Category Archives: Environment

Can raw low grade cotton clean up oil spills? — Maybe says a study (with a cool demonstration video) at Texas Tech 0

© 2013  Peter Free Citation — to study Vinitkumar Singh, Ronald J. Kendall, Kater Hake, and Seshadri Ramkumar, Crude Oil Sorption by Raw Cotton, Industrial & Engineering Chemistry Research 52 (18): 6277–6281, DOI: 10.1021/ie4005942 (08 May 2013) Citation — to press release John Davis, Low-Grade Cotton Brings Top Value in Oil Spill Cleanup, Texas Tech [...]

Tectonic modeling casts (apparently legitimate) doubt on previous assessments of dramatic sea level rise, allegedly due to continental ice sheet melting — a comment regarding the difficulty of obtaining measuring perspective, when having nothing unmoving to stand on 0

Citation — to study David B. Rowley, Alessandro M. Forte, Robert Moucha, Jerry X. Mitrovica, Nathan A. Simmons, and Stephen P. Grand, Dynamic Topography Change of the Eastern United States Since 3 Million Years Ago, Science Express,  DOI: 10.1126/science.1229180 (16 May 2013) Citation — to press release Canadian Institute for Advanced Research, World’s biggest ice [...]

Methane emission levels across the southern US are apparently higher than suspected — says a comparatively low budget science project 0

© 2013 Peter Free Citation — to study Ira Leifer, Daniel Culling, Oliver Schneising, Paige Farrell, Michael Buchwitz, and John P. Burrows, Transcontinental methane measurements: Part 2. Mobile surface investigation of fossil fuel industrial fugitive emissions, Atmospheric Environment, http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.atmosenv.2013.03.018 (in press, early online publication, 11 May 2013) Citation — to press release George Foulsham, UC [...]

Somewhat botched communication from the US Forest Service — regarding the carbon sequestration value of urban trees — an example of dumbed down science analysis that goes nowhere — and a comment on the desirability of not using imprecise language to communicate units of measurement 0

Citation — to study David J. Nowak, Eric J. Greenfield, Robert E. Hoehn, and Elizabeth Lapoint, Carbon storage and sequestration by trees in urban and community areas of the United States, Environmental Pollution 178: 229–236, http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.envpol.2013.03.019 (July 2013) Citation — to Forest Service press release Press Office, US urban trees store carbon, provide billions in [...]

An apparently clever way of collecting and treating beach seaweed for other purposes, including biofuel 0

© 2013 Peter Free Citation — to press release Asociación RUVID, The University of Alicante invents a system to clean seaweed from beaches, AlphaGalileo Foundation (03 May 2013) Moving bulky things around has obvious costs, and sometimes it’s better to get most of the processing done on site From the press release: A research group [...]

Sahara’s Laperrine’s olive tree — its clonal survival strategy worked for in the past — but allegedly may be unavoidably self-defeating now — (i) an illustration of possible diminished genetic fitness in climate changing times or (ii) biologists jumping to unwarranted conclusions 0

© 2013 Peter Free Citation — to study G. Besnard, F. Anthelme, and D. Baali-Cherifc, The Laperrine’s olive tree (Oleaceae): a wild genetic resource of the cultivated olive and a model-species for studying the biogeography of the Saharan Mountains, Acta Botanica Gallica 159 (3): 319-328, DOI: 10.1080/12538078.2012.724281 (26 November 2012) Citation — to press release [...]

Illinois’ wild pollinators are significantly reduced in numbers — and domestic honeybees probably cannot make up the difference — one study compared Illinois sites that had been sampled in the late 1800s, 1970s, and 2010-2011 — and another looked at wild pollinators’ contribution to 41 international crop systems 0

© 2013 Peter Free Citation — to studies Laura A. Burkle, John C. Marlin, and Tiffany M. Knight, Plant-Pollinator Interactions over 120 Years: Loss of Species, Co-Occurrence, and Function, Science 339 (6127): 1611-1614 (29 March 2013) Lucas A. Garibaldi, Ingolf Steffan-Dewenter, Rachael Winfree, Marcelo A. Aizen, Riccardo Bommarco, Saul A. Cunningham, Claire Kremen, Luísa G. [...]

New study indicates that dengue (breakbone fever) is 3 times more prevalent than the World Health Organization had estimated 0

© 2013 Peter Free Citation — to study Samir Bhatt, Peter W. Gething, Oliver J. Brady, Jane P. Messina, Andrew W. Farlow, Catherine L. Moyes, John M. Drake, John S. Brownstein, Anne G. Hoen, Osman Sankoh, Monica F. Myers, Dylan B. George, Thomas Jaenisch, G. R. William Wint, Cameron P. Simmons, Thomas W. Scott, Jeremy [...]

Peru’s Quelccaya Ice Cap provides a Rosetta Stone (indexing key) for 1,800 years of climate data — with insight into two rewarding lives devoted to science — and a piece of outstanding lay science writing from Pam Frost Gorder at Ohio State University 0

© 2013 Peter Free Citation — to study L. G. Thompson, E. Mosley-Thompson, M. E. Davis, V. S. Zagorodnov, I. M. Howat, V. N. Mikhalenko, and P. N. Lin, Annually Resolved Ice Core Records of Tropical Climate Variability Over the Past ~1800 Years, Science Express, DOI: 10.1126/science.1234210 (04 April 2013) Citation — to press release [...]

One Anasazi archaeological site reportedly demonstrates that Puebloans had food sources beyond maize — not that this should surprise anyone 0

© 2013 Peter Free Citation — to press release Tom Robinette, UC Research Examines Ancient Puebloans and the Myth of Maize, University of Cincinnati (02 April 2013) Busting a myth that no one with a functioning brain would have believed? Tom Robinette reports from the University of Cincinnati that: Nikki Berkebile, a graduate student in [...]