PRESS-NEWS.org - Press Release Distribution
PRESS RELEASES DISTRIBUTION

New American Chemical Society podcast: Stop wasting food and save energy

2010-11-02
(Press-News.org) WASHINGTON, Nov. 1, 2010 — Generations of Moms and Grandmas have preached the virtues of not wasting food. Now scientists are reporting a compelling new reason to follow this advice: It could save enormous amounts of energy, according to the latest episode in the American Chemical Society's (ACS) award-winning podcast series, "Global Challenges/Chemistry Solutions." They say that the United States could immediately save the energy equivalent of about 350 million barrels of oil a year — without spending a penny or putting a ding in the quality of life: Just stop wasting food.

The new Global Challenges podcast and website describe scientific research explaining that food contains energy and requires energy to produce, process, and transport. Estimates indicate that between 8 and 16 percent of energy consumption in the United States went toward food production in 2007. Michael Webber and Amanda Cuéllar, in their study in ACS' journal Environmental Science & Technology, found that it takes the equivalent of about 1.4 billion barrels of oil to produce, package, prepare, preserve and distribute a year's worth of food in the United States.

They said that despite this large energy investment, the U.S. Department of Agriculture estimates that people in the U.S. waste about 27 percent of their food. The scientists realized that the waste might represent a largely unrecognized opportunity to conserve energy and help control global warming.

INFORMATION: The new podcast is available without charge at iTunes and from ACS at www.acs.org/globalchallenges. ACS encourages educators, schools, museums, science centers, news organizations, and others to embed links to Global Challenges on their websites. Recent podcasts in the series include the importance of hand-washing to stop the spread of disease; nanotechnology for more sustainable buildings, producing cost-effective biodiesel from sewage sludge and green exercise for better mental health.

Global Challenges/Chemistry Solutions is a series of podcasts describing some of the 21st Century's most daunting problems, and how cutting-edge research in chemistry matters in the quest for solutions. Global Challenges is the centerpiece in an alliance on sustainability between ACS and the Royal Society of Chemistry. It includes topics such as providing a hungry, thirsty world with ample supplies of nutritious food and clean water; developing alternatives to petroleum to fuel society; preserving the environment and assuring a sustainable future for our children; and improving human health.

The American Chemical Society is a nonprofit organization chartered by the U.S. Congress. With more than 161,000 members, ACS is the world's largest scientific society and a global leader in providing access to chemistry-related research through its multiple databases, peer-reviewed journals and scientific conferences. Its main offices are in Washington, D.C., and Columbus, Ohio.


ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:

Microreactor speeds nanotech particle production by 500 times

2010-11-02
CORVALLIS, Ore. – Engineers at Oregon State University have discovered a new method to speed the production rate of nanoparticles by 500 times, an advance that could play an important role in making nanotechnology products more commercially practical. The approach uses an arrayed microchannel reactor and a "laminated architecture" in which many sheets, each with thousands of microchannels in them, are stacked in parallel to provide a high volume of production and excellent control of the processes involved. Applications could be possible in improved sensors, medical ...

Diverse surgeons initiative effectively increases underrepresented minorities in academic surgery

2010-11-02
CHICAGO (November 1, 2010) – According to a report published in the October issue of the Journal of the American College of Surgeons, a grant-funded program tailored to provide advanced minimally invasive surgery skills to young, underrepresented minority surgeons, is helping address shortages of minority faculty members at US medical institutions. The report states that the Diverse Surgeons Initiative (DSI) has helped 86 percent of graduates in the program acquire fellowship training. These outcomes surpassed the 2005 national percentage of fifth-year residents in academic ...

Inhaled steroids increase diabetes risk, say Lady Davis Institute researchers

2010-11-02
Patients taking inhaled corticosteroids are at increased risk of developing type 2 diabetes, and more so with higher doses, say researchers at the Jewish General Hospital's Lady Davis Institute for Medical Research (LDI) In Montreal. The risk is of special concern for patients suffering from chronic obstructive pulmonary disorder (COPD), and much less significant for asthmatics. "These medications are very effective in asthma, so the benefits clearly outweigh the risk for asthmatics," said Dr. Samy Suissa, Director of the Centre for Clinical Epidemiology at the LDI, and ...

Common stomach bacteria may fight off inflammatory bowel disease caused by Salmonella

2010-11-02
Ann Arbor, Mich. — Helicobacter pylori, a common stomach bacterium, reduced the severity of inflammation of the colon caused by Salmonella in mice, according to research from U-M Medical School scientists. More than half the people in the world are infected with H. pylori, although it is very unusual to find it in the United States. But this research shows there may be an inflammation control benefit to hosting the H. pylori infection, says Peter Higgins, M.D., Ph.D., M.Sc., lead author of the study published last week in the journal Inflammatory Bowel Diseases. "If ...

In the job hunt, people do lie, but honesty pays off, study finds

2010-11-02
Honesty pays off, according to a new study of job seekers. When job applicants were warned that a pre-employment test could detect fake responses, they gave more honest answers -- a result that could improve their chances of being hired. Results were published in the human resources journal Applied HRM Research. "People may be tempted to make themselves look as attractive as possible to employers, but honesty is always the best policy, since many pre-employment tests have ways to spot fakers," said Chris Wright, associate professor of psychology at San Francisco State ...

