News from the Nicholas Institute

Subject line:  News from the Nicholas Institute

NI Update June 15, 2006
A brief roundup of news and information about the Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions at Duke University

1. A New Home on the Web – The Nicholas Institute has a new Web site!  Searchable by areas of interest, the site allows you to quickly track down information on Institute events, reports, projects and partnerships. The only thing that isn’t changing is our Web address, www.nicholas.duke.edu/institute.

2. Marine Meeting – The Nicholas Institute recently hosted a meeting between U.S. Rep. Wayne T. Gilchrist (R.-Md.), chair of the House Resources Committee’s Fisheries Sub-committee, and Nicholas School marine conservation experts Larry Crowder, Michael Orbach and Patrick Halpin, who briefed Gilchrist on the environmental and economic benefits of ecosystem-based management.  The Nicholas Institute is now working with legislators on language for an amendment to the Magnuson-Stevens fisheries bill that would increase the bill’s emphasis on ecosystem-based management for the oceans.  Congress is expected to debate the bill’s reauthorization this year.   To learn more about the Institute’s works on oceans, click here > .

3. Presenting to the U.N. – Brian Murray, the Nicholas Institute’s director for economic analysis, was invited to give a plenary address at the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change in Bonn, Germany, in May.  His talk focused on the economics of climate change mitigation in forests, agriculture and land-use change, with emphasis on low-cost methods that can be enacted in the near term.  Murray’s presentation is online at http://unfccc.int/files/methods_and_science/mitigation/application/pdf/unitedstates_murray.pdf.

4. More Carbon Dioxide Will Bring An Itchier Future – Get out the calamine lotion: A new study by scientists at the Nicholas School finds that increased levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide –equivalent to what scientists predict will occur on Earth in the year 2050 – causes poison ivy to grow twice as fast as normal. The study, published last month in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, also found that poison ivy grown in elevated carbon dioxide produces a more allergenic form of urushiol, the compound that causes its signature rashes and itching.  Need to know more?  The study is online at http://www.nicholas.duke.edu/news/poisonivypaper.pdf.