(Press-News.org) EAST LANSING, Mich. --- Unlike Vegas, what happens in China doesn't stay in China.
The country's environmental challenges have worldwide implications, so more developed nations, such as the United States, need to help China adopt integrated solutions for the sake of global sustainability, a Michigan State University environmental scientist argues.
"What happens in China affects the rest of the world," said Jianguo "Jack" Liu, University Distinguished Professor of fisheries and wildlife. Liu is known around the world for his work on environmental sustainability and coupled human and natural systems and is the lead investigator of the International Network of Research on Coupled Human and Natural Systems, funded by the National Science Foundation.
"China is growing very quickly and as its economy has grown, so have its environmental challenges. The first thing everyone needs to do is recognize the relationship between humans and the environment. Environmental problems are an indicator of human problems. By protecting the environment, people protect their health and their livelihoods," he said.
"Every country needs to recognize the important link between human and natural systems," said Peter Raven, president of the Missouri Botanical Garden and noted China scholar. "We focus on China because the country is developing so fast. In 2002, the Chinese government compared the growth in gross domestic product to environmental destruction and both were about 10 percent. Those numbers aren't compared any more because it makes the economic statistics look bleak. China's biodiversity, one of the richest sets of organisms in the world, is seriously threatened by extinction in the decades to come, but if preserved, offers great opportunities to us all for the future."
Liu and Raven's paper, "China's Environmental Challenges and Implications for the World," is published in the September issue of Critical Reviews in Environmental Science and Technology.
The paper examines long-term and recent socioeconomic and environmental trends in China and outlines a systems approach to tackling China's environmental issues. Those include using economic stimulus money to invest in low-emission industries such as solar and bioenergy; better coordination of environmental and economic activities at all organization levels; and working together with developed countries, such as the United States, and developing countries, such as India, to develop a global climate agreement and reduce carbon dioxide emissions.
"In the past, China's motto was 'conquer nature.' People thought that development should come first and pollution could be cleaned up later," explained Liu. "It is encouraging that this attitude has begun to change. Investment in green technologies is increasing dramatically. However, fundamental changes in the development model and in the administrative system are urgently needed. Through institutional, scientific and technological innovations, China can help achieve global sustainability."
Liu holds the Rachel Carson Chair in Sustainability at MSU and is director of the MSU Center for Systems Integration and Sustainability. This research is funded by the National Science Foundation and supported by the Michigan Agricultural Experiment Station.
###
Michigan State University has been advancing knowledge and transforming lives through innovative teaching, research and outreach for more than 150 years. MSU is known internationally as a major public university with global reach and extraordinary impact. Its 17 degree-granting colleges attract scholars worldwide who are interested in combining education with practical problem solving.
The Michigan Agricultural Experiment Station, www.maes.msu.edu, is one of the largest research organizations at Michigan State University. Founded in 1888, the MAES funds the work of nearly 400 scientists in six colleges at MSU to enhance agriculture, natural resources and families and communities in Michigan.
For MSU news on the Web, go to news.msu.edu.
END
BEAUMONT - Figuring out how a rice crop was faring used to be a head-scratching exercise with predictably unpredictable results.
But now a few punches on a keyboard can yield a pretty close forecast for a rice crop and tell a farmer what changes could improve the outcome at harvest.
The program, Rice Development Advisory, stems from extensive data collected over the years by researchers at the Texas AgriLife Research Center in Beaumont. They methodically accumulated reams of data in the course of studying and creating improved varieties of rice.
As technology improved, ...
(CHICAGO) – Neurological researchers at Rush University Medical Center have found a new therapeutic target that can potentially lead to a new way to prevent the progression of Alzheimer's disease. The target called neutral sphingomyelinase (N-SMase) is a protein that when activated, can cause a chain of reactions in the cell leading to neuronal death and memory loss.
Results from the study funded by the National Institutes of Health and the Alzheimer's Association will be published in the September 22 issue of the Journal of Neuroscience.
