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Environmental News Network -- Know Your Environment
Interest in using cover crops to improve soil health continues to grow in the Texas Rolling Plains region, but the nagging concern of reductions in soil moisture and effects on yields of subsequent cash crops still exists.
In the underground rivers and flooded caves of Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula, where Mayan lore described a fantastical underworld, scientists have found a cryptic world in its own right.
How safe is the water you drink? For the 45 million Americans who get their drinking water from private groundwater wells rather than a public utility, the answer is decidedly murky. The Environmental Protection Agency regulations that protect public drinking water systems don’t apply to privately owned wells, leaving owners responsible for ensuring their water is safe from contaminants.
MIT researchers have developed a new system that could potentially be used for converting power plant emissions of carbon dioxide into useful fuels for cars, trucks, and planes, as well as into chemical feedstocks for a wide variety of products.
The western corn rootworm continues to be on the rise in Europe. Why attempts to biologically target this crop pest by applying entomopathogenic nematodes have failed, can now be explained by the amazing defense strategy of this insect. In their new study, scientists from the University of Bern, Switzerland, and the Max Planck Institute for Chemical Ecology in Jena, Germany, show that the rootworm larvae are able to sequester plant defense compounds from maize roots in a non-toxic form and can activate the toxins whenever they need them to protect themselves against their own enemies. (eLife, November 2017, DOI: 10.7554/eLife.29307.001)
Lakes Environmental Research anunció, hace dos semanas, la emisión de la patente número 9,605,212 B2 por parte de la Oficina de Patentes de EEUU, que cubre un proceso revolucionario de recuperación de arenas petrolíferas. El "nuevo proceso de recuperación de arenas bituminosas con ‘ultra bajo’ contenido de agua " (NUWORP) reduce significativamente, con la posibilidad de eliminar, tres de las mayores barreras para una adopción más amplia de la producción de arenas petrolíferas, pues está diseñado para:
Actualmente, las vastas reservas de arenas petrolíferas en el oeste de Canadá tienen su mercado restringido debido al calentamiento global y a las preocupaciones del cambio climático asociadas con la alta intensidad actual de dióxido de carbono (CO2) asociado a la extracción de petróleo de arenas petrolíferas.
