Health Briefs

Future Fuels: U.S. Renewable Energy Surpasses Nuclear (5/6/2012) - Beginning in 2011, renewable energy production in the United States surpassed nuclear production in overall quantity and percentage. As a percentage of total U.S. energy generation, renewables are steadily, if modestly, gaining. California’s leadership goal targets the utilization of 33 percent renewable energy sources by 2020.

Rocky Topping: Appalachian Residents Oppose Coal Mining Policies (5/6/2012) - Even though coal mining forms the economic backbone of several Appalachian states, a recent poll reveals overwhelming local resistance to the technique of removing the entire tops of mountains to secure the coal, and then dumping the toxic remains in valleys and streams. Residents are mad enough to make it an election issue.

Going Out Green: New Mortuary Practices Reduce Mercury Pollution (5/6/2012) - Resomation, Ltd., in Glasgow, Scotland, has invented a new alkaline hydrolysis unit as a green alternative to cremation. Founder Sandy Sullivan plans to install the first one in America at the Anderson-McQueen Funeral Home, in St. Petersburg, Florida.

Fishy Business: Something’s Spawning Gender-Bent Fish (5/6/2012) - A French study examining wild gudgeon fish that live directly downstream from a pharmaceutical drug manufacturing plant found that up to 80 percent of them exhibited both male and female traits in their sex organs.

Resilient Communities: Volunteerism Remains Strong in America (5/6/2012) - More than 60 million Americans volunteered 8 billion hours of their services in 2010, holding steady with the previous year, according to the latest report by the Corporation for National and Community Service (CNCS), released late last year.