state Senate last week.

The measure now goes to the desk of Governor Peter Shumlin, a Democrat, who is expected to sign it into law.

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Going Wild to Counter Bee Colony Collapse

by Enrique Gili, via Grist.org

BeehiveIn 2009, lifelong beekeeper Dan Harvey faced an existential crisis when he lost 
much of his honeybee stock to colony collapse disorder (CCD). So the former Vietnam-era Special Forces veteran did what came naturally: He took to the deep dark woods of the Pacific Northwest, searching for answers to his predicament.

Harvey began by hunting for wild and feral bees living near his home in Port Angeles, Wash. (These bees have escaped from commercial colonies and find refuge in the tall timber and glens enveloping the Olympic Peninsula). For years, he crossbred the feral bees he captured with honeybees in order to produce hybridized hives that would be well-suited to the dank climes of the temperate rainforest region.

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Farmers Markets Are Expanding Online

by Katherine Gustafson, via Yes! Magazine

CSA delivery basketsIt isn’t always easy finding fresh, high-quality food in this country. Supermarkets with their long, complex supply chains usually offer unripe or subpar produce that leaves a lot to be desired. But the usual alternative methods of provision have distinct limitations. Luckily, technology provides one great answer to this dilemma, opening up an important new avenue for small-scale producers to connect to customers.

Only local farms can deliver the very freshest produce. But while the common methods of providing this bounty to consumers—community supported agriculture (CSA) plans and farmers’ markets—are essential components of a revitalizing fresh-food sector, they don’t always provide a sufficiently flexible or robust shopping experience.

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Technology Breakthrough Offers Improved GMO Testing

by Cookson Beecher, via Food Safety News

GMO TestingDoes this food contain genetically modified organisms?

That's what many consumers, including overseas trading partners, want to know about the food they're buying.

A prime example of that is the recent initiative in California, dubbed the "Right to Know" campaign, which calls for food manufacturers in the Golden State to identify genetically engineered ingredients on the labels of food products sold in that state.

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NSF Study Shows Plant Diversity Is Key to Productive Crops

National Science Foundation's (NSF) Cedar Creek Long-Term Ecological Research (LTER) site in MinnesotaVegetation, such as a patch of prairie or a forest stand, is more productive in the long run when more plant species are present, results of a new study show.

The long-term study of plant biodiversity found that each species plays a role in maintaining a productive ecosystem, especially when a long time horizon is considered.

The research found that every additional species in a plot contributed to a gradual increase in both soil fertility and biomass production over a 14-year period.

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Battling Illness on Public Transportation

via Rice University

UV Air filter systemThe best place to enjoy a breath of fresh air may be a city bus, if Rice University students have their way. A team of graduating seniors has created a system for public transit that would continually clear the air of pathogens that can lead to tuberculosis (TB), flu and pneumonia.

The CityBusters—Joseph Spinella, Jerry Lue, Sundeep Mandava, Grace Ching and Shidong Chen, all seniors—have installed a $500 device on a METRO bus in Houston that has proven effective at killing 99.8 percent of the pathogens that circulate through the air-filtering system. The device, called FluProof, incorporates high-powered ultraviolet lamps that sterilize the air on the fly.

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The Costs of the Obesity Epidemic

by Sharon Begley, Reuters, via The Huffington Post

Obesity is causing massive increases in unexpected costsU.S. hospitals are ripping out wall-mounted toilets and replacing them with floor models to better support obese patients. The Federal Transit Administration wants buses to be tested for the impact of heavier riders on steering and braking. Cars are burning nearly a billion gallons of gasoline more a year than if passengers weighed what they did in 1960.

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Are There Drugs in Your Chicken Dinner?

by Richard Schiffman, via The Huffington Post

Banned drugs are being found in factory-farmed chickensIn 2005, the antibiotic fluoroquinolone was banned by the FDA for use in poultry production. The reason for the ban was an alarming increase in antibiotic-resistant campylobacter bacteria in the meat of chickens and turkeys -- "superbugs," which can lead to a lethal form of meningitis that our current antibiotics are no longer effective against.