The zebrafish's neural circuit prevents it from biting off more than it can chew

The zebrafishs neural circuit prevents it from biting off more than it can chew
2010-11-02
Between alerting us to danger and allowing us to spot prey, vision keeps many animals, including humans, alive. But exactly how does this important sense work, and why is it easier for us to spot movement of small objects in our field of vision, than to notice other things? The complexity of the neural network that supports vision has long baffled scientists. Now, with a new technology and support from the National Science Foundation, Claire Wyart in Ehud Isacoff's lab at the University of California at Berkeley and Filo Del Bene at Herwig Baier's lab at the University ...

New data from Phase 3 studies showed superior SVR (viral cure) rates achieved with telaprevir-based combination therapy in people with hepatitis C, regardless of race or stage of liver disease

2010-11-02
Boston, MA, October 30, 2010 – Vertex Pharmaceuticals Incorporated (Nasdaq: VRTX) today announced new data from its Phase 3 studies of people with genotype 1 chronic hepatitis C who have not been treated previously. In these studies, the majority of people achieved superior sustained viral response (SVR or viral cure) rates with a telaprevir-based combination regimen, compared to current therapies, regardless of race/ethnicity or stage of liver fibrosis (factors known to limit response to current hepatitis C treatments). Patients in the ADVANCE and ILLUMINATE studies were ...

Study improves accuracy of models for predicting ozone levels in urban areas

2010-11-02
A team of scientists has, for the first time, completely characterized an important chemical reaction that is critical to the formation of ground-level ozone in urban areas. The team's results indicate that computer models may be underestimating ozone levels in urban areas during episodes of poor air quality (smoggy days) by as much as five to 10 percent. Ground level ozone poses significant health hazards to people, animals and plants; is the primary ingredient of smog; and gives polluted air its characteristic odor. It is known that even small increases in ozone concentrations ...

A discovery could be important for the therapy of lymphoma and leukemia

2010-11-02
A recent scientific discovery made by researchers at the Institut de recherches cliniques de Montréal (IRCM) led by Dr. Javier Marcelo Di Noia, Director of the Mechanisms and Genetic Diversity research unit, was published online today by The Journal of Experimental Medicine. The team identified a mechanism regulating activation-induced deaminase (AID), which could be important for the therapy of some types of lymphoma and leukemia. AID is a B-lymphocyte enzyme that creates deliberate mutations in the DNA encoding antibodies, which helps produce an appropriate immune ...

Research explores lung cancer among pediatric cancer patients

2010-11-02
Because primary lung adenocarcinoma is exceedingly rare in the pediatric population, it is difficult to properly classify certain lung tumors in children and adolescents. While anecdotal reports of pediatric patients with lung cancer lesions exist, little research has been conducted to link the disease in children to similar pulmonary malignancies in adults. Through an assessment of clinical, tissue-based and molecular data for pediatric lung cancer, research published in the November edition of the Journal of Thoracic Oncology determined that pulmonary lesions found in ...

LAST 30 PRESS RELEASES:

Sylvester Cancer Tip Sheet for October 2025

Three science and technology leaders elected to Hertz Foundation Board of Directors

Jump Trading CSO Kevin Bowers elected to Hertz Foundation Board of Directors

Former Inscripta CEO Sri Kosaraju elected to Hertz Foundation Board of Directors

Citadel’s Jordan Chetty elected to Hertz Foundation Board of Directors

McGill research flags Montreal snow dump, inactive landfills as major methane polluters

A lightweight and rapid bidirectional search algorithm

Eighty-five years of big tree history available in one place for the first time

MIT invents human brain model with six major cell types to enable personalized disease research, drug discovery

Health and economic air quality co-benefits of stringent climate policies

How immune cells deliver their deadly cargo

How the brain becomes a better listener: How focus enhances sound processing

Processed fats found in margarines unlikely to affect heart health

Scientists discover how leukemia cells evade treatment

Sandra Shi MD, MPH, named 2025 STAT Wunderkind

Treating liver disease with microscopic nanoparticles

Chemicals might be hitching a ride on nanoplastics to enter your skin

Pregnant patients with preexisting high cholesterol may have elevated CV risk

UC stroke experts discuss current and future use of AI tools in research and treatment

The Southern Ocean’s low-salinity water locked away CO2 for decades, but...

OHSU researchers develop functional eggs from human skin cells

Most users cannot identify AI bias, even in training data

Hurricane outages: Analysis details the where, and who, of increased future power cuts

Craters on surface of melanoma cells found to serve as sites for tumor killing

Research Spotlight: Mapping overlooked challenges in stroke recovery

Geographic and temporal patterns of screening for breast, cervical, and colorectal cancer in the US

Cannabis laws and opioid use among commercially insured patients with cancer diagnoses

Research Spotlight: Surprising gene mutation in brain’s immune cells linked to increased Alzheimer’s risk

Missing molecule may explain Down syndrome

Donor diabetes and 1-year Descemet membrane endothelial keratoplasty success rate

[Press-News.org] New American Chemical Society podcast: Stop wasting food and save energy