Krag Conway (earthplanet3)
This work is aimed to investigate the effect of research and development (R&D) on reduce in environmental pressures through an empirical analysis of the top six global carbon emitters (the C6 China, USA, India, Russia, Japan, and Germany). This work is valuable toward carbon reduction within C6 countries and the world (C6 emit roughly 60% of the global carbon emissions). Moreover, it is also meaningful for exploring the decoupling of economic development from carbon emissions in other areas (both developing and developed countries). The main findings displayed that the decoupling status in developed countries (i.e., USA, Japan, and Germany) were better and more stable than in developing countries (i.e., China, India, and Russia). Germany performed best among the developed countries, and China performed most stable among the developing countries. The effect of the per capita R&D expenditure was main resistance to decoupling carbon emissions from economic development in C6 countries. However, the energy intensity effect and R&D efficiency effect related to technological progress were the main driving forces for the decoupling process. Consequently, this study proposes that the improvement of technological progress should be prioritized.There is increasing interest in understanding potential impacts of complex pollutant profiles to long-lived species such as the green sea turtle (Chelonia mydas), a threatened megaherbivore resident in north Australia. Dietary ingestion may be a key exposure route for metals in these animals and marine plants can accumulate metals at higher concentrations than the surrounding environment. We investigated concentrations of 19 metals and metalloids in C. mydas forage samples collected from a group of offshore coral cays and two coastal bays over a period of 2-3 years. Although no samples exceeded sediment quality guidelines, coastal forage Co, Fe, and V concentrations were up to 2-fold higher, and offshore forage Sr concentrations were ~3-fold higher, than global seagrass means. Selleck ODM-201 Principal Component Analysis differentiated coastal bay from coral cay forage according to patterns consistent with underlying terrigenous-type or marine carbonate-type sediment geochemistry, such that coastal bay forage was higher in Fe, Co, Mn, Cu, and Mo (and others) but forage from coral cays was higher in Sr and U. Forage from the two coastal bays was differentiated according to temporal variation in metal profiles, which may be associated with a more episodic sediment disturbance regime in one of the bays. For all study locations, some forage metal concentrations were higher than previously reported in the global literature. Our results suggest that forage metal profiles may be influenced by the presence of some metals in insoluble forms or bound to ultra-fine sediment particles adhered to forage surfaces. Metal concentrations in Great Barrier Reef forage may be present at levels higher than expected from the global seagrass literature and appear strongly influenced by underlying sediment geochemistry.Fall armyworm (FAW) is a new invasive pest that is causing devastating effects on maize production and threatening the livelihoods of millions of poor smallholders across sub-Saharan Africa and Asia. Using unique survey data from 2356 maize-growing households in Ghana, Rwanda, Uganda, Zambia and Zimbabwe, we examined how smallholder farmers are fighting this voracious pest. In particular, we assessed the FAW management strategies used by smallholders, socio-economic factors driving the choice of the management options, the complementarities or tradeoffs among the management options, and the (un)safe pesticide use practices of farmers. Results showed that smallholder farm households have adopted a variety of cultural, physical, chemical and local options to mitigate the effects of FAW, but the use of synthetic pesticides remains the most popular option. Results from multivariate probit regre