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Environmental News Network -- Know Your Environment
Tattoos really are more than skin deep—and that raises questions about their safety.
Many people enjoy the aesthetic beauty of tattoos. But the brightly colored inks that make tattoos so vibrant and striking also carry health concerns, report authors of a new paper related to tattoo safety.
According to the Pew Research Center, 45 million Americans have at least one tattoo; roughly $1.65 billion is spent on tattoos each year in the U.S.
This week, EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy joined private and public sector leaders for a second annual White House roundtable discussion about the progress made and new steps taken to curb emissions of hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs), potent greenhouse gases used in refrigeration and air conditioning. Administrator McCarthy announced several new actions the agency will take to help support a smooth transition to climate-friendly alternatives to HFCs.
"EPA is working closely with industry leaders to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, transition to climate-friendly refrigerants, and deploy advanced refrigeration technologies,” said EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy. “The powerful combination of EPA’s regulatory actions and innovations emerging from the private sector have put our country on track to significantly cut HFC use and deliver on the goals of the President’s Climate Action Plan.”
El ecoturismo, en el que los viajeros visitan entornos naturales, con la intención de apoyar los esfuerzos de conservación de financiación o impulsar las economías locales, se ha convertido cada vez más popular en los últimos años. En muchos casos se trata de una observación minuciosa de o interacción con la vida silvestre, por ejemplo cuando los turistas nadan con los animales marinos.
Treinta y uno por ciento de las especies de cactus están amenazadas con la extinción, según la primera evaluación integral, global del grupo de especies de la Unión Internacional para la Conservación de la Naturaleza (UICN, International Union for Conservation of Nature) y asociados, publicado en la revista Plantas Naturales (Nature Plants).
Although researchers have known since 1999 that traces of the Ebola virus could remain in semen for months, two papers published in The New England Journal of Medicine today offer more detail about the frightening possibility that survivors of an infection could rekindle outbreaks. One study focuses on nearly 100 men in Sierra Leone who survived the dreaded viral illness, whereas the second one documents a clear case of sexual transmission of Ebola virus.
In the Sierra Leone study, researchers found Ebola viral RNA in semen samples from almost half the 93 men they tested. The likelihood of finding viral RNA declined as time from disease onset increased: All nine men who were tested 2 to 3 months after they fell ill had evidence of Ebola RNA in their semen, but the researchers found it in only 26 of 40 men whose infections had started 4 to 6 months earlier and in 11 of 43 men whose infections had started 7 to 9 months earlier. The result from one Ebola patient tested 10 months after disease onset was indeterminate.
Hacer predicciones sobre la variabilidad del clima a menudo significa voltear al pasado para encontrar tendencias. Ahora los investigadores “paleo-climáticos” de la Universidad de Missouri (UM) han encontrado pistas en el lecho de una roca expuesta junto a una autopista de Alabama, que podría ayudar a pronosticar la variabilidad del clima. En su estudio, los investigadores verificaron evidencia de que el dióxido de carbono se redujo significativamente al final del Período Ordovícico, hace 450 millones de años, precediendo a una edad de hielo y una extinción masiva. Estos resultados ayudarán a los climatólogos a predecir mejor los futuros cambios ambientales.
