ScienceDaily: Science & Society News

Sand and gravel are the most mined materials in the world, with between 32 and 50 billion tons extracted globally each year. They are being extracted faster than they can be replaced. But according to a new study, the human and environmental costs of this extraction on lower and middle-income countries have been largely overlooked.

How to design efficient demo areas for urban carbon sequestration? In the latest policy brief research groups focus on the main principles of urban demonstration areas using biochars for carbon sequestration.

From small committees to national elections, group decision-making can be complicated -- and it may not always settle on the best choice. That's partly because some members of the group do research on their own, and others take their cues from the people around them. A new mathematical framework predicts that decision-making groups have a critical threshold of people who get their information from others. Below that threshold, the group chooses the high-quality outcome. Above it, the group can end up choosing the better or worse option.

Updating the laws, the researchers say, will allow the true value of public resources to be revealed in an environmental market. It will give different groups equal footing in auctions, and create a more stable, actionable path toward conservation, to the benefit of both industry and the environment.