EARTH: Is there really a minerals crisis?
2011-07-12
(Press-News.org) Alexandria, VA – China sent the high-tech industry and markets reeling last fall when it blocked exports of raw rare earth minerals to Japan, Europe and the U.S. The sudden severing of rare earths supply was a frightening prospect as the minerals are key ingredients in a broad range of high-tech products, from smartphones to wind turbines and hybrid cars. Although the bans have since been lifted, governments around the world saw the ban as a kind of wake-up call and started looking at ways to develop their own mineral resources — for rare earths as well as basic industry metals like copper and zinc.
As EARTH explores in "Is There Really a Minerals Crisis?" in the August issue, the rare earths scare of last fall prompted scientists from academia, government and industry alike to reconsider the question of the world's supply of minerals in general — and how governments should, going forward, invest in new exploration. At issue, economic geologists argue, is not whether the geological reserves of these minerals exist. Instead, they say, any shortages have more to do with ongoing sociological and political impediments to minerals exploration and mining.
Read how Europe and other parts of the world are trying to surmount the sociological and political issues surrounding mining. Plus, learn about other topics such as what scientists are finding in mysterious sinkholes beneath the Great Lakes, how the Large Hadron Collider is answering long-standing theoretical physics questions, and how natural gas fracking is affecting well water in the August issue. And don't miss the cover stories about traveling to Australia and New Zealand.
INFORMATION:
These stories and many more can be found in the August issue of EARTH, now available digitally or in print on your local newsstands.
For further information on the August featured article, go to http://www.earthmagazine.org/earth/article/45f-7db-7-8.
Keep up to date with the latest happenings in earth, energy and environment news with EARTH magazine, available on local newsstands or online at http://www.earthmagazine.org/. Published by the American Geological Institute, EARTH is your source for the science behind the headlines.
END
ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:
2011-07-12
Tel Aviv — Most marketing departments work hard to establish a flawless reputation for their product or service. But new research from Tel Aviv University is showing that perfection is not all it's cracked up to be.
Dr. Danit Ein-Gar of Tel Aviv University's Faculty of Management at the Leon Recanati Graduate School of Business Administration, working in collaboration with Baba Shiv and Zakary Tormala from Stanford University, has uncovered the "blemishing effect," a counterintuitive benefit of negative information. When utilized in the right way, she says, a small flaw ...
2011-07-12
TORONTO, Ont., July 11, 2011—More patients are tested and treated for osteoporosis when fracture clinics have someone dedicated to screening for the bone disease, a new study has found.
Those patients also do better when the clinic actually provides bone mineral density (BMD) testing or prescription drug treatment as part of its program rather than just referring fracture patients elsewhere.
Researchers at St. Michael's Hospital led by Joanna Sale, a clinical epidemiologist, reviewed osteoporosis screening and management programs involving patients treated for fragility ...
2011-07-12
Data Match Solutions today released DataMatch Tool 2.0, a very powerful software to match and merge databases. This software helps researchers, faculty and students to save valuable time and effort to collect and analyse data for their projects.
Academics can now take their research to a higher level
With DataMatch Tool 2.0 (DMT 2.0), researchers can link data from different sources easily and quickly and take their research to a higher level.
Based on their experience in academic research and their knowledge in data collection and analysis, researchers from Data ...
2011-07-12
An extract of the poisonous shrub Jatropha curcas acts as a strong painkiller and may have a mode of action different from conventional analgesics, such as morphine and other pharmaceuticals. Details of tests are reported in the current issue of the International Journal of Biomedical Engineering and Technology.
Omeh Yusuf and Ezeja Maxwell of the Micheal Okpara University of Agriculture in Umudike, Nigeria, explain how J. curcas, also known as the "physic nut" is a perennial shrub that grows to 5 meters in height and belongs to the Euphobiaceace family. It is native ...
2011-07-12
Online consumers thought to be motivated primarily by savings are, in fact, often willing to pay a premium for purchases from online vendors with clear, protective privacy policies, according to a new study in the current issue of a journal of the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS®).
"The Effect of Online Privacy Information on Purchasing Behavior: An Experimental Study" is by Janice Y. Tsai, Serge Egelman, Lorrie Cranor, and Alessandro Acquisti of Carnegie Mellon University. The study appears in the current issue of the INFORMS journal ...
2011-07-12
The author of this paper set out to determine the extent to which potential "errors" in many early epidemiologic studies led to erroneous conclusions about an inverse association between moderate drinking and coronary heart disease (CHD). His analysis is based on prospective data for more than 124,000 persons interviewed in the U.S. National Health Interview Surveys of 1997 through 2000 and avoids the pitfalls of some earlier studies. He concludes that the so-called "errors" have not led to erroneous results, and that there is a strong protective effect of moderate drinking ...
2011-07-12
Paddington Brands announced today that it has launched its Agoston wine brand through Walgreens, the nation's largest drugstore chain. Bodegas Virgen del Aguila, the Spanish wine cooperative, confirmed Paddington Brands as the exclusive U.S. importer of Agoston wines.
"When we first tasted Agoston, we knew this was a wine that would appeal to American consumers," said J. Smoke Wallin, chairman and CEO of Paddington Brands. "Year after year Agoston has been receiving 90+ points in the Penin Wine Rating Guide, which is Spain's equivalent to Robert Parker ...
2011-07-12
COLUMBIA, Mo. – Psychologists at the University of Missouri have identified the beginning of first grade math skills that teachers and parents should target to effectively improve children's later math learning.
A long-term psychology study indicates that beginning first graders that understand numbers, the quantities those numbers represent, and low-level arithmetic will have better success in learning mathematics through the end of fifth grade, and other studies suggest throughout the rest of their lives.
"Math is critical for success in many fields, and the United ...
2011-07-12
CINCINNATI—The alarm caused by bisphenol A (BPA) presence in reusable plastic bottles resulted in a recent industry change, producing products made with supposed BPA-free materials.
Prompted by requests and concern from consumers, University of Cincinnati (UC) researchers wanted to see if these alternatives—including products made with stainless steel and coated aluminum—were truly giving the consumer an option free of BPA.
In a study reported in the July 8, 2011 advance online edition of the journal Chemosphere, Scott Belcher, PhD, associate professor in the pharmacology ...
2011-07-12
CHICAGO --- "I don't remember how I got home from the party." This could be a text from last night to one hard-partying college student from another.
New research from Northwestern Medicine shows that 50 percent of college drinkers report at least one alcohol-induced memory blackout -- a period of amnesia -- in the past year during a drinking binge. Despite being fully conscious during such blackouts, students could not recall specific events, such as how they got to a bar, party or their own front door.
Published in Injury Prevention, May 2011, the study found college ...
LAST 30 PRESS RELEASES:
[Press-News.org] EARTH: Is there really a minerals crisis?
