Greenlist(tm) Bulletin 07/06/2007
This is the weekly bulletin of the TURI Library, reporting a selection of recently published titles we have acquired. Our pledge is to keep the bulletin relevant to your work and brief -- no more than 10 titles. You are welcome to send a message to jan@turi.org if you would like more information on any of the articles listed here.
Titles here, abstracts below:
- Risk assessment of topically applied products
- Fuel for your body -- and car
- Ten guidelines for energy efficient data center design
- Barnacle-busting paint makes ships' voyages greener
- Message in a bottle
1. Risk assessment of topically applied products
Authors: Soeborg, Tue; Basse, Line Hollesen; Halling-Sorensen, Bent
Source: Toxicology, v236 n1-2, pp140-148, July 1, 2007
Abstract: The human risk of harmful substances in semisolid topical dosage forms applied topically to normal skin and broken skin, respectively, was assessed. Bisphenol A diglycidyl ether (BADGE) and three derivatives of BADGE previously quantified in aqueous cream and the UV filters 3-BC and 4-MBC were used as model compounds. Tolerable daily intake (TDI) values have been established for BADGE and derivatives. Endocrine disruption was chosen as endpoint for 3-BC and 4-MBC. Skin permeation of the model compounds was investigated in vitro using pig skin membranes. Tape stripping was applied to simulate broken skin associated with various skin disorders. BADGE and derivatives had a tendency to permeate pig skin membranes in vitro with higher fluxes in the tape stripped membranes compared to the non-treated membranes. Data from the in vitro skin permeation study and from the literature were used as input parameters for estimating the risk. The immediate human risk of BADGE and derivatives in topical dosage forms was found to be low. However, local treatment of broken skin may lead to higher exposure of BADGE and derivatives compared to application to normal skin. 3-BC permeated skin at higher flux than 4-MBC. Both UV filters are endocrine disrupting compounds with 3-BC being the more potent. UV filters in sunscreen are often present in high concentrations, which potentially may lead to high systemic exposure dosages. Thus, the risk associated with use of 3-BC and 4-MBC containing sunscreen with regards to endocrine disrupting effects was found to be high and more data is urgently needed in order to fully assess the human risk of 3-BC and 4-MBC in commercial sunscreen.
2. Fuel for your body -- and car
Author: Comis, Don
Source: USDA Agricultural Research Service, June 22, 2007
Abstract: With an increasing percentage of the nation's corn harvest going to ethanol production, some are questioning the wisdom of taking away corn as food for people. But Agricultural Research Service (ARS) scientist Kurt Rosentrater has a way to at least partially allay that concern: create new foods from an edible byproduct of ethanol production, distiller's dried grains (DDGs).
The new foods could include cookies, breads and pastas that are low in calories and carbohydrates, but high in protein and fiber.
Rosentrater, an agricultural engineer at the ARS North Central Agricultural Research Laboratory, Brookings, S.D, is working on many fronts to find new uses for the growing supply of DDGs as ethanol production roars along. One such front is making a better cookie out of distiller's grains. The cookies are smaller than those made with all-wheat flour because the high-protein/low-starch combination keeps the cookie batter from spreading as easily as batter made with 100 percent wheat. But the batter bakes consistently. The main problem right now is appeal. The fermentation process used to make ethanol often imparts a bitter off-flavor and odor to distiller's grains. That's why, to date, there have been no commercial foods made with ethanol byproducts.
But DDGs flour is often more nutritious than regular flour, because ethanol processing tends to concentrate the grain's protein and fiber three- to nine-fold.
Research on these uses was done in the 1980s, but interest then waned. Since 2000, there has been only one published study on food products made with distiller's dried grains, other than the studies by Rosentrater and colleagues.
Many new ethanol plants are designed for production of food-grade ingredients. Rosentrater and colleagues are among the few researchers today dedicated to giving them a way to make products that will sell like hotcakes.
Link: http://www.ars.usda.gov/is/pr/2007/070622.htm?pf=1
3. Ten guidelines for energy efficient data center design
Author: Rumsey, Peter
Source: GreenerComputing, June 2007
Abstract: Data centers are prime targets for energy efficient design measures: a typical data center can consume 25 to 50 times as much electricity as a standard office space. But the mission-critical nature of data centers has historically put other concerns - mainly reliability and high power density capacity - ahead of energy efficiency in the minds of owners and designers. Also, data centers usually have short design cycles that leave little time to fully assess efficient design opportunities or consider first cost versus life cycle cost issues. This can lead to designs that are simply scaled up versions of standard office space approaches or that re-use standard inefficient strategies and specifications without regard for energy performance.
