Making paper without trees.
Paper has not always been made out of wood. The ancient Egyptians made paper out of papyrus plants; the 3rd-century Chinese made it of flax and wisteria; the 8th-century Japanese made it of hemp; and the 12th-century Spanish made it of cotton. A 17th-century English preacher named Gcorge Fox,...

Bleaching paper without chlorine.
A new process for making white paper without chlorine has been developed by Craig Hill of Emory University in collaboration with the Forest Products Laboratory at the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Forest Service. It substitutes polyoxometalate (POM) salts and oxygen for chlorine and creates only carbon dioxide and water as...

Taking chlorine out of tough pollutants.
The crisp white paper that readers and writers enjoy bears more than a monetary price. The unseen cost comes in the form of pollution, since many of the chemicals generated in paper manufacturing resist natural degradation and instead tend to linger, unwanted, in the environment. In the process of...

Republic of Sudan.
THE Republic of Sudan celebrated its National Day. It is a republic in northeastern Africa and the largest country of the African continent. Northern Sudan, ancient Nubia, was settled by Egyptians in antiquity, and was converted to Coptic Christianity in the 6th Century. Arab conquests brought Islam...

EPA: dioxins are more than carcinogens.
Dioxins are ubiquitous in the industrial world. Yet compared to other pollutants generated by human activities, dioxins appear to be released in trivial amounts. Perhaps only 30 pounds of these chemicals enter the U.S. environment annually, according to a new Environmental Protection Agency report. In terms of...

Keep Your Eyes Off the Screen: Online Cheating and What Can We Do About It.
Introduction Ever since teachers and students have been thrown together in universities, cheating and plagiarism have been persistent problems. The advent of the Internet and other online tools has greatly widened the scope of potential dishonesty. Electronic technology is making the task of protecting research integrity more...

Asthma and air pollution.
The World Health Organization (WHO) and the Asian Development Bank (ADB) have listed the Philippines as one of the ''high risk'' areas in environmental health, particularly in air pollution. They ranked Metro Manila as the 15th most polluted city in the world with suspended air particulates exceeding...

Beyond estrogens: why unmasking hormone-mimicking pollutants proves so challenging.
Over the past year, the news media have hammered home the message that most of the animal kingdom is bathed in a sea of pollutants that act like estrogen, the primary female sex hormone. Reinforced by photos of birds, fish, and alligators exhibiting gonadal malformations, a growing awareness and acceptance...

Honor among environmentalists.
John Zenner thought you could clean up pollution while saving jobs. Wisconsin saw it differently. John Zenner, 55, of East Troy, Wisconsin, is a big man of sunny disposition with an easy, bubbling laugh. He has needed his good humor much these past seven years. Though he...

Attack of the vog: natural air pollution has residents of Hawaii all choked up.
Jeff Sutton wrinkles his nose at the acrid fumes drifting across his desk. It's 9:45 a.m., a time when the office air typically transports the scent of bad coffee or perhaps the faint aroma of jelly donuts. But today the hallways reek unmistakably of sulfur. As a geochemist with...