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No water, no food, no shelter, missing or dead family members, decaying bodies everywhere, armed criminals roaming the streets, another tropical storm on its way, etc., etc., etc….(list of horrors could go on for pages). What would you do? It is really worth taking a few minutes to think about how you might cope with an impossible situation like this, and the real possibility that you or some of your family members will die.
PLEASE CONSIDER DONATING ANY AMOUNT OF MONEY TO ONE OF THE MANY AID AGENCIES THAT ARE HELPING THE VICTIMS IN THE PHILIPPINES. TIME IS OF THE ESSENCE! THEY NEED HELP NOW, NOT NEXT WEEK. THANK YOU. CLICK THE FOLLOWING LINK FOR AID AGENCIES ACCEPTING DONATIONS: http://edition.cnn.com/SPECIALS/impact.your.world/
Jack Andraka on the scourge of paywalls for scientific journals
http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2013-10/17/jack-andraka-wired-2013
Great article! Describes how this teenager crashed into the scientific journal paywall. The paywall is the wall that prevents 99% of humanity from benefiting from published scientific results. The article also describes the development of his amazing new pancreatic cancer screening test, which is 168 times faster and 26,000 times cheaper than the existing system.
We need to move to Open Access journals so that everyone in the world can freely access knowledge, not just a tiny intellectual elite.
Four African girls have created a generator that produces Electricity for six hours using a single liter of urine as fuel.
Click here to read Forbes article
Dr. Megh Goyal and Dr. Eric Harmsen have co-edited a new book titled Evapotranspiration Principles and Application for Water Management. Additional information is available at the following website: http://www.appleacademicpress.com/title.php?id=101 (Not sure if the 15% discount still applies.)
Just saw the most amazing movie called The Vanishing of the Bees (http://www.vanishingbees.com/). The video goes extensively into the mysterious bee disappearance and our current scientific understanding. But more importantly, bees are the “canary in the mineshaft”, they just might be our motivation for reversing our insane dependence on pesticides and chemical agriculture. Unfortunately, the video is not free. Here is the trailer for the video.
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Irrigation System Construction Photos – Finca Alzamora, UPRM Campus
An irrigation system was designed and constructed for an organic fruit tree orchard in the University of Puerto Rico-Mayaguez campus farm, Finca Alzamora (Lat 18.220247°, Lon -67.145497°, see Figure 1). The system has a capacity of irrigating up to 60 trees at a rate of 25 gallons per hour. Currently there are approximately 30 small trees at the site.
Figure 1. The organic fruit orchard is located on the left half of the hill.
The system consists of a 1.25 in. PVC mainline laid on the slope and 8 3/4 in. PVC laterals oriented along the topographic contours. All PVC pipe will be buried 1 ft below the surface (Figure 2). Two-gallon per hour pressure compensating emitters used. Up to five drip emitters or micro-spray emitters can be used. The system header is shown in Figure 3.
Figure 2. 1.25 in. Mainline and 3/4 in. lateral PVC tubing.
Figure 2. Irrigation system header and mainline. The header includes a ball valve, air vacuum relief valve, cumulative water meter, filter and pressure gauge.
Numerous students from Dr. Pablo Payam’s organic fruit production course and my irrigation course helped to construct the system. Figure 4 shows students gluing together pieces of PVC pipe. Click here to view more photos.
Figure 4. UPRM Agronomy students helping to construct the irrigation system.
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PRAGWATER 