This article discusses alternatives to inefficient design practices within ten technology areas. There is no single correct way to design a data center, but the following guidelines can offer design suggestions that provide efficiency benefits in a wide variety of data center design situations.
Link: http://www.greenercomputing.com/news_third.cfm?NewsID=35344
4. Barnacle-busting paint makes ships' voyages greener
Author: McKie, Robin
Source: The Observer, June 24, 2007
Abstract: Scientists have developed a novel way to combat one of the world's stickiest and most expensive maritime problems: the encrusting of ships' hulls by algae and barnacles. They have created a special coating, using nanotechnology, that is engineered to a scale of a millionth of a millimetre. Organisms that try to hitch a ride will simply slip off.
The development, announced at the EuroNanoForum in Dusseldorf last week, is important because 'bio-fouling' costs billions of pounds a year, not just to the shipping industry but to private yachtsmen and owners of power and desalination plants whose pipes get blocked by bacteria and barnacles. In addition, ships burn excess fuel with encrusted hulls, increasing carbon emissions; while current anti-fouling paints are thought to harm sealife.
Link: http://observer.guardian.co.uk/world/story/0,,2109953,00.html
5. Message in a bottle
Author: Fishman, Charles
Source: Fast Company, July 2007
Abstract: Thirty years ago, bottled water barely existed as a business in the United States. Last year, we spent more on Poland Spring, Fiji Water, Evian, Aquafina, and Dasani than we spent on iPods or movie tickets--$15 billion. It will be $16 billion this year.
Bottled water is the food phenomenon of our times. We--a generation raised on tap water and water fountains--drink a billion bottles of water a week, and we're raising a generation that views tap water with disdain and water fountains with suspicion. We've come to pay good money--two or three or four times the cost of gasoline--for a product we have always gotten, and can still get, for free, from taps in our homes.
When we buy a bottle of water, what we're often buying is the bottle itself, as much as the water. We're buying the convenience--a bottle at the 7-Eleven isn't the same product as tap water, any more than a cup of coffee at Starbucks is the same as a cup of coffee from the Krups machine on your kitchen counter. And we're buying the artful story the water companies tell us about the water: where it comes from, how healthy it is, what it says about us. Surely among the choices we can make, bottled water isn't just good, it's positively virtuous.
Except for this: Bottled water is often simply an indulgence, and despite the stories we tell ourselves, it is not a benign indulgence. We're moving 1 billion bottles of water around a week in ships, trains, and trucks in the United States alone. That's a weekly convoy equivalent to 37,800 18-wheelers delivering water. (Water weighs 81/3 pounds a gallon. It's so heavy you can't fill an 18-wheeler with bottled water--you have to leave empty space.)
Meanwhile, one out of six people in the world has no dependable, safe drinking water. The global economy has contrived to deny the most fundamental element of life to 1 billion people, while delivering to us an array of water "varieties" from around the globe, not one of which we actually need. That tension is only complicated by the fact that if we suddenly decided not to purchase the lake of Poland Spring water in Hollis, Maine, none of that water would find its way to people who really are thirsty.
A chilled plastic bottle of water in the convenience-store cooler is the perfect symbol of this moment in American commerce and culture. It acknowledges our demand for instant gratification, our vanity, our token concern for health. Its packaging and transport depend entirely on cheap fossil fuel. Yes, it's just a bottle of water--modest compared with the indulgence of driving a Hummer. But when a whole industry grows up around supplying us with something we don't need--when a whole industry is built on the packaging and the presentation--it's worth asking how that happened, and what the impact is. And if you do ask, if you trace both the water and the business back to where they came from, you find a story more complicated, more bemusing, and ultimately more sobering than the bottles we tote everywhere suggest.
Link: http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/117/features-message-in-a-bottle.html
You are welcome to send a message to jan@turi.org if you would like more information on any of these resources. Also, please tell us what topics you are particularly interested in monitoring, and who else should see GREENLIST. An online search of the TURI Library catalog can be done at http://slk060.liberty3.net/turi/ for greater topic coverage.
This page updated Friday July 06 2007