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Green Burials:
Thinking Outside the Box
Natural Burials Signal a Return to More Traditional
Funeral Practices
By MARC LALLANILLA
Oct. 14, 2004 -- When Bonnie Ramey buried her husband two years ago, she knew she didn't want to
have a typical funeral ceremony at a landscaped cemetery plot.
"The commercialization of funerals is getting out of control," she said. "They get you at your weakest point. In my opinion,
they're just ripping off the dead."
Bonnie and her husband, Charles, both nature lovers, spent many hours hiking through the wooded Appalachian foothills surrounding
their home in rural South Carolina.
So after Charles died, Bonnie's choice of burial spots was an easy one — down the road from her house is Memorial
Ecosystems, one of the only places in the United States devoted to environmentally sensitive or "green" burials.
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The ideas behind green burials are simple. Bodies are not embalmed. Elaborate caskets made of metal or rare tropical hardwoods
are replaced with fabric burial shrouds or simple, biodegradable coffins made of wood or cardboard. Concrete grave liners
or vaults that prevent the ground above the coffin from settling are avoided.
Perhaps most significantly, in lieu of carefully manicured cemetery grounds, native plants and wildflowers are allowed
to flourish, turning the burial ground into a nature preserve. "It preserves the land and the habitat for the animals," said
Ramey. "Our habitat is going quickly, and if we don't preserve it, we won't have any."
Though there are over 200 green cemeteries in Great Britain, the movement is relatively unknown in the United States. South
Carolina, Florida, California and Texas have the only four green cemeteries currently operating here. Several more green burial
facilities are being planned throughout the country.
For the full story, go to ABC News
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| (Robert F. Bukaty/AP Photo) |
Do Boiling Lobsters
Feel Pain?
Research Indicates They Don't, But Not Everyone Agrees
By MARC LALLANILLA
May 11, 2005 — Drop a lobster in boiling water and the lobster will thrash around wildly. Pierce
an earthworm with a fishhook and the worm will twist and writhe in excruciating pain.
Or will it? Do these animals really feel pain? Or are their movements just muscles automatically contracting due to an
outside stimulus?
"You're dealing with the fundamentals of pain and what pain is," said Tony Yaksh, professor of anesthesiology at the University
of California at San Diego. "It's complicated — how do you define pain?"
What is Pain — And Who Feels It?
A recent scientific report from Norway has added fuel to this long-simmering debate. The study, funded by the Norwegian
government, finds that animals like lobsters have nervous systems that are too simple to process what we call "pain."
According to Yaksh, primitive animals like lobsters have the ability to perceive and respond to a "noxious stimulus," that
is, any agent that can cause physical harm like tissue damage.
"When you deal with a non-verbal animal, and when you see a lobster in boiling water, you know that's a noxious stimulus,"
said Yaksh.
But scientists like Yaksh stop short of calling what the lobster feels "pain" — or pain as humans know it. The difference,
Yaksh explained, is in our feelings. "There's a strong emotional component to what we call pain," he said.
For the full story, go to ABC News
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Huge Meat-Eating Dinosaur Discovered
Bigger than T. Rex, This Monster Was Eight Tons of Hungry
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| (Rodolso Coria) |
By MARC LALLANILLA
April 17, 2006 — Move
over, Tyrannosaurus Rex. There's a new dinosaur in town, and he's bigger and badder than you ever were.
A ferocious meat-eater named Mapusaurus roseae and weighing almost eight
tons was recently discovered in Argentina. Because the bones of several individuals were found in one place, scientists believe
that the carnivores lived together in social units and hunted with deadly efficiency in well-organized packs.
Their prey? Mapusaurus probably dined on the flesh of the largest dinosaur
that ever lived, Argentinosaurus, a massive 125 foot-long, 100-ton giant.
"They would have been quite formidable," said Philip Currie, paleontologist
at the University of Alberta who worked on the Mapusaurus site. "These were definitely the top dogs in the Southern Hemisphere."
The Family that Preys Together
The Mapusaurus bones were found in a bone bed on a hill in the Patagonia
region of southern Argentina. "Bone beds are a good area to work for giving info on more than one animal," said Currie, who
made the Mapusaurus discovery with Rodolfo Coria of the Museo Carmen Funes in Plaza Huincul, Argentina.
Carnivorous dinosaurs like T. Rex were once believed to be solitary hunters,
but new evidence suggests otherwise. Currie speculates that the Mapusaurus he and Coria discovered were all living together
in a social group until their death in some catastrophic event about 100 million years ago.
"They all died together, so you can reason that they all lived together,"
Currie said. "Carnivores, when you find them all together like this, were probably packing animals with coordinated hunting
efforts."
For the full story, go to ABC News
No Bed of Roses
Floral Industry's Use of Pesticides
Has Some Consumers Wary
By MARC LALLANILLA
Feb. 13, 2004 — Nothing can express affection
on Valentine's Day better than a bouquet of fresh flowers. But those floral beauties come at a high cost — for the health
of the workers that harvest them.
That's because most flowers are grown free from many pesticide regulations,
leaving low-wage floral industry workers vulnerable to toxic exposures.
Now, in part because of growing pressure from consumers, who are beginning
to seek alternatives like organically grown flowers, flower buyers worldwide appear increasingly concerned about the environmental
and health hazards of pesticide use.
About 65 percent of the flowers sold in the United States are imported, primarily
from Colombia and Ecuador. For those nations, blessed by rich volcanic soils, ample sunshine and a mild climate, floriculture
investment has blossomed into a large and profitable industry. Colombia alone exports about $630 million worth of flowers
annually.
And even critics of the flower industry agree the stable jobs and higher-than-average
wages provided by flower growers are a benefit to workers. In recent years, for example, some large commercial growers have
attempted to provide better housing, schools and health care for communities surrounding their farms.
But reports from the field suggest life as a flower farm employee is no bed
of roses.
For the full story, go to ABC News
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