"There are multiple, neurotoxic, ...
At a time when new transfer arrangements mean children in Northern Ireland will no longer be formally assessed in science at age 11, researchers at Queen's University have found overwhelming support for science assessment in primary schools in England and Wales.
The study, which was conducted by researchers at Queen's School of Education on behalf of the Wellcome Trust, is the first study to look at the attitudes and concerns of children and parents on the way science is assessed in primary schools in England and Wales.
It is hoped the findings will be used to inform ...
PORTLAND, Ore - Research conducted at Oregon Health & Science University's Vaccine and Gene Therapy Institute may spur debate about the risks associated with administering a specific compound in some forms of bone-marrow transplantation. The research is published in the current edition of Cell Host and Microbe.
The VGTI research team, led by institute director Jay Nelson, Ph.D., studies human cytomegalovirus, a virus that may infect up to 80 percent of the American population. The exact percentage of infected citizens is unknown due to the fact that the virus causes minor ...
Washington, DC – In order for targeted therapies against cancer to be effective, scientists need to understand upfront what related proteins in a signaling "network" makes a cancer cell resistant to a drug and selectively target them as well, say researchers at Georgetown Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center and Fox Chase Cancer Center.
In the September 21 issue of Science Signaling, the investigators discuss how cancer cells activate a network of pro-growth proteins that can bypass a molecule being therapeutically targeted. The researchers specifically found that many ...
GAINESVILLE, Fla. — In the complex world of ant-plant partnerships, serial monogamy can help trees maximize their evolutionary fitness, a new University of Florida study shows.
Trees that sequentially partner with multi-species sets of ants produce more offspring than trees that maintain a lifelong association with any single ant — even when those sets include ant species that appear to harm the tree, said Todd Palmer, a UF biology professor.
The study has broad implications because many of the world's ecosystems rely on cooperative partnerships between species, Palmer ...
Titan, one of Saturn's moons, is the only moon in the solar system with an atmosphere ― ten times denser than the atmosphere of Earth. Five years ago, the Cassini–Huygens mission to Saturn, a collaboration between the European Space Agency and NASA, sent a probe through Titan's atmosphere, revealing that Titan is home to a landscape that includes hills, valleys and most notably lakes.
A researcher involved with the mission, Prof. Akiva Bar-Nun of Tel Aviv University's Department of Geophysics and Planetary Sciences, has now determined the composition of these lakes. ...
Scientists from the California Institute of Technology and UCLA have discovered evidence of "universal ubiquitous magnetic fields" that have permeated deep space between galaxies since the time of the Big Bang.
Caltech physicist Shin'ichiro Ando and Alexander Kusenko, a professor of physics and astronomy at UCLA, report the discovery in a paper to be published in an upcoming issue of Astrophysical Journal Letters; the research is currently available online.
Ando and Kusenko studied images of the most powerful objects in the universe — supermassive black holes that ...
Grabbing a child firmly by the arm, yelling and repeatedly punishing him or her may not be without long-terms risks, according to researchers from the Université de Montréal. They are studying how this harsh parenting can impair the emotional development of a child, possibly leading to anxiety disorders such as social phobia, separation anxiety and panic attacks.
"Several studies have shown that coercive parenting practices are linked to anxiety," says Françoise Maheu a professor at the Université de Montréal's Department of Psychiatry and lead investigator of the study. ...
PHILADELPHIA (September 21, 2010)—Molecularly targeted therapies can reduce tumors rapidly. However, not all tumors respond to the drugs, and even those that do often develop resistance over time. Looking for a way to combat the problem of resistance, researchers at Fox Chase Cancer Center hypothesized that hitting already weakened cancer cells with a second targeted agent could kill them—but only if it was the right second agent.
One well-validated molecular target for anti-cancer drugs is the epidermal growth factor receptor, or EGFR. Using a novel screening approach, ...
