Continued Efforts on Nanomaterial‐Environmental Health and Safety Is Critical to Maintain Sustainable Growth of Nanoindustry – Liu – 2020 – Small

Researchers developing renewable plastics and exploring new processes for plastics upcycling and recycling technologies will now be able to easily baseline their efforts to current manufacturing practices to understand if their efforts will save energy and reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Benchmark data calculated and compiled at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) provide a measurement—at the supply chain level—of how much energy is required and the amount of greenhouse gases emitted from the production of a variety of plastics in the United States. “Today, we employ a predominantly linear economy for many of the materials we use, including plastics,” said Gregg Beckham, a senior research fellow at NREL. “Many people and organizations around the world are looking at ways to make our materials economy circular.”

Pollination & human livelihoods Pollination is a keystone process in both human managed and natural terrestrial ecosystems. It is critical for food production and human livelihoods, and directly links wild ecosystems with agricultrual production systems. The vast majority of flowering plant species only produce seeds if animal pollination move pollen from the anthers to the stigmas of their flowers. Without this service, many interconnected species and processes functioning within an ecosystem would collapse. Highlights In Depth Understanding The more we know about pollinators, plant pollination services and the interactions between agro-ecosystems and pollination management, the more we can understand how to conserve them and manage them to maintain biodiversity, ensure ecosystem health and improve human livelihoods. Monitoring pollinator declines, monitoring pollinator deficits, assessing socio-economic values, pollinator identification and understanding plant/pollinator interactions expands the knowledge base. Managing Both wild and managed pollinator populations require habitat and forage resources in order to…

SRS offers a coordinated e-waste recycling and IT asset disposition (ITAD) solutions with a high focus on data security, regulatory and corporate compliance, value recovery and sustainability. With processing facilities throughout the Americas, EMEA and APAC, SRS is well-placed to directly support…

Increasing the lifespan of different tribosensitive components while reducing environmental impacts is becoming a more important area of research. A possible approach to solving this issue is the use of solid lubricants to enhance the wear resistance of different components. Another approach is the use of “green or environmental” fluids for enhancing lubrication where removing or decreasing the use of ecotoxic oils for lubrication is the goal. Another answer is by using components that are wear-resistant through enhanced microstructure design.
Challenges facing the use of solid lubricants include:
•  Low mechanical strength
•  Limited temperature applicability
•  High application costs.
Andy Nieto, assistant professor at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, Calif., says reducing friction and effectively dissipating frictional heating are key mechanisms in reducing wear. Two-dimensional (2D) nanomaterials are one possible approach for solid lubricants that create protective surface layers as solid-state lubricants.