President George Bush declared October 1, 2007 Child Health Day.  The EPA celebrates Children's Health Month each October by developing publications and activities that highlight the importance of protecting children from environmental risks.

You can view an English calendar or download a Korean calendar with a children's environmental health tip for every day in October.   

Sprinkler systems for commercial buildings are mandatory. They're not required in new home construction but a NIST study says that, above a 100 percent reduction in civilian deaths, they make economic sense.

According to NIST, the cost in 2005 dollars for adding a multipurpose network sprinkler system to a house under construction was approximately $2,075 for a 3,338-square-foot colonial-style house, $1,895 for a 2,257-square-foot townhouse and $829 for a 1,171-square-foot ranch house.

The British Interplanetary Society is having a conference on 15 November 2007, 9:30 am-5:00 pm, titled "Warp Drive, Faster Than Light:Breaking the interstellar distance barrier" and is inviting attendees. Details below:

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General Relativity defines the geometrical warpage of spacetime within the vicinity of a matter distribution. Since its publication by Albert Einstein nearly a century ago our understanding of the universe has undergone a revolution. In particular, the existence of black holes, objects once considered not worthy of serious consideration for the end point of stellar collapse has now become a largely accepted phenomenon.

Natural gas ( methane ) has a greater global warming impact than carbon dioxide but conventional cellulose acetate membranes in processing plants lose natural gas in their waste products.

Thermally rearranged (TR) plastic works four times better than conventional membranes at separating out carbon dioxide, say University of Texas at Austin researchers. Dr. Ho Bum Park, a postdoctoral student in the laboratory of Professor Benny Freeman, also found that TR plastic membranes act quicker.

The genome analysis of this tiny green alga has uncovered hundreds of genes that are uniquely associated with carbon dioxide capture and generation of biomass.

Among the 15,000-plus genes revealed in the study are those that encode the structure and function of the specialized organelle that houses the photosynthetic apparatus, the chloroplast, which is responsible for converting light to chemical energy. The genome also provides a glimpse back through time to the last common ancestor of plants and animals.

Red wine is known to have multiple health benefits. Researchers at the University of Missouri-Columbia have found that red wine may also protect humans from common food-borne diseases, even E. coli.

Researchers Azlin Mustapha, associate professor of food science in the College of Agriculture and doctoral student Atreyee Das are conducting on-going studies examining the inhibitory effects of red wines and grape juice against pathogens and probiotic bacteria, which naturally reside in the intestinal tract and can be beneficial in combating, among other things, high cholesterol and tumors.