Burger King pledges to end use of caged pigs, hens

On Wednesday, the Miami-based chain committed to serving 100 percent cage-free eggs in its U.S. restaurants by 2017 and to buy pork only from suppliers with documented plans to end their use of gestation crates for breeding sows.McDonald's, the top U.S. hamburger chain by sales, vowed in February to work with its U.S. pork suppliers to phase out the use of gestation crates. Domestic pork producers confine millions of sows in cramped stalls while they raise piglets.Wendy's Co, which recently edged out Burger King to become the No. 2 hamburger chain in the United States, made a similar announcement in March.

Maldives: In a Troubled Paradise, Time Runs Out on Environmental Deadline

The Maldives are a group of islands in the Indian Ocean. They are a very popular vacation spot and the industry is growing at a rapid rate. It seems that the Maldives are a paradise. But underneath the tropical weather and beautiful hotels is an environmental disaster. Water pollution is destroying the corral in the atolls that scatter the archipelago. Also the majority of the maldives is an average of only 1.8 meters above sea level. This poses a great problem for them due to global warming. If the water level rises only a few feet, all of the islands could vanish. 

http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,2097119,00.html

Old Power Plants Need New Rules

 The Environmental Protection Agency’s proposal earlier this week to reduce greenhouse gases from new power plants was hailed by many environmentalists, but unless steps are taken quickly to bring existing plants under the rule, it will create a perverse incentive for companies to keep running older, more heavily polluting power plants. That’s bad economics that could lead to dirtier air. The proposal would regulate carbon emissions from future power plants but leave existing sources untouched. This is yet another instance in a more than 40-year pattern under the Clean Air Act in which old and outdated technology has avoided new environmental standards. The result is continuing unhealthy levels of pollution.

Denmark aims to get 50% of all electricity from wind power

The Danish government has stepped up its green energy and carbon reduction targets for 2020, hailing the plan as the "broadest, greenest, and most long-term energy agreement" it has ever reached.The deal aims to see Denmark cut its greenhouse gas emissions by 34% by 2020 compared to 1990 levels and decrease energy consumption by more than 12% compared to 2006."Denmark will once again be the global leader in the transition to green energy," said Lidegaard. "This will prepare us for a future with increasing prices for oil and coal. Moreover, it will create some of the jobs that we need so desperately, now and in the coming years."It also aims to supply 35% of its total energy from renewables, with half of its electricity delivered by wind farms. 

Viruses Recruited as Killers of Tumors

Dr. Mohr and a doctoral student, Matt Mulvey, then engineered a way for their virus to evade the immune system, making it an even more potent cancer-killing agent. Unlike chemotherapy, which can diminish in effectiveness over time, oncolytic viruses multiply in the body and gain strength as the infection becomes established. In addition to attacking cancer cells directly, some also produce an immune response that targets tumors. Today, several potential cancer-fighting viruses are in trials, including two in Phase 3 trials. An engineered form of vaccinia, the viral agent that helped eradicate smallpox, is being tested against advanced liver cancer, the third leading cause of cancer deaths globally. In a recent trial, survival for patients treated with high doses of the virus, called JX-594, doubled to 14 months from 7, compared with that of patients treated with low doses.

Salamanders Learn to Live With Pollution

Steven P. Brady found that Salamanders can evolve fairly rapidly, in 10 to 20 generations, in response to the chemical runoff found in many roadside ponds. In New England, where Mr. Brady did his work, much of this runoff is from the salt used to break up ice and snow as well as chemicals thrown off by cars like gasoline and oil. Salamanders whose parents lived in these surroundings were 25 percent more likely to survive if they found themselves in a polluted pond than salamanders whose forebears had been used to cleaner water. Mr. Brady pointed out that some analogous data has been collected in fish populations, some of which are better able to process chemical compounds like PCB’s.

Cardboard rolls aid Dounreay clean-up

The sludge mixer stirs radioactive material dredged from the Dounreay Fast Reactor in Caithness, with cement, inside 200 litre steel drums.Workers were having difficulty fitting the machine's motor drive to the spindle of its mixing paddle.They have been using the tubes to make it easier to access the spindle.By cutting the cardboard rolls into equal sized pieces they have been able to raise the paddle off the bottom of the drums.The spindle can then be easily reached because it pokes above the top of the drums.The cardboard easily squashes down and mixes with the sludge and cement without risking any damage to the device. Dounreay worker Ross Murray came up with the idea to use the cardboard rolls, the latest in a series of household items used in the £2.6bn clean-up of the plant.Domestic cleaning product Cillit Bang has been used to help clean plutonium stains.A design engineer at site also used the castors off his own living room couch to stop a machine dubbed the "hedgehog" from toppling over.The device was built to probe radioactivity levels and shoot video inside Dounreay's Prototype Fast Reactor.In tests, the device kept toppling over when turning corners.However, senior design engineer Calder Bain used the castors to stabilise the machine.