Air quality is a major challenge globally and is the single greatest environmental risk to human health. More than 90 per cent of the world’s population lives in areas that exceed the World Health Organization guideline for healthy air. In North America, Canada and the United States of America have …
Indigenous protesters and environmental groups have taken their fight against a coal-bed methane exploration project in Canada to the British media. An advertisement decrying Royal Dutch Shell's plan to drill wells in the headwaters region of the Stikine, Nass and Skeena rivers was carried in European editions of the Financial …
A nuclear revival is welcome so long as the industry does not repeat its old mistakes IN MARCH 1986 this newspaper celebrated "The Charm of Nuclear Power" on its cover. The timing wasn't great. The following month, an accident at a reactor at Chernobyl in Ukraine spread radioactivity over Europe …
Two liquid chromatography mass spectrometric techniques, i.e. ultra-performance liquid chromatography/quadrupole time-of-flight mass spectrometry (UPLC/Q-Tof MS) and high-performance liquid chromatography/tandem mass spectrometry (LC/MS/MS), were used for quantification, confirmation or identification of six macrolide antibiotic residues and/or their degradation products in eggs, raw milk, and/or honey. Macrolides were extracted from food samples …
>> Sicko, Produced and directed by Michael Moore, 125 minutes, USA Michael Moore has penchant for turning polemics into cinema. And good cinema at that. His first film, Roger and Me, delineated the economic plight of small us town in the wake of General Motors' decision to close down its …
European companies are not yet taking full advantage of carbon markets IT SOMETIMES seems that plans for emissions trading are piling up even faster than the greenhouse gases they are designed to curb. In late July the first emissions exchanges in Australia and Canada opened, in anticipation of mandatory carbon-trading …
An environmental group sued Canada for failing to meet its Kyoto Protocol obligation to cut greenhouse gases (GHG) in the country. The Canada chapter of an international NGO, Friends of the Earth (FOE), filed a lawsuit in the Ottawa federal court on May 29. They claimed that a clause in …
>> China has rejected a recent report of the International Energy Agency that had said the country would overtake the US as the world's biggest carbon dioxide emitter by 2008 (see
This study examines the activities of governments and researchers in six cities and urban regions to integrate climate concerns into policy and programs, and to adapt to climate change. The cities/urban regions studied were: London, New York City and the Metro East Coast Region, Boston Metropolitan Region, Halifax Regional Municipality, …
Coca-cola booted Students of the University of Guelph in Canada, have voted to remove Coca-Cola products from their campus because of the company's unethical practices in India and Colombia. As Coca-Cola's 10-year contract with the University of Guelph is set to expire in August 2007, a referendum calling for replacing …
scientists have always been puzzled by hills mysteriously rising from the sea floor in the Arctic Ocean. A paper recently published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters (Vol 34 No 1) offers an explanation: methane bubbling through seafloor sediments is the source of the swellings. These hills are called
Contrary to expectations, fishing countries have established relatively effective management plans for a few international fisheries. The model described in this article explains how such multilateral regulation can evolve in spite of strong political and economic barriers to cooperation. Qualitative cases from the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic …
Scientists have discovered a deposit of a solid form of natural gas off the east coast of Canada. Great hopes are being pinned on the discovery, which could address global energy concerns because the deposit is expected to be amenable to commercial exploitation. The discovery was recently presented at the …
numbers phobia: Children with Foetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder (FASD) have particular difficulty understanding numbers and sequences, a University of Alberta study shows. An assessment of 50 Canadian children diagnosed with FASD, a condition caused by the mother's alcohol consumption while a foetus is still in the womb, revealed that the …
A solid-phase extraction (SPE) and liquid chromatographic (LC) method was developed for the determination of selected fluoroquinolone (FQ) drugs including ofloxacin, norfloxacin, and ciprofloxacin in municipal wastewater samples. Extraction of the FQs was carried out with a weak cation exchanger SPE cartridge, the Oasis WCX. The cartridge was washed with …
The adaptation and climate change fields continue to expand rapidly. The scientific understanding of climatic change projections and the associated impacts from these changes, as well as the understanding of the vulnerabilities faced by human societies and structures, will continue to evolve over time. In the same way, procedures and …
the latest buzz: Researchers at Oregon State University have discovered the oldest bee ever known, a 100-million-year-old specimen preserved in almost lifelike form in amber, and an important link to help explain the rapid expansion of flowering plants during that period. The specimen, at least 35-45 million years older than …
The principles and modalities of a five-year programme to generate information on climate change and its impacts was the first issue to be resolved and adopted. It was hailed as a major step forward for developing nations. Under this programme, steps will be taken to assist all parties, in particular …
another attempt to bring chrysotile, the most common form of asbestos, under the prior informed consent list (pic) of the Rotterdam Convention has failed. Parties to this international treaty governing trade in toxic substances met in Geneva between October 10 and 13, 2006. But they couldn't agree on adding chrysotile …