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Topic Review
The Fungi That Degrade Plastic
Plastic has become established over the world as an essential basic need for our daily life. Plastics have many characteristics such as low production costs, inertness, relatively low weight, and durability. The primary disadvantage of plastics is their extremely slow natural degradation. The latter results in an accumulation of plastic waste in nature. Many fungi can be used to degrade plastics.
  • 1.1K
  • 03 Aug 2022
Topic Review
The Great Global Warming Swindle
The Great Global Warming Swindle is a polemical documentary film that suggests that the scientific opinion on climate change is influenced by funding and political factors, and denies the existence of a scientific consensus about the reality and causes global warming. The program was formally criticised by Ofcom, the UK broadcasting regulatory agency, which upheld complaints of misrepresentation made by David King. The film, made by British television producer Martin Durkin, presents scientists, economists, politicians, writers, and others who dispute the scientific consensus regarding anthropogenic global warming. The programme's publicity materials assert that man-made global warming is "a lie" and "the biggest scam of modern times." Its original working title was "Apocalypse my arse", but the title The Great Global Warming Swindle was later adopted as an allusion to the 1980 mockumentary The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle about British punk band the Sex Pistols. The UK's Channel 4 premiered the documentary on 8 March 2007. The channel described the film as "a polemic that drew together the well-documented views of a number of respected scientists to reach the same conclusions. This is a controversial film but we feel that it is important that all sides of the debate are aired." According to Hamish Mykura, Channel 4's head of documentaries, the film was commissioned "to present the viewpoint of the small minority of scientists who do not believe global warming is caused by anthropogenic production of carbon dioxide." Although the documentary was welcomed by global warming deniers, it was criticised by scientific organisations and individual scientists (including one of the scientists interviewed in the film and one whose research was used to support the film's claims). The film's critics argued that it had misused and fabricated data, relied on out-of-date research, employed misleading arguments, and misrepresented the position of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Later broadcasts corrected three errors in the original film.
  • 1.2K
  • 14 Oct 2022
Topic Review
The Heart of Borneo
The HoB is situated in Borneo, the third-largest island in the world next to Greenland and New Guinea. It is shared by Indonesia (Kalimantan) covering an area of 745,567 square kilometers (km2), Borneo Malaysia, comprising the states of Sarawak and Sabah with an area of 124,449 km2 and 73,711 km2, respectively, and a small-nation sate, Brunei Darussalam (5765 km2). The rainforests in Borneo, which evolved between 100 and 150 million years ago, are among the most biologically diverse on Earth. Representing just one percent of the earth’s terrestrial surface, the island of Borneo holds about six percent of the world’s plant and animal species. There are approximately 15,000 flowering plants and 3000 species of trees found in Borneo’s forest, including 6000 endemic species. The biologically diverse island is recognized as a globally significant biodiversity ‘hotspot’. In addition, the uplands of Borneo are a source of at least 14 of the 20 major rivers on the island. Thus, environmentally sustainable resource management is critically important in maintaining the ecological health of riverine systems, which underpin the socio-economic progress of 17 million people in Borneo.
  • 2.6K
  • 23 Sep 2021
Topic Review
The Heartland Institute
The Heartland Institute is an American conservative and libertarian public policy think tank founded in 1984 and based in Arlington Heights, Illinois. The Institute conducts work on issues including education reform, government spending, taxation, healthcare, tobacco policy, global warming, hydraulic fracturing, information technology, and free-market environmentalism. In the 1990s, the Heartland Institute worked with the tobacco company Philip Morris to attempt to discredit the health risks of secondhand smoke and to lobby against smoking bans.:233–34 Since the 2000s, the Heartland Institute has been a leading promoter of climate change denial. It rejects the scientific consensus on climate change, and says that policies to fight it would be damaging to the economy.
  • 1.7K
  • 30 Oct 2022
Topic Review
The Heritage Foundation
The Heritage Foundation (abbreviated to Heritage) is an American conservative think tank based in Washington, D.C., primarily geared towards public policy. The foundation took a leading role in the conservative movement during the presidency of Ronald Reagan, whose policies were taken from Heritage's policy study Mandate for Leadership. Since then, The Heritage Foundation has continued to have a significant influence in U.S. public policy making, and is considered to be one of the most influential conservative public policy organizations in the United States .
  • 4.1K
  • 07 Nov 2022
Topic Review
The Honey Bee Apis mellifera
The honey bee Apis mellifera Linnaeus (1758) provides many benefits to humans and ecosystems. This species is an important pollinator in natural environments, which may help to preserve and restore the biodiversity of wild plants. On the other hand, pollination in agro-ecosystems by managed honey bee colonies may enhance crop yield and quality, meeting the increasing food demand. Beekeeping is also a high-valued and income-generating activity, which provides humans with honey as high-quality food as well as substances used as raw materials and in pharmaceuticals. In addition, the honey bee and its products are valuable bioindicators and bioaccumulators of environmental pollution: they provide valuable information on the impact of human activities, enabling the implementation of measures to mitigate risks to human and ecosystem health. The honey bee is also linked to many cultural ecosystem services and has a longstanding tradition in human culture, mysticism, and religion. Its popularity may be therefore used for educational purposes and to raise public awareness of important issues, such as the conservation of pollinator habitats and biodiversity.
  • 1.1K
  • 22 Jun 2022
Topic Review
The Impact of Bitcoin on the Environment
While blockchain and distributed ledger technology offer immense potential for applications in transparency, security, efficiency, censorship resistance, and more, they have been criticized due to the energy-intensive nature of the proof of work consensus algorithm, particularly in the context of Bitcoin mining. Bitcoin’s environmental impact has been portrayed in comparison to countries (Netherlands, Ireland, Argentina) and to industries (steel, aluminum, gold, banking, Christmas lights, aviation, tumble dryers, and even the global monetary system). The former is usually preferred by critics, as it gives a sense of the scale of Bitcoin energy consumption. In contrast, the latter is usually preferred by advocates, who highlight that many industries surpass individual countries in energy consumption and this is not usually seen as a problem. Bitcoin’s environmental impact are not confined to GHG emissions but also encompass issues such as e-waste and noise pollution.
  • 276
  • 25 Aug 2023
Topic Review
The Impact of Climate Change on Cholera
Water ecosystems can be rather sensitive to evolving or sudden changes in weather parameters. These changes can result in alterations in the natural habitat of pathogens, vectors, and human hosts, as well as in the transmission dynamics and geographic distribution of infectious agents. 
  • 591
  • 27 Jan 2022
Topic Review
The Impact of Microplastics on Global Food Production
Microplastics (MPs), a new class of pollutants, are extremely varied and their effects are particular to each organism, making the qualitative assessment and evaluation of their effects on the global food industry extremely complex. MPs are present in air, earth, and water, and hence can access all sectors of the food production industry.
  • 195
  • 29 Nov 2023
Topic Review
The Implementation of Water Framework Directive in Europe
The development of a sustainable water quality monitoring system at national scale remains a big challenge until today, acting as a hindrance for the efficient implementation of the Water Framework Directive (WFD).
  • 311
  • 04 May 2023
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