Environment

Humans of the Upper Palaeolithic Age recycled and repurposed their stone artifacts to be put to other uses, according to a group of anthropologists after examining burnt artifacts found in the Molí del Salt site in Tarragona, Spain. How could they make that determination? Finding that stone tools during prehistoric times were recycled is not going to be apparent in archaeological records. "In order to identify the recycling, it is necessary to differentiate the two stages of the manipulation sequence of an object: the moment before it is altered and the moment after. The two…

James Madison - A Prescient President. We are changing our planet's atmosphere. It is widely known that G.S. Callendar warned of this in 1938. It is virtually unknown that James Madison warned of it in 1818, in the form of a rhetorical question: The atmosphere is not a simple but a compound body. In its least compound state, it is understood to contain, besides what is called vital air, others noxious in themselves, yet without a portion of which, the vital air becomes noxious. But the atmosphere in its natural state, and in its ordinary communication with the organized world, comprises…

Landscapes are bound to change if population is growing and demand for housing is increasing and industry and home require food, fodder, and fuel that is obtained from forests legally or illegally. What should be done to prevent biodiversity loss?  A careful preparation of the biodiversity of an existing area before some development has to start can be done with use of local flora and once a list is prepared the plant associations and ecosystems parameters understood the practice can provide clue to what should come after the development has been completed. Preserve nature for which…

There are LEED-certified buildings and there are zero-energy buildings. And then there’s Villa Åkarp outside of Malmo, Sweden — an energy-plus residential home. In other words, a home that produces more energy than it uses. Since construction was completed on the three-bedroom, two-bathroom house in 2009, it has raised the bar for what is possible in home construction. Villa Åkarp takes its design cues from the passive house, or Passivhaus, movement, a design program for creating super-insulated houses that rely on window orientation, thermal recovery and other elements for heating and…

Melvin Calvin at Berkeley in 1945 showed that Chlorella could take up 14CO2 and produce 3-phosphoglycerate.  This article is for wider audience interested to know that carbon fixation cycle  is not “Dark reaction”  or  ” Light independent carbon fixation cycle” but is "Light dependent Carbon fixation". Calvin cycle enzymes are present in mesophyll cells of C3 plants but they are absent from mesophyll cells of C4 plant. In C4 plants the RuBISCo is present and active in Bundle sheath cells only where they fix CO2 during day time.  In CAM plants the  …

The EPA has declared water, the substance the Clean Water Act was created to protect, a pollutant - and it is getting the federal government dragged into court. How so?  They are requiring Fairfax County, Virginia, to artificially control the flow of water in Accotink Creek watershed because that is their solution to managing sediment; too much water is a pollution problem, they claim, and it needs to be fixed.   But the EPA has far overreached itself, local officials claim, and that has created strange bedfellows.  The Democrats on the Board of Supervisors have joined…

Photosynthesis inplants can fall into three types C3 , C 4 and CAM. C3 photosynthesis: Photosynthesis is conversion of light energy into chemical energy utilizing chlorophyll (  LHC II.PS II and LHC I  PS I ) along with water and generating ATP, reducing NADP+ to NADPH + H+  and photolysis of water with release of Oxygen.   Earlier Photosynthesis was divided into two type of reactions: Light reactions and dark reactions.  It was assumed that Carbon fixation does not require light and the reaction is light independent. Here I would like to put together recent results…

Biofuels utilisation to  mitigate Climate Change   Ashwini Kumar Alexander vonHumboldt Fellow Energy PlantationDemonstration Project Centre. Department of Botany, University ofRajasthan, Jaipur – 302 004, INDIA Phone: 0091-0141-2654100 (M) 0091-9461663610 http://www.science20.com/profile/professor_ashwani_kumar E-mail :Ashwanikumar214@gmail.com   ABSTRACT:  Global climate change has stimulated efforts to reduce CO2 emissions. Photosynthetic organisms use solar energy to generate reducingequivalents and incorporate atmospheric CO2 into organic molecules.Cellular phenotype…

Climate change advocacy groups are not happy with U.S. Climate Envoy Todd Stern's recent statement at Dartmouth College renouncing a limit of 2 degree celsius (2C) temperature rise as a global goal for UN climate negotiations. Stern said that agreeing to a framework to achieve the 2C goal would "only lead to deadlock" and that a new agreement should give countries "flexibility."  Responding from Manila, Lidy Nacpil, Director of Jubile South - Asia Pacific Movement on Debt&Development, noted that 250,000 people have now fled their flooded homes and  said, "President Obama…

Everytime I hear the word 'manhole' I think I have a hearing problem, or that my English is really, really bad. It sounds like a word I should understand, consisting of the two well known words 'man' and 'hole' , both of which give perfect meaning. The reason why I think 'manhole' is so weird, is that the combination doesn't give an immediate logical meaning. It is too ambiguous for that; a hole made for a man? or by a man? maybe even a certain hole in a man? For those of you who share my resistant linguistic ignorance, here is a picture showing what a manhole really is – so we all know what…