Free Republic

A Norwegian biorefinery company has started turning waste wood fibre into a cream-like fat substitute which it claims can be used to make ice cream, mayonnaise and even hot dogs. Borregaard has already opened a plant in Wisconsin, USA, producing the revolutionary new substance, which it calls Sense-Fi,and plans to open a second factory in Sarpsborg, Norway, in 2016. "We are rolling it out primarily in the US, where it has been approved. Sales are just about underway, and there is a lot of focus on fighting obesity," says business director Harald Rønneberg Borregaard to Norway's Dagbladet newspaper. Researchers at...

An ancient mummified forest, complete with well-preserved logs, leaves, and seedpods, has been discovered deep in the Canadian Arctic... The dry, frigid site is now surrounded by glaciers and is completely treeless, except for a few bonsai-size dwarf trees... located on Ellesmere Island, one of the world's northernmost landmasses. The rangers had come across wood scattered on the ground from much larger trees than the few dwarfs currently in the area, including logs that were several feet long... When Barker and colleagues found where the scattered logs were coming from -- a slope that had been eroded by a river...

The Washington Post reported yesterday on the frustration and anger among international AIDS charities with the White House. The groups argue that President Obama’s administration has reneged on pledges to fund antiretroviral therapy programs. The programs have been big successes in Africa, which faces epidemic levels of infection. “In sub-Saharan Africa, antiretroviral therapy, much of it paid for by the U.S. government, is resurrecting whole communities,” the Post reports. That progress is endangered, the charities say, by a shortage of funds. They now long for the good old days of ... the previous administration.

Pine trees grown for 12 years in air one-and-a-half times richer in carbon dioxide than today's levels produced twice as many seeds of at least as good a quality as those growing under normal conditions, a Duke University-led research team reported Aug. 3 at a national ecology conference.

County GOP chair runs for supervisor By Kevin Shopshire DAILY PRESS & ARGUS Hamburg Township resident Cindy Pine has thrown down the gauntlet in announcing late Monday her intention to run for Hamburg Township supervisor. Pine, the chair of the Livingston County Republican Committee since November 2002, said incumbent Howard Dillman is not doing the job he was elected to do by making the position part time and hiring a deputy supervisor, and she is calling for new leadership in the township. "I'm running to be a full-time supervisor who will serve the township residents," she said. "That's in stark...

            Pine trees may help create smog, acid rainThursday, 13 March  2003 Could pine trees be making things worse? Latest research suggests they contribute to smog  Rather than being a global warming solution, pine trees may be inducing smog and acid rain by releasing vast amounts of nitrogen oxide into the air, researchers have discovered. Under some circumstances, needles from Scots pine trees can release nitrogen oxides directly into the atmosphere, according to a report in today's issue of the journal, Nature. A team led by Professor Pertti Hari of the University of Helsinki...

Coniferous forests may produce more smog components than traffic does, calculations suggestMaybe Ronald Reagan was right after all about trees being big polluters. A new study suggests the Scotch pine and other northern evergreens may emit more nitrogen oxides -- key components of smog -- than all the cars and industrial plants on the planet.It has been known for years that some plants emit small amounts of nitrogen oxides. Now, a team of Finnish and U.S. researchers has found that Scotch pine needles increase those emissions substantially when they are exposed to ultraviolet radiation from the sun. This led the...