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Mientras que los bosques tropicales por largo tiempo han atraído la atención por su papel en la captura de carbono, los debates sobre el Ártico se han centrado en si vamos a permitir a las empresas extraer petróleo muy hacia el norte, y en qué cantidad.

Ahora, los científicos están sugiriendo que el Ártico debería atraer el interés por otra razón: El cambio climático, acelerado por el deshielo del permafrost, con la consiguiente emisión de gases de efecto invernadero, que podría costar a la economía mundial en el largo plazo, tanto como $ 43 billones de dólares.

As much as 47 percent of the edible U.S. seafood supply is lost each year, mainly from consumer waste, new research from the Johns Hopkins Center for a Livable Future (CLF) suggests. The findings, published in the November issue of Global Environmental Change, come as food waste in general has been in the spotlight and concerns have been raised about the sustainability of the world’s seafood resources.

An investigation has found that the majority of French lettuce contains traces of hormone disrupting chemicals, some of which are banned. Journal de l Environnement reports. 

The French NGO Générations Futures released the results of an inquiry into chemical contamination in food products on Tuesday (22 September). After examining the contaminants in strawberries in July 2013, the NGO published a report this week entitled EXPPERT 5, examining lettuce, the fourth most popular vegetable in France.

The findings were less than impressive: of the 31 products bought in supermarkets in the French departments of the Oise and the Somme, grown on conventional farms, over 77% contained traces of at least two pesticides, and only 19% were pesticide-free.

While rain forests have long scored attention for their role in trapping carbon, discussions concerning the Arctic have centered on whether or not, or how much, we are going to allow companies to drill for oil far up north. Now, scientists are suggesting the Arctic should have renewed focus for another reason: Climate change, accelerated by the melting of permafrost and resulting greenhouse gas emissions, could cost the global economy, in the long run, as much as $43 trillion.

A recent study led by researchers at the Cornell University-affiliated Boyce Thompson Institute (BTI) in collaboration with colleagues at Rutgers and Italy’s San Raffaele University and Research Institute, shows that aspirin’s main breakdown product, salicylic acid, blocks the protein, HMGB1, which could explain many of the drug’s therapeutic properties.

The findings appear Sept. 23, 2015, in the journal Molecular Medicine.

“We’ve identified what we believe is a key target of aspirin’s active form in the body, salicylic acid, which is responsible for some of the many therapeutic effects that aspirin has,” said senior author Daniel Klessig, a professor at BTI and Cornell University. “The protein, HMGB1, is associated with many prevalent, devastating diseases, including rheumatoid arthritis, heart disease, sepsis and inflammation-associated cancers, such as colorectal cancer and mesothelioma,” he said.