Environment

Livestock is an essential part of the human diet and farm productivity is dependent on animals being healthy, which depends on adequate nutrition. Existing evidence shows that livestock feed can be improved by the use of feed additives which improve diet and health but also increase milk yields, suppress the oestrus (female reproductive) cycle or improve digestion in livestock. When properly used in a well-managed environment, many of these additives can substantially improve performance and farm profitability. The Agricultural and Environmental Research Unit at the University of…

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has found that, despite claims by some that the water has been polluted by gas drilling, extensive tests in the northeastern Pennsylvania village of Dimock found it safe. Anti-science activists claimed that Houston-based Cabot Oil  & Gas Corp. polluted the local aquifer with methane and toxic chemicals. They also disputed earlier EPA findings that the water was safe. If your mind reels at the idea that anyone at the EPA is anti-environment and in bed with business, you are not alone.  They have ceaselessly endeavored to take over more and…

In recent years, international climate  policy has increasingly focused  on limiting temperature rise,as opposed  to achieving greenhouse-gas-concentration-related  objectives.  The agreements reached at the United Nations  Framework Convention on Climate Change conference in Cancunin 2010  recognize that countries  should take urgent action to limit the increase in global  average temperature  to less  than  2 ◦ C relative to pre-industrial  levels.  It took 3000 year for raise of 6 degree temperature at global level but…

 "Bioethanol, Biobutanol, Biodiesel, Vegetable oils, Biomethanol, Pyrolysis oils, Biogas, Biohydrogen. Biodiesel: Technically, Mono-alkyl esters of long chain fatty acids derived from renewable lipid feedstock such as vegetable oils and animal fats for use in Compression Ignition engines”. The definition eliminates pure vegetable oils. Depending on the feed stock it may be referred as : – Soybean methyl ester - SME or SOME – Rape methyl ester - RME – Fatty acid methyl ester - FAME (a collective term including both of the above). – Vegetable oil methyl ester - VOME yielding plants…

 In a number of scenarios of the global food and agriculture system in 2030, we examine to what extent increases in livestock and crop productivity, and changes in human diets, may expand the bioenergy potential. The results from the scenarios indicate that if the recent projections of global agriculture made by the FAO come true, the prospects for bioenergy plantations will be less favorable. In our scenario depicting the FAO projections, it is estimated that total agricultural land area globally will expand from current 5.1 billion ha to approximately 5.4 billion ha in 2030, leaving…

Global climate change has stimulated efforts to reduce CO2 emissions. Photosynthetic organisms use solar energy to generate reducing equivalents and incorporate atmospheric CO2 into organic molecules. Cellular phenotype is a manifestation of gene expression levels, metabolic demand, resource availability, and cellular stresses. The variation in raw material for production of biofuels ranges from hydrocarbon yielding plants, non-edible and edible oil yielding plant, corn ,sugarcane to lingo-cellulosic waste to algal biofuels.  Currently, cellulosic biofuels and algal biodiesels …

Plants have a capacity to uptake minerals from the soil and use them for synthesis of their own cellular components. Plants are autotrophs and they can make their own food and human beings are heterotrophs; we have to get food from plants. All life on earth depends on the energy captured by plants. How do plants discriminate among ions to be taken up by them? How do they "exclude ions" (or in simple terms if you allow me to put a corollary) "vomit out" , i.e., sodium exclusion from membrane?  Plants have a very interesting mechanism of sodium exclusion (Schubert et al . 2009; Pitann…

Today in a show on television called “Asar”, Mr. Amir Khan rightly upheld my point that it's better to eat slightly damaged or slightly infected fruits instead of eating totally shiny and infection-free fruits and vegetables and government representatives promised to check the contents of pesticides in the fruits and vegetables at a point before they are supplied to retailers in Delhi.  A good lab equipped with capillary GLC with FID detectors could detect pesticide contents in fruits and vegetables (even less than 1 ppm) and I know from my experience that Delhi University South Campus…

What is organic farming and “organic food”?  In the EU in many stores, particularly in Germany, there are shelves with the label “organic food”. To my surprise they cost almost double or one and half times the “normal food”. Perhaps farmers in India or Japan or Europe some 1,000 years ago were doing the same: organic farming.  At the most this “organic food” could be food produced without inorganic fertilizers, without insecticidal spray with the help of organic fertilizers.  All food itself is organic, made from inorganic molecules by the plants, that is how the autotrophic…

Today you'll find a myriad of different Earth observation systems covering all from local to global areas, collected from sub-sea to ground to air and of course space. Providers of these Earth observation services come from both public and private sector. Some of the collected data are required through national regulations while others are in demand because of global challenges such as climate change etc. The need for Earth observations permeates the entire global society. Answering this need for Earth observation capacity several Earth observation systems have been built. Agenda 21, G8…