Antibiotic-resistant infections kill tens of thousands of people every year, more than die of AIDS, according to the Infectious Diseases Society of America. This problem is on the rise because antibiotics are recklessly overused, especially in the commercial livestock industry, where 80% of all antibiotics manufactured in the U.S. end up.

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Making Childhood Obesity Our Business

by David Katz, MD, via The Huffington Post

"Food" marketed to kidsThere was an expression, once commonly used, to describe a situation in which it was easy to exploit people: "like taking candy from a baby." As with all such similes, the illustration itself was meant to be the extreme, self-evident case. Stealing a baby's candy is something so outrageously objectionable that all decent people must oppose it. It would concern anyone, and everyone. It would be everybody's business.

We don't hear that expression much any more for fairly obvious reasons. There is, if anything, far too much "candy"—and variations on the theme of candy, such as soda, sugary cereals, and so on—to go around; and too much of it in particular heads right into the mouths of our babes. The new-age problem is selling far too much candy to babies (well, children, really). That, too, is objectionable!

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A Climate Scientist Decides to Fight Back

by Michael Mann, via Yale Environment 360

Melting Artic sea iceAs scientists, we are used to having our work questioned.

Anyone who has ever attended a scientific meeting knows that scientists are hardest on themselves. When we present a new research paper at a conference, colleagues often interrupt us with sharp, pointed questions. Those questions are asked in good faith, in an attempt to make our work better and advance scientific knowledge.

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Indie Retailer Causes Kashi to Announce Move to Non-GMO

by Caren Baginski, via NewHope 360

Where's My KashiAfter a whirlwind of a week for Kellogg-owned Kashi Company, the natural cereal and granola giant has announced its intent to ditch GMOs in two existing product lines by 2014. And by 2015, all new Kashi foods will contain 70 percent organic ingredients and also be Non-GMO Project Verified. While the company was already moving toward non-GMO, what prompted this sudden announcement?

Perhaps it was consumer outrage to an anti-GMO viral photo circulated on Facebook created a PR nightmare for Kashi—one that the company tried to curb with a video response that didn't satisfy consumers. On April 30, 2012, the brand offered a more satisfying response to its customers, and one that's surely capturing the attention of natural retailers as they evaluate their role in effecting healthy change in the market.

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The Folly of Big Agriculture Fighting Nature

by Verlyn Klinkenborg, via Yale Environment 360

Corn field. Photo by by fishhawk, via FlickrIn its short, shameless history, big agriculture has had only one big idea: uniformity. The obvious example is corn. The U.S. Department of Agriculture predicts that American farmers—big farmers—will plant 94 million acres of corn this year. That’s the equivalent of planting corn on every inch of Montana. To do that you’d have to make sure that every inch of Montana fell within corn-growing parameters. That would mean leveling the high spots, irrigating the dry spots, draining the wet spots, fertilizing the infertile spots, and so on. Corn is usually grown where the terrain is less rigorous than it is in Montana. But even in Iowa that has meant leveling, irrigating, draining, fertilizing, and, of course, spraying.

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California GMO Labeling Initiative Headed for November Ballot

GMO labeling campaignSAN FRANCISCO, May 2, 2012 — /PRNewswire/ — In victory rallies across state today, supporters celebrated as the California Right to Know campaign filed 971,126 signaturesfor the state's first-ever ballot initiative to require labeling of genetically engineered foods. The huge signature haul, gathered in a 10-week period, is nearly double the 555,236 signatures the campaign needs to qualify for the November ballot.

If passed this November, Californians will join citizens of over 40 countries including all of Europe, Japan and even China who have the right to know whether they are eating genetically engineered food.   

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Improving Solar Panel Efficiency by Imitating Leaves

via Princeton University, Engineering School

Microscopic folds increase the power output and durability of solar cells. Credit: Frank WojciechowskiTaking their cue from the humble leaf, researchers have used microscopic folds on the surface of photovoltaic material to significantly increase the power output of flexible, low-cost solar cells.

The team, led by scientists from Princeton University, reported online April 22 in the journal Nature Photonics that the folds resulted in a 47 percent increase in electricity generation. Yueh-Lin (Lynn) Loo, the principal investigator, said the finely calibrated folds on the surface of the panels channel light waves and increase the photovoltaic material's exposure to light.

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