Showing posts with label biomadness. Show all posts

Monday 8 October 2012

Carbon emissions target urged by business leaders

Emissions from a chimney at Eggborough Power Station, near Selby

A recent report by business group the CBI estimates that policy uncertainty over carbon emissions could prove to be costly for the UK's economy

The plea is made in an open letter to Chancellor George Osborne signed by 50 businesses and organisations.Ministers must set a specific target for restricting carbon emissions from power generation, businesses have said.

They want a target for how emissions should be curbed by 2030, arguing that a failure to show commitment to reducing carbon emissions may harm the economy and their commercial prospects.

Mr Osborne has outlined plans to get energy from gas beyond 2030.

Labour Leader Ed Miliband has backed a 2030 target for the power sector and the Liberal Democrats have supported a target under the Energy Bill, to be included in secondary legislation to allow flexibility.

The government's climate advisers have warned support for future gas plants without technology fitted to cut emissions is not compatible with climate change legislation and is harming investment in low-carbon power such as renewables and nuclear.

Companies and investors have joined with trade unions, environmental groups and industry bodies to warn the chancellor that support for gas power into the 2030s is undermining investment in UK electricity infrastructure.

The introduction of a carbon intensity target for the energy sector would, they say, provide investors with the long term confidence needed to transform the electricity market and promote wider economic growth.Such a target would also be in line with recent recommendations from the independent Committee on Climate Change

The letter was signed by 50 businesses and organisations, including Microsoft, Marks and Spencer, Alliance Boots and Asda.

In it, they warn the Mr Osborne that uncertainty over the government's commitment to low-carbon power generation is harming the development of green businesses.

The letter states: "The government's perceived commitment to the low carbon transition is being undermined by recent statements calling for unabated gas in the power sector beyond 2030 and the absence of a specific carbon intensity target."

It highlights a recent report by business group the CBI, which estimates that while a third of UK growth in 2011/2012 came from green businesses, policy uncertainty could lose the UK £400m in exports in 2014/2015 alone.

"It is essential for government to provide investors with the long-term confidence they need to transform our electricity market and make investments capable of driving wider economic growth," says the letter.

Peter Young, chairman of the Aldersgate Group which co-ordinated the move, called for an end to "any political uncertainty surrounding the UK's energy future".

And Andy Atkins, executive director at Friends of the Earth, which backed the letter, said Mr Osborne's support for gas power was looking "increasingly isolated".

Asda, Aviva, British American Tobacco, EDF, Microsoft, Marks & Spencer, PepsiCo, Philips, Sky and the Co-operative are among the businesses to have signed the letter.

Tuesday 11 September 2012

increasing vitamin intake

'Super soup' test in asthma trial

By Jonathan BallBBC News, Aberdeen

Asthma inhaler dispensing a dose of medication

There are more than five million people in the UK who suffer from asthma

Scientists are to begin clinical trials to determine if eating more foods rich in vitamin E during pregnancy prevents childhood asthma.

Women will eat soups naturally high in the vitamin, which it is believed may promote lung growth in the developing foetus.

Children born with good lung function are less likely to develop asthma.

Details of the trial were outlined at the British Science Festival being held in Aberdeen.

Asthma is highly prevalent - in the UK, 10-15% of children and 5-10% of adults have been diagnosed with the disease.

The majority of children with asthma will carry the illness into adulthood.

The disease is managed by preventing and relieving the major symptoms - breathlessness, wheezing and coughing - using inhalers and, in extreme cases, with steroid tablets.

There has been a recent increase in the prevalence of asthma in children.

To try to understand why, a team of researchers from the University of Aberdeen established a cohort of approximately 2,000 women and measured the impact of diet on the incidence of asthma in children up to the age of five.

Prof Graham Deveraux, who led the study, said: "We were able to show, for the first time, that children born to mums with a lower vitamin E intake during pregnancy were more likely to develop asthma by the age of five and have poor lung function."

These early findings were then confirmed in studies carried out in Japan and the US.

The next challenge for the researchers was to show that altering nutrition during pregnancy could positively impact on a child's susceptibility to asthma.

Avoiding potions and pills

Prof Deveraux considered that a trial using vitamin supplements lacked credibility - trials of vitamins to treat various conditions had so-often failed.

He said the key may be intake in food.

"People have never actually eaten vitamin E tablets; normally most people get their vitamin E from food.

"I wondered whether it might be the other nutrients that go with vitamin E in food that may be responsible for the effect. There may be interactions between vitamin E and the other nutrients.

"So, I was very keen to do a dietary intervention rather than a pill or a potion."

With the help of a team of dietitians, he performed a small study on pregnant women to see if he could manipulate their diet to increase their vitamin E intake up to the recommended levels and, he says, "it worked a treat".

But vitamin E was not the only thing that altered, as Prof Deveraux observed: "Lots of other things changed, like the fatty acids changed, the zinc changed, the selenium, the vitamin D - and all these are nutrients which we know have been associated during pregnancy with childhood asthma."

Whilst the results vindicated their overall approach, the dietary interventions were too complex and would not be readily accessible to a wide range of society. Also it was difficult to standardise and control.

Super soups

To overcome these problems, the team approached a commercial soup manufacturer to develop a range of enhanced soups. Each one is naturally rich in vitamin E - and other potentially important minerals - and for each there is a similarly tasting "normal" soup that could be used for the control group of pregnant women.

By judicious tweaking of ingredients - for example, substituting normal tomatoes found in cream of tomato soup with their super-nutritious sun-dried counterparts - they were able to develop three new varieties of "super-soups".

The team now plan to test the soups in a small pilot study involving 50 women. They will be enrolled during early pregnancy and asked to eat either enriched or normal soup three times a week.

The study will show whether the new dietary intervention is well tolerated by the women and - by carrying out blood measurements - if it has the desired effect on vitamin intake.

They might also get an early indication that the approach could prevent asthma. "If we're really lucky we might show that the children [born to women] receiving vitamin E enhancement may actually have better lung function," Prof Deveraux commented.

The overall approach has support from both nutritionists and asthma experts.

Prof Maijaliisa Erkkola, from the University of Helsinki, told BBC News: "Appropriate food-based strategies that could contribute to reducing low maternal intakes of vitamin E to prevent asthma in offspring and to improve health of children are welcome."

Whilst Prof Ian Hall, from the University of Nottingham and an expert on asthma, told us: "In general these studies [using diet supplement tablets] have been disappointing in that they have failed to show reductions in the risk of developing asthma in the treated subjects.

"The current study adopts a novel approach by using natural supplementation in soup rather than a tablet based approach: it will be interesting to see if this proves more successful".

If the pilot study is successful in its primary aim - increasing vitamin intake - then Prof Deveraux and his team plan to carry out a much larger trial in over 1,000 women.