Friday, March 28, 2008

ENN: American West Heating Up, Squid Beaks, The End of Silicon and Much More


ENN: Environmental News Network [[ ENN Daily Newsletter - Friday, March 28, 2008 ]]
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Friday, March 28, 2008
News of Note

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - The U.S. West is heating up at nearly twice the rate of the rest of the world and is likely to face more drought conditions in many of its fast-growing cities, an environmental group said on Thursday.

Top Stories

Susan Greenfield and her girlfriend Llina Kempner couldn't wait for their new memory-foam mattress top to arrive. For months, they'd heard friends rave about how the high-tech material molds itself to your body. But when they unwrapped the three-inch-thick pad in their Manhattan apartment, they noticed a strong, acrid odor. "My nose and my lungs were miserable," recalls Greenfield. For the two nights Kempner slept on the mattress top, she felt nauseated. After Greenfield, who is chemically sensitive, had an asthma attack in the middle of the night, the couple returned the mattress pad. But its stench lingered in the apartment for weeks.

Degraded land in western Tanzania is gradually being reclaimed — two decades after work began to rehabilitate the declining ecosystems. Once a thriving and diverse woodland environment, western Tanzania supported the livelihoods of local communities without difficulty.

(Santa Barbara, Calif.) –– How did nature make the squid's beak super hard and sharp –– allowing it, without harm to its soft body –– to capture its prey? The question has captivated those interested in creating new materials that mimic biological materials. The results are published in this week's issue of the journal Science.

The future of computing is under the spotlight at the Institute of Physics' Condensed Matter and Materials Physics conference at the Royal Holloway College of the University of London on 26-28 March.The end of the silicon chip The silicon chip, which has supplied several decades' worth of remarkable increases in computing power and speed, looks unlikely to be capable of sustaining this pace for more than another decade – in fact, in a plenary talk at the conference, Suman Datta of Pennsylvania State University, USA, gives the conventional silicon chip no longer than four years left to run.

ENN Spotlight

MARAMBIO BASE, Antarctica (Reuters) - Argentina's base on Antarctica is more like a commune than a barracks.The 36 members of the Argentine Air Force stationed here all eat the same food, take turns washing dishes and clean their own clothing, regardless of rank.

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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Bush administration, which has resisted regulating carbon dioxide emissions, this spring will propose rules that could affect everything from vehicles to power plants and oil refineries, the top U.S. environmental official told Congress on Thursday. Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Stephen Johnson said the agency will issue proposed rules "later this spring" on "the specific effects of climate change and potential regulation of greenhouse gas emissions from stationary and mobile sources."

TOKYO (Reuters) - As Japanese sushi conquers restaurants and homes around the world, industry experts are fighting the side-effects of the raw fish boom: fake sushi bars, over-confident amateurs, poisoned consumers. Once a rare and exotic treat, seaweed rolls and bites of raw tuna on vinegared rice are now familiar to most food fans. So familiar, in fact, that many hobby cooks in Europe and the United States like to make them in their own kitchens.

CANBERRA (Reuters) - A cattle farmer in Australia's remote northern outback on Friday said he had found a giant ball of twisted metal, which he believes is space junk from a rocket used to launch communications satellites. Farmer James Stirton found the odd-shaped ball last year on his 40,000 hectare property, about 800 kilometers (500 miles) west of the northern Queensland state capital of Brisbane.

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Member Press Releases
By: California Safe Schools
Yesterday in Los Angeles, many distinguished environmental health and justice advocates in addition to political leaders expressed their gratitude & praised the efforts of the Los Angeles Unified School District, (2nd largest in the nation) for working cooperatively for a decade with California Safe Schools (CSS), a children's environmental health organization in creating the most protective pesticide policy for schools in the country. By: International Fund for Animal Welfare
Today, experts with IFAW (International Fund for Animal Welfare – www.ifaw.org) denounced the Canadian government's claims that a new condition of licence will improve the humaneness of Canada's commercial seal hunt. By: International Fund for Animal Welfare
(Yarmouth Port, MA - March 27, 2008) The International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW) announced today the launch of its new space, IFAW Island, in the virtual world called Second Life. IFAW Island will serve as a virtual meeting ground for those interested in animal welfare issues. By: Center for Biological Diversity
Conservation and health groups are seeking to end unsustainable commercial harvest of freshwater turtles in four southern states and to stop the export of contaminated turtles to international food markets. By: The National Audubon Society
The National Audubon Society and Toyota today launched TogetherGreen, a nationwide Audubon program to fund conservation projects, train environmental leaders, and offer volunteer opportunities to significantly benefit the environment. By: Rainforest Alliance
A new Rainforest Alliance study has found that forest concessions managed in compliance with Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) certification standards have seen fewer wildfires and less deforestation compared with protected and other areas within the Maya Biosphere Reserve, an area of tropical forest in Guatemala's northern Petén region that the government set aside to conserve its unique natural and cultural patrimony. By: Center for Biological Diversity
The Center for Biological Diversity notified the National Marine Fisheries Service Friday of its intent to file suit against the agency for missing the first deadline in the Endangered Species Act listing process for the ribbon seal, imperiled by global warming and the melting of its sea-ice habitat in the Bering Sea off Alaska. By: Low Impact Living, Inc.
LOS ANGELES (March 20, 2008)— Low Impact Living.com, the largest green home improvement site online, has launched a groundbreaking new Household Environmental Impact Calculator and rating system. These tools will help Americans understand their environmental impacts and chart a course to a more eco-friendly home and lifestyle. (Please see the calculator at www.lowimpactliving.com)

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