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Environmental News Network -- Know Your Environment
An abundant enzyme in marine microbes may be responsible for production of the greenhouse gas. Industrial and agricultural activities produce large amounts of methane, a greenhouse gas that contributes to global warming. Many bacteria also produce methane as a byproduct of their metabolism. Some of this naturally released methane comes from the ocean, a phenomenon that has long puzzled scientists because there are no known methane-producing organisms living near the ocean’s surface.
Los hallazgos sugieren que la exposición a la contaminación del aire proveniente del tráfico en Londres durante el embarazo se asocia con un mayor riesgo de bajo peso de bebés nacidos a término. Pero el ruido relacionado con el tráfico parece no tener ningún efecto.
Chithra Karunakaran and Karen Tanino’s team developed a simple non-destructive method to screen hundreds of wheat leaf samples in a day, reducing the time and cost associated with traditional breeding programs to select varieties for drought tolerance. Their findings were published in the November issue of Physiologia Plantarum.
“Developing these types of tools better enables physiologists to complement breeding programs,” said Tanino, a professor of plant sciences at the University of Saskatchewan.
Power plants have been the biggest source of greenhouse gas emissions in the United States for more than 40 years. But according to new data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration, transportation has now claimed the top spot.
What’s the key ingredient to successful partnerships? York University Development Studies Professor Uwafiokun Idemudia reviewed existing research on an unorthodox union between a non-governmental organization (NGO) and an oil company with a history of spills in Nigeria. He found that collaboration was beneficial even when innate creative tensions exist, and to reach sustainable targets, the company needs to align its overall strategy with the goals of the partnership.
Los gobiernos necesitan dar a los expertos técnicos más autonomía y controlar sus nervios para proporcionar más estabilidad a largo plazo cuando invierten en energía limpia, sostienen los investigadores en cambio climático y en política de innovación en un nuevo documento publicado hoy. En la revista Nature los autores, de instituciones del Reino Unido y Estados Unidos, han establecido pautas para invertir en innovaciones energéticas cambiantes basadas en un análisis de los últimos veinte años de "lo que sí funciona" en programas de investigación de energía limpia.
