I will be offering the following two courses this semester at UPR-Mayaguez. Please click the following links for the course fliers.
Please feel free to contact me if you would like additional information about either course.
Eric Harmsen, Professor
University of Puerto Rico
Dept. of Agricultural and Biosystems Engineering
Mayaguez, Puerto Rico 00681
email: harmsen1000@hotmail.com, eric.harmsen@upr.edu
phone: 787-955-5102
websites: http://pragwater.com , http://bahai.org
Excellent technology! Hats off to House in the Woods Farm for their re-usable mulch layer. I use the same machine in my Drip Irrigation laboratory. I would love to be able to replace the plastic with the landscape fabric.
“…..a water-permeable, air-permeable reusable weed-barrier that is laid out in 15 minutes by a tractor. The mulch machine layer makes a raised bed, lays out the drip tape, lays out the reusable cloth, tucks the edges under soil and makes your dinner, all in one or two passes of the tractor.” Read more…
The world has reached a critical point in its development. The decisions we make will lead us to a prosperous and peaceful world, in which each individual contributes to the advancement of civilization; or to a world in which the human spirit is held captive by antiquated cultural practices, a world in which heinous crimes are committed upon its people (mostly women and girls) on a daily basis. One future is heaven and the other is hell. The advancement of women and girls is the key to unlocking the processes leading to sustainable development, global prosperity and world peace.
As early as the 19th Century, Abdu’l-Baha recognized the importance of women in achieving peace:
“When all mankind shall receive the same opportunity of education and the equality of men and women be realized, the foundations of war will be utterly destroyed. Without equality this will be impossible because all differences and distinction are conducive to discord and strife.”
So important is the advancement of women and girls that he recommended that daughters be given priority over sons, in regard to education.
“ ….training and culture of daughters is more necessary than that of sons, for girls will one day be mothers, and mothers are the first educators of the new generation. If it is not possible, therefore, for a family to educate all the children, preference is to be accorded to daughters since, through educated mothers, the benefits of knowledge can be most effectively and rapidly diffused throughout society.”
Implicit in the above statement is that empowered, educated mothers can train their sons to become men of strong moral character, something that is sorely lacking in today’s world.
Numerous other benefits will accrue to society with the advancement of women; including their special contributions to the various fields of science; based on their mental alertness, intuition, and spiritual qualities of love and service, in which women are strong.
“The world in the past has been ruled by force, and man has dominated over women by reason of his more forceful and aggressive qualities both of body and mind. But the balance is already shifting — force is losing its weight and mental alertness, intuition, and the spiritual qualities of love and service, in which woman is strong, are gaining ascendancy. Hence the new age will be an age, less masculine, and more permeated with the feminine ideals — or, to speak more exactly, will be an age in which the masculine and feminine elements of civilization will be more evenly balanced.”
For the reasons stated above, pragwater.com will aggressively promote the advancement of women in its future posts. I sincerely hope that the readers of pragwater.com will take advantage of the valuable information that will be posted relative to this important topic.
Eric Harmsen, Pragwater Administrator
Excellent viewgraph with lots of information. Check it out.
Water Lily: Like snorkels, the mouthlike stomata on water lily leaves point up, where they find the air they need.
From National Geographic Magazine, October 2012, http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2012/10/leaves/dunn-text
This article is very interesting, describing some of the evolutionary processes that created the wide diversity of plant leaves that exist over the surface of the Earth. It also discusses the process of photosynthesis as a unique mechanism for deriving food directly from the sun. The article, unfortunately, never once mentioned the extremely important temperature regulation mechanism of evapotranspiration, which is the other important function of the stomata (microscopic pores on the surface of leaves). The reader may find it interesting that only about 1% of the solar energy received by the leaf is used for photosynthesis. The other 99% is converted into other energy fluxes for maintaining the leaf temperature within a comfortable range. When sufficient water is present in the soil, virtually all of the solar radiation is converted into the latent energy flux (i.e., water vapor), which keeps the plant leaf cool, the same way perspiration is used to cool humans. Keeping cool is critically important for plants, to avoid heat stress and a reduction in their growth and yield (e.g., fruit, seed, etc.).
PRAGWATER 