Category Science

What is no-till farming?

It is a method of farming by which crops are grown without disturbing the soil by tilling. If there is no tilling the crop residue on the soil prevents evaporation of rain water and more water infiltrates the soil. There is better retention of organic matter in the soil and nutrients are well recycled, thereby improving the fertility of the soil. It minimises soil erosion and no ploughing means there is no air-blown dust. It is more profitable as it does away with the labour, irrigation and machinery associated with tilling.

Tilling also damages ancient structures like burial mounds under the earth as archaeologists have found in the UK

It was Edward Faulkner’s book “Plowman’s Folly” which started the idea of no-till farming in the 1940s. No-till farming is widely practised in the U.S. Indian farmers started adopting the practice in the 1960s. In the Indo-Gangetic plains, rice-wheat cultivation is done using this method. In parts of Andhra Pradesh, rice-maize cultivation is done without tilling.

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A new way to tackle planet-heating CO2

How can you capture carbon? We know that forests and oceans act as carbon sinks. Can we employ mechanisms to capture carbon dioxide so that the carbon emissions can be prevented? Enter Carbon capture and storage (CCS).

A technology employed to sequester carbon dioxide, CCS prevents the release of CO2 post the conventional power generation and industrial production processes.

Here, the CO2 is injected in suitable underground storage reservoirs. The capture technology works by separating CO2 emissions from the process and the compressed COZ gets transported through pipelines or gets shipped to a geological storage location where it is then injected.

One may wonder where these geological storage locations are situated at. Well, they are the abandoned oil and gas fields, deep saline formations, and unmineable coal seams. This technology enables the use of fossil fuels whilst ensuring the CO2 emissions are also significantly reduced.

Now, scientists have found a new way to sequester carbon. The idea is to turn it into sodium bicarbonate and store it in oceans.

According to a research paper published in the journal ‘Science Advances’ recently, the new technique is found to be more efficient than the current carbon capture technology, in fact, three times more efficient. It could be a new step in addressing the climate crisis by removing carbon from the air.

The study focusses on direct air capture. Even with the conventional carbon-capturing mechanism, only relatively small amounts of carbon can be captured. It makes the whole process challenging and expensive. That’s where the new study holds promise. It follows the direct air capture method but the research team used copper to modify the absorbent material. As such, the absorbent can remove CO2 from the atmosphere at ultra-dilute concentrations. The usage of copper helps increase the capacity of the absorbent to two to three times.

Even the material can be produced with ease and is cheap. Thus the cost incurred in direct air capture can be reduced. After the carbon dioxide is captured, it is turned into sodium bicarbonate or baking soda Sea water is used for this and then the sodium bicarbonate is released into the ocean in small concentrations.

There is, however, the challenge of disposing of tonnes of sodium bicarbonate in the ocean as it could amount to “dumping”.

The negative impacts on the ocean cannot be dismissed. Scientists are also of the opinion that such carbon capture technologies may distract us from the core target of reducing the burning of fossil fuels and instead give us a licence to continue being large-scale polluters.

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What is arsenic?

Millions of people all over the world are affected by the contamination of groundwater with arsenic. Most of them live in South Asian countries such as Bangladesh, Cambodia, India, Nepal and Vietnam.

 A study in 2017 revealed that over 60 million Pakistanis who live in the Indus River Valley are at risk from arsenic poisoning their drinking water.

Arsenic is a chemical element that has no odour or taste, making it difficult for a lay person to detect. Trace quantities of arsenic are essential in the human diet, but is dangerous in large amounts. Long-term exposure can lead to skin lesions, cancer, developmental defects, heart disease and diabetes.

While 10 mcg per litre is the safe limit recommended by WHO, in the Indus Valley, the concentration exceeded 200 mcg in many places!

Arsenic occurs naturally in the Earth’s crust, but it stays locked in the rocks and sediment. When people draw too much water from underground aquifers, it causes the water tables to drop drastically. The water deep down is often tainted by arsenic.

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Why does the European Space Agency want to give the Moon its own time?

The European Space Agency announced that space organisations around the world are considering how best to keep time on the moon. The need is for an internationally accepted lunar time zone.

How do you keep track of time on the moon?  What is the lunar reference point? The moon needs to be given its own time zone, the European Space Agency announced recently. As the race to the moon begins and more and more lunar missions are getting deployed, it is become, pertinent to come with a common refer time.

The European Space Agency announced that space organisations and the world are considering how best to keep time on the moon. The idea took out at a meeting in the Netherlands last year in such the participants agreed on the imminent need to set up    “ a common lunar reference time” Pietro Giordana, a navigation system engineer of the space agency said.

“A joint international effort is now being launched towards achieving this, “Giordano said in a statement.

As of now, a moon missions on the time of the country that is operating the spacecraft. The need is for an internationally accepted lunar time zone. This will be easier for all space-faring nations as mare countries and even private companies are aiming for the moon. The NASA is also getting art to send astronauts there.

