USDA Organic: Ecopornography or a Label Worth Searching For?

Ecopornography,” more commonly known as greenwashing, is a term that applies to any entity that disseminates disinformation in order to promote an environmentally friendly public image without actually taking significant action to protect the environment. Greenwashing is pervasive and a nearly unavoidable component of consumers’ evaluations of potential purchases. Food producers and packagers are often guilty of greenwashing their products to appeal to the environmentally conscious consumer by using such terms as “free range” or “all natural.” The United States Department of Agriculture (“USDA”) has set standards for the use of the word “organic” on food labels. These standards, while significantly more meaningful than those behind the “free range” label, are by no means the most stringent in the world. Is the USDA organic label indicative of an environmentally friendly product or is it greenwashing

Aquaponics & Landfill Methane Use: These Fetid Miasmata Smell Like Profitable Conservation

This article outlines the basic processes involved in aquaponics and landfill methane utilization and then proposes that more synergistic systems should be developed and then implemented on a larger scale to minimize total human waste output. Aquaponics is a sustainable practice because the waste of one system is used to fuel another symbiotic system and the only input is the fish food

Afternoon concurrent track 2: The State of climate change education

AFTERNOON CONCURRENT TRACK 2: THE “STATE” OF CLIMATE CHANGE EDUCATION Moderator Scott Mensing Student Union Room 211 David Hassenzahl, Michael Collopy, Scott Mensing – NSHE EPSCoR Climate Infrastructure Grant Education Component Abstract: The Nevada System of Higher Education has received funding from the National Science Foundation EPSCoR program to develop climate change research infrastructure. This session will present information on what the Education Component is doing and plans to do, and solicit ideas on future climate education efforts for NSHE. Education is one of six components of this grant, and will support NSHE efforts on: Undergraduate research. Each school year and summer, funds are available to undergraduates at any NSHE institution of higher education to do research related to climate change. Graduate research. A number of competitive graduate research fellowships are available to graduate students at UNLV and UNR. Students propose research, supported by at least two faculty mentors. Curriculum development. A graduate student will work with the Component Lead to do research on climate education norms and methods across the United States and in Nevada. Part of this will be in anticipation of a 2010 NSHE Climate Education Conference, which will establish existing courses and programs, identify gaps, and propose course and program activities. K-12. The K-12 program will provide school-wide climate change education to middle school teachers in at-risk middle schools in Clark County and Washoe counties. A new cohort of teachers will be supported each year. Paul Buck – A Team Teaching Approach to Improving Climate Change Education in Nevada Middle Schools Abstract: The NSF EPSCoR RII Climate Change Infrastructure Award includes a small but important effort to build educational infrastructure among in-service middle school science, math, and English teachers at six Nevada middle schools. We will focus on whole school or whole grade level approaches, often referred to as a “professional learning community” or “community of practice” model, engaging a cohort of teachers at selected schools. Using specific elements of Nevada climate change research themes particularly relevant to each local community, this project will create a magnet school in one of the proposed themes at each school. The themes will be guided by the Nevada state science teaching framework and national science teaching standards. Target schools have student populations 50% or more minority and the proportion of science classes taught by teachers considered not highly qualified is above the school district mean. The use of graduate students to act as mentors and content links to in-service teachers will help develop a science research community that includes NSHE and middle school teachers working together. Donica Mensing, Hans-Peter Plag, Jen Huntleysmith – Assessing the State of Sustainability Education: A Case Study of Faculty Efforts at the University of Nevada, Reno Abstract: The University of Nevada, Reno established a Sustainability Committee in 2008, one goal of which is to strengthen the focus of the undergraduate curriculum on sustainability. In the process of implementing this goal, a faculty working group has discussed and come to agreement on several critical issues, including definitions, participation, methods, and culture. Discussion also led to recognition of a spatial component of sustainable development, in addition to the often referred to temporal component, and addressed the implicit ethical obligations that arise in considering these aspects of sustainability. Participation in the working group has been guided by the desire to be as cross-disciplinary as possible, explicitly including faculty from every college, on the understanding that sustainability naturally concerns almost all disciplines and areas of study. The initial method chosen by the committee to collect data is a survey of both faculty and undergraduate students, to develop a baseline on which to assess the current coverage of sustainability issues by the undergraduate curriculum. A secondary goal is to assess and compare the strength and direction of personal attitudes about sustainability issues. Discussions have also stressed the need for developing a culture on campus that values sustainability as a practice and subject of inquiry. Efforts to address cultural, administrative, attitudinal, and practical barriers to improved teaching on these issues will also be discussed

Preparation and characterisation of carbon-free Cu(111) films on sapphire for graphene synthesis

This work presents an investigation of carbon formed on polycrystalline Cu(111) thin films prepared by ion beam sputtering at room temperature on c-plane Al2O3 after thermal treatment in a temperature range between 300 and 1020°C. The crystallinity of the Cu films was studied by XRD and RBS/channeling and the surface was characterised by Raman spectroscopy, XPS and AFM for each annealing temperature. RBS measurements revealed the diffusion of the Cu into the Al2O3 substrate at high temperatures of > 700°C. Furthermore, a cleaning procedure using UV ozone treatment is presented to remove the carbon from the surface which yields essentially carbon-free Cu films that open the possibility to synthesize graphene of well-controlled thickness (layer number)

Health literacy in Europe. comparative results of the European health literacy survey (HLS-EU)

Sørensen K, Pelikan JM, Röthlin F, et al. Health literacy in Europe. comparative results of the European health literacy survey (HLS-EU). The European Journal of Public Health. 2015;25(6):1053-1058