In calling for a switch of fossil fuel subsidies to funding of universal health coverage, Vinay Gupta and colleagues (June, 2015) miss two health-relevant issues: all fossil fuels are not the same and all subsidies are not the same. Liquefi ed petroleum gas (LPG) has major, direct health advantages in household cooking in countries of low and middle income, its primary use. Indeed, the Global B...

Biodegradation of the polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons of creosote by undefined bacterial cultures was shown to be accompanied by the accumulation of neutral and acidic oxidation products. Formation of a number of identified neutral products is accounted for by demonstration of anomalous actions of an arene dioxygenase on the benzylic methylene and methylene carbons of napthenoaromatic hydrocar...

Microscapha andrzeji sp. nov., the first fossil representative of the genus is described from Eocene Baltic amber. An updated list of fossil Melandryidae (Coleoptera: Tenebrionoidea) is provided. The presence of Microscapha within Baltic amber suggests some potential for palaeoenvironmental inferences based on the melandryid assemblage within the deposit.

Renewable biomass and biomass derived fuels could readily replace fossil fuels in many of the present energy utilization applications with concomitant environmental benefits. Gasification is a form of biomass energy conversion producing a fuel that could substitute for fossil fuels in high efficiency power generation and CHP applications. While fossil fuel resources are heavily concentrated in ...

[1] Sulfate aerosol from burning fossil fuels not only has strong cooling effects on the Earth’s climate but also imposes substantial costs on human health. To assess the impact of addressing air pollution on climate policy, we incorporate both the climate and health effects of sulfate aerosol into an integrated-assessment model of fossil fuel emission control. Our simulations show that a polic...

This paper studies a dynamic game where each of two large blocs, of fossil fuel importers and exporters respectively, sets either taxes or quotas to exercise power in fossil-fuel markets. The main novel feature is the inclusion of a “fringe” of nonstrategic (emerging and developing) countries which both consume and produce fossil fuels. Cumulated emissions over time from global fossil fuel cons...

[1] Characterizing flow patterns and mixing of fossil fuel-derived CO2 is important for effectively using atmospheric measurements to constrain emissions inventories. Here we used measurements and a model of atmospheric radiocarbon (C) to investigate the distribution and fluxes of atmospheric fossil fuel CO2 across the state of California. We sampled C in annual C3 grasses at 128 sites and used...