Monday, March 24, 2008

ENN: Green Guitars, Black Carbon, Bamboo Homes and Much More.


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Monday, March 24, 2008
News of Note

LOS ANGELES (Billboard) - Sustaining the supply of natural materials isn't a new idea in the musical instrument industry, which depends on old-growth wood to achieve the best tonal quality.

Top Stories

Fantasizing about building a bamboo home, but not sure if you'd like living in it? Here's a place that you can try before you buy. Take a much needed vaca to a Maui resort (swim to the island if you must), and rent a bamboo jungalow to experience what it would be like to live in a bamboo home. Bamboo Living Technologies offers building code certified pre-fab homes in the USA, built for any climate. So, you can practically grow your own home.

Organic food proponents will remember Thursday as the day the ground shifted. Giant food retailer Wal-Mart Stores Inc. announced that its store brand milk in the United States will now come exclusively from cows not treated with artificial growth hormones.

We've all read about the antioxidant superstars—the blueberries, blackberries, and cherries, for instance—that are so effective at squelching the audacious free radicals that bombard our bodies' delicate cells every day. But few studies have been aimed at investigating how well our bodies use these antioxidant-rich foods—and whether or not their soaring ORAC (oxygen radical absorbance capacity) scores really translate into practical, disease-fighting capabilities in humans.

Black carbon, a form of particulate air pollution most often produced from biomass burning, cooking with solid fuels and diesel exhaust, has a warming effect in the atmosphere three to four times greater than prevailing estimates, according to scientists in an upcoming review article in the journal Nature Geoscience. Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego atmospheric scientist V. Ramanathan and University of Iowa chemical engineer Greg Carmichael, said that soot and other forms of black carbon could have as much as 60 percent of the current global warming effect of carbon dioxide, more than that of any greenhouse gas besides CO2.

ENN Spotlight

EPA's Superfund program has identified 12 new hazardous waste sites throughout the U.S. to add to its list of locations that need to be cleaned up, in addition to six other sites that have been proposed as additions. Superfund has already added 1,581 sites, of which 324 have been deleted. Contaminants found at these sites range from arsenic to copper to lead.

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If you have ever gotten service at a car wash in Brazil, you know that many of them make up the phenomenon Hernando DeSoto calls dead capital. They operate outside of the formal economy, paying low wages off the books, skipping out on taxes and side-stepping regulations. This is the environment the owners of DryWash stepped into when their business first opened in 1994. I had the chance to talk to a partner of their International division recently and our discussion reminded me that the day in and day out work of the entrepreneurs and small businesspeople in developing countries is sometimes the most overlooked sustainable development initiative.

Cherry blossoms flowered in Tokyo and two other prefectures in Japan, the first of this season in designated observation areas across the country, the Japan Meteorological Agency said on Saturday. The emergence of the delicate, pale pink blooms is something of a national obsession, the focus of close media attention during the month or so it takes for the "cherry front" to move from south to north.

SINGAPORE (Reuters) - Europe's top semiconductor maker, STMicroelectronics, said it has developed a portable chip to detect influenza viruses including bird flu in humans. The device, which functions as a mini laboratory on a chip, can screen and identify multiple classes of pathogens and genes in a single diagnostic test within two hours, unlike other tests available on the market that can detect only one strain at a time and require days or weeks to obtain results.

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Member Press Releases
By: Center for Biological Diversity
The Center for Biological Diversity notified the National Marine Fisheries Service Friday of its intent to file suit against the agency for missing the first deadline in the Endangered Species Act listing process for the ribbon seal, imperiled by global warming and the melting of its sea-ice habitat in the Bering Sea off Alaska. By: Low Impact Living, Inc.
LOS ANGELES (March 20, 2008)— Low Impact Living.com, the largest green home improvement site online, has launched a groundbreaking new Household Environmental Impact Calculator and rating system. These tools will help Americans understand their environmental impacts and chart a course to a more eco-friendly home and lifestyle. (Please see the calculator at www.lowimpactliving.com) By: African Wildlife Foundation
KENYA--The African Wildlife Foundation (AWF) is pleased to announce the opening of Satao Elerai Camp, a luxury lodge set on 5,000 acres of communally conserved lands in southern Kenya. The camp is owned by the Entonet/Elerai Maasai community, which planned and created the enterprise with strategic support from AWF. Southern Cross Safaris, a leading private company, will operate the lodge and the conservancy as a single high-quality, highly efficient enterprise. By: the Jane Goodall Institute
Dr. Jane Goodall is coming to Chicagoland to celebrate the first anniversary of the Roots & Shoots Great Lakes Regional Office and to laud the community service efforts of Roots & Shoots groups across the Great Lakes region. Attendees at the event will include local dignitaries, the principal of the Richard J. Daley Academy and local Roots & Shoots members from the Chicago area. By: The Fields of Green Team
Burnaby, British Columbia CANADA, March 18, 2008 – The Fields of Green Team, (http://www.fieldsofgreenteam.com) in response to the high price of fuel is pleased to announce the creation of the Business to Business master pack program featuring Ultimate ME2 eco-fuel saving product. By: AAMCO Transmissions, Inc
Hastings, Mn.—March 18, 2008—AAMCO Transmissions, Inc recently announced another of its centers has passed the rigorous 'Eco-Green' certification process. The AAMCO center, located at 460 Spiral Blvd. in Hastings, Mn. met a rigorous new standard established by AAMCO as part of a national effort to green the auto industry. By: Center for Biological Diversity
Based on new science that documents health hazards of moving desert tortoises, the Center for Biological Diversity and Desert Survivors filed notice of their intent to sue three government agencies Monday over the relocation of hundreds of these charismatic and imperiled animals as "mitigation" for the impacts on tortoises from the expansion of the Fort Irwin army base. By: Environmental Law Institute
(Washington, DC) A report released this week, Design of U.S. Habitat Banking Systems to Support the Conservation of Wildlife Habitat and At-Risk Species, a joint effort of the Environmental Law Institute and Environmental Defense (both DC-based), assesses the potential for habitat banking to contribute to the conservation of priority wildlife habitat identified in the state wildlife action plans.

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