Europe

State of the world's nursing 2025

Central to the achievement of the Agenda for Sustainable Development is an adequate, equitably distributed and fully supported health workforce. Nurses are the largest occupational group and represent an indispensable force with which to combat inequities in access to health services and progress towards health-related Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), while …

Flowering in concrete jungles

It's not time yet to write the obituary of urban biodiversity. A recent study by Czech ecologist Pavel Pysek reveals that European cities host a large number of wild plants. Berlin tops the list with 1,432 species, while Polkowice, a small city in western Poland, is at the bottom. Pysek …

Bananas over bananas

The European Court of Justice has rejected Germany's complaint about the European Community's (ec) banana import rules. Germany, the largest importer of bananas, favours the Latin American variety and its grouse is that the ec regime prefers producers in Europe and its former colonies over Latin America. Until recently, Germany …

Breaks in particle accelerator

European Laboratory for Particle Physics sees little chance of an agreement g hammered out soon for the financing of Europe's next generation particle accelerator, the Large Hadron Collider (LHCJ (Down to Earth, September 30, 1994). CERN's 2 host countries, France and Switzerland, continue to stonewall efforts by Germany and the …

Nurturing a delta

EUROPE's largest remaining wetlands may yet be saved from devastation. The Global Environment Facility has given a $4.5 million grant to Romania to help it preserve the rare flora and fauna of the Danube delta. The greatest threat to the delta comes from the pollutants and waste accumulated by the …

Plastic is good

Incinerating unrecyclable waste plastic is environmentally the most benign way of disposing of it, new experiments show (New Scientist, Vol 143, No 1932). Europe's Association of Plastic Manufacturers incinerated municipal waste containing 3 different proportions of plastics -- without added plastic, with 7.5 per cent extra plastic and with 15 …

Common standards

The European Community has approved a draft directive under which member states will have common air quality monitoring standards and pollution limits. The directive will cover 14 air pollutants, ranging from sulphur and nitrogen dioxide to ground-level ozone and carbon monoxide. The Community envisages pollution limits for all the substances …

Putting the lid on Chernobyl

ONE of the few bright spots in the recently-concluded stormy European Community (EC) summit in Corfu in Greece was the unanimous decision on the need to shut down, permanently and as quickly as possible, reactors at the Chernobyl nuclear plant in the Ukraine. EC leaders decided to put their might …

Bacterial flesh eaters

A carnivorous pack of bacteria has struck terror in parts of the US and Europe. Known as group A streptococcus, the bacteria, say researchers, can cause a fatal drop in blood pressure, toxic shock and organ failure. In their most macabre form, they eat away human flesh. Over the past …

EC launches from audits

IT IS time for European farmers to clean up their backyards: the European Community has launched in London its first environmental audit for farms. The brainchild of Linking Environment and Farming (LEAF), a British organisation promoting profitable but environment-friendly farming, the audit has won support from the government, conservationists, supermarkets, …

Rotten eggs in our face

THE errant ways of humans have the most unexpected effects on ecosystems. Ecologists J Graveland and his colleagues at the Netherlands Institute of Ecology say that air pollution and the subsequent acid rain have had enormous impact on the reproduction of a common European bird -- the great tit (Nature, …

Green goes red

"GOING green" has turned out to be a risky proposition for paper producers in Europe, who have invested heavily in a pioneering technology that is totally chlorine free, in a bid to please their environment-conscious customers. Chlorine, normally used as a bleaching agent, is also a heavy polluter, adding toxic …

No milking the super cows

FIRST superheroes and now supercows. The USA is raising a breed of super-udders that will raise milk production in the country by 25 per cent, according to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). From 1 February, 1994, some farmers began injecting the hormone bovine somatrophin (BST) into cows to boost …

In the red with green measures

GREEN is not a popular colour in Europe at the moment -- at least not with industry. Flattened under the weight of over 200 environment protection rules, many European companies are afraid that they may lose the sharp edge of the market wedge. British prime minister John Major clarified Britain's …

The business of environment

IN NOT too distant a future, much of the pep and zing may disappear from environmental campaigns. Business may well reduce a concern for the environment into advertisement copy to burnish its own image among the public and in stockmarkets. Business today has its own vision of an approach to …

India catching up fast

SCIENTISTS at Hyderabad's Indian Institute of Chemical Technology (IICT) recently announced they can now produce in the laboratory HFC-134a, a hydrofluorocarbon that is seen as the best substitute for CFCs, especially in USA and Japan. With access to the multilateral fund set up under the Montreal Protocol, IICT scientists plan …

The Greenfreeze revolution

FORON, a firm formerly called DKK Scharfenstein based in eastern Germany, was on the brink of bankruptcy last year after reunification when Greenpeace, an international environment group, gave it orders for 10 prototypes of refrigerators that use eco-friendly chemicals as coolants. FORON turned out a prototype that uses a mixture …

Options to Chloroflurocarbons

The problem coolant:CFCs-To be phased out ine developing world by 2010 under the Montreal Protocol on Substances that deplete the Ozone Layer. Deplete the Ozone Layer. Deadlines could be advanced by 4 years. The possible substitutes In favour Against Hydrochloroflurocarbons such as HCFC-22 Can only be a temporary substitute to …

Russia`s role raises hopes and fears

AFTER much dithering, Russia has joined Europe, Canada and Japan in the US-led international space station project. Russia will merge its Mir programme with the US Freedom programme for the project, the first of its kind. Orbiting where Russia's Mir 1 is currently deployed, the project will consist of the …

A way out for India

INDIAN fridge manufacturers may find an alternative to chlorofluorocarbons (CFC) in a technology that is being revived in some European countries. Besides being eco-friendly, the adoption of this technology will rid Indian manufacturers of dependence on Western companies for a CFC substitute. Most substitutes on offer today for ozone-depleting CFCs, …

Science cannot be a minion to wealth

What do you think went wrong with scientific progress and the scientific establishments in Europe after the Second World War? The Second World War was a period of rapid technical achievement. Radar, jet engines and nuclear energy were successfully put to use in a very short period of time. As …

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