Publication archives

The Environmental Protection Agency on Monday rejected an industry request to use a chromate-based wood preservative for lumber in decks and playground equipment, saying it poses a risk of cancer and other health problems.

After five years of acrimony with the United States, the Canadian forest industry finally abandoned its battle for free trade in lumber in 2006. It accepted a deal that guarantees access to the world's largest building products market in exchange for a tax on Canadian wood and the return of only $4.3 billion US of $5.3 billion in duties.

Wah, wow, hoo! Turns out humans aren't the only primates using songs to warn of life's dangers and travails. White-handed gibbons in Thailand's forests have been found to communicate threats from predators by singing -- the first time the behavior has been discovered among non-human primates, researchers said Wednesday.

It's getting easier to be green. A growing focus on Earth-friendly design, construction and operation is fueling a surge in green building activity in San Luis Obispo County and throughout the country.

David Bischoff lights a gas lantern in his tiny cabin and gazes out the window. Two forested peaks rise beyond a snow-strewn field of hay. It's a view that's costing him dearly.

The leek (Allium ampeloprasum var. porrum) is a vegetable belonging, with onion and garlic, to the Alliaceae, the onion family.

Onion in the general sense can be used for any plant in the genus Allium but used without qualifiers usually means Allium cepa, also called the garden onion. Onions (usually but not exclusively the bulbs) are edible with a distinctive strong flavour and pungent odour which is mellowed and sweetened by cooking. They generally have a papery outer skin over a fleshy, layered inner core.

Longwood University has more than 4,000 students, hundreds of employees and dozens of buildings, and it keeps all of them warm with a wood fire. The Southside school doesn't have to split wood to feed the fire _ it dumps in sawdust, which is plentiful from the region's forest-products industry.