Digital Scale

How Much Weight Would a Woodland Vole Gain if It Could Gain Weight?

I have to admit that, when in the vicinity of a rodent, my one desire is to get out of the vicinity of a rodent. Luckily for the progress of science, not everyone is like me. There are some people who like them enough to want to learn about them, such as two researchers from Read More

Richard Gaughan May 15th, 2012

How to Pull out Fingerprints when None Are Visible

You might use cyanoacrylate superglue to repair a chipped ceramic coffee cup, unless you’re trying to prove a point, then you might use it to lift a car. You might also use specially formulated cyanoacrylate to bind a wound. But unless you’re in law enforcement, you probably don’t use it to extract latent fingerprints. If Read More

Richard Gaughan May 14th, 2012

The Health of Marine Environments: Physical, Chemical, Biological

If I were responsible for bioassessment and biocriteria development for estuarine and coastal marine waters, I would need a lot of technical guidance. Good thing the EPA has got it covered. They developed the guidance in 2000 in recognition of the fact that “Understanding how estuarine ecosystems function and respond to human activity requires a Read More

Richard Gaughan May 11th, 2012

No Surprise Here: Burning Trash is No Good for the Air

As life goes on, we learn, both individually and collectively. Unfortunately, sometimes it is not that easy to act on what we learn. So, for example, if you live in a rural area, you might like the convenience of burning your household waste in a barrel. In 1997 the EPA took a look at the Read More

Richard Gaughan May 10th, 2012

Measuring the Efficiency of Distributed Power Generators

There’s great promise in distributed generation—small-scale electrical power generation that can be done very close to the point at which it’s used. It minimizes transmission losses, and can also be part of a combined heat and power system, where waste heat from the electrical generator is used to heat the facility. But small scale systems Read More

Richard Gaughan May 9th, 2012

Does Cleaner Diesel Fuel Result in Cleaner Emissions?

“The goal of the [EPA's] Environmental Technology Verification (ETV) program is to further environmental protection by substantially accelerating the acceptance and use of improved and innovative environmental technologies.” A representative example is a test procedure the EPA and partner organizations came up with to validate the performance of a diesel fuel cleaning procedure. The claim Read More

Richard Gaughan May 8th, 2012

Wood-Fired Heating Systems Are Particulate Sources

When you think of air pollution, you might think of factory smokestacks or busses spewing dark clouds, but what doesn’t spring to mind is the bucolic image of a lone cabin with a thin stream of smoke. Notwithstanding that image, woodfires can be a significant source of particulate contamination. That’s why the EPA has developed Read More

Richard Gaughan May 7th, 2012

Report Recommends Remediation for Skid Roads

Forestry operations disturb the soil. That disturbance is not a minor thing. According to a report from the University of Vermont, “sedimentation has clearly been identified as one of the most important sources of non point source pollution in the United States.” It can make streams unsuitable for aquatic organisms. Different phases of a logging Read More

Richard Gaughan May 3rd, 2012

Soil Stability Monitoring is No Easy Task

Like it or not, we’re all linked together. Say you have a riverfront property you bought specifically because of its access to quality fishing. If I’m upstream, and I cut some trees to let in some more sun, the runoff from the disturbed soil can end up in the stream and disrupt breeding grounds and Read More