 The question of time confounded NASA as it was designing and building the international Space Station, fast approaching the 25th anniversary of the launch of its first pierce. The space station doesn’t have its a time zone, But it runs on Coordinated Universal Time, or UTC which is meticulously based on atomic clocks. This ensures in splitting the time difference between NASA and the Canadian Space Agency, and the other partnering space programmes in Russia, Japan and Europe.

Debate is going on among the international team looking into lunar time on whether a single organisation should set and maintain time on the moon.

When it comes to keeping time on the moon, there are technical issues involved. One being that clocks run faster on the moon than on Earth, gaining about 56 microseconds each day, according to the space agency. Also, ticking occur differently on the lunar surface than in bar orbit.

The lunar time will have to be practical for astronauts there, noted the space agency’s Bernhard Hufenbach. NASA is gearing up for its first flight to the moon with astronauts in more than a half-century in 2024, with a lunar landing as early as 2025.

“This will be quite a challenge” with each day lasting as long as 29.5 Earth days, Hufenbach said in a statement. “But having established a working time system for the moon, we can go on to do the same for other planetary destination.” Mars standard Time, anyone?

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What did Lee De Forest discover?

Exactly 100 years ago, on March 12, 1923, American inventor Lee de Forest conducted a public demonstration of his Phonofilm at a press conference. Even though it wasn’t a great financial success, it heralded on era in movie production as it synced sound with the moving image.

When we think about successful inventors whose inventions have heralded a new era, we imagine that they would have enjoyed considerable personal financial success from it as well. This, however, isn’t always the case as some of them turn out to be bad at business. American inventor Lee de Forest was one of them. Even though he contributed immensely to the broadcasting industry and had plenty of scientific successes, he gained little from it all personally.

Unusual upbringing

Born in lowa, the U.S. in 1873, de Forest had an unusual upbringing for his time. Following his family’s move to Alabama, they were avoided by the white community. This was because his father had taken the presidency of the Talladega College for Negroes and was involved in efforts to educate blacks.

Despite his unusual circumstances, de Forest grew up as a happy child unaware of the prejudices he was being meted out making friends with the black children in the town. He was drawn towards machinery and by the time he turned 13, he was already making gadgets at will. This is why he took the path towards the sciences, rather than become a clergyman as planned by his father.

Invents first triode

Even though education wasn’t easy as he had to do odd jobs to meet expenses in addition to those covered by his scholarship and allowance from parents. de Forest completed his Ph.D. in physics in 1899. By 1906, he presented the audion – the first triode – and it went on to become an indispensable part of electronic circuits.

For several decailes, Inventors including American great Thomas Edison, had been trying to bring together the 3 phonograph (a device for recording and reproducing sound) and the moving picture. De Forest, working alongside fellow inventor Theodore Case, first became interested in the idea of sounds for films in 1913.

The patented system that he called Phonofilm began as a drawing in 1918. Over the next couple of years, he earned a number of patents pertaining to the process as he perfected it along the way. On March 12, 1923, he conducted a successful demonstration for the press and presented his Phonofilm.

Sound on film

The technological advance that de Forest brought about was to synchronise sound and motion. He did this by placing the sound recording as an optical soundtrack directly on the film. This meant that sound frequency and volume were represented in the form of analog blips of light.

In the weeks that followed, a number of short films premiered using the Phonofilm. As synchronising the sound of human voice with the lips that moved on screen was still rather difficult, the first sound films that the public viewed still haut dialogue titles, but were accompanied by music.

Below-par fidelity

While de Forest did equip nearly 30 theatres around the world with Phonofilm, he couldn’t get Hollywood interested in his invention. De Forest had a solution for the sound-sync issue with his Phonofilm, but the fidelity (how accurately a copy reproduces its source) on offer didn’t meet the expectations of the age.

 In the following years, the motion picture industry shifted to talking pictures and the sound-on-film process was similar in principle to that used in de Forest’s Phonofilm. De Forest, however, was a failed businessman who was bad at judging people. He was defrauded by his own partner, had to pay for lengthy legal battles for his patents, and even had to sell many of these patents, which were then employed profitability

For all his efforts, de Forest at least finished as an Oscar winner. In 1959, two years before his death in 1961, the Academy of Motion Picture Art and Sciences awarded de Forest an honorary Oscar for the “pioneer invention which brought sound to the motion picture”.

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Which animal is covered with scales?

In the animal kingdom, you will see that there are animals and insects with scales or shells. These help the animals protect themselves from predators. Animals both on land as well as in sea can have scales or shells. Let us take a look at some such animals.

GILA MONSTER

The Gila monster is a tough, heavily bodied lizard whose body is covered with beadlike scales called osteoderms. The scales cover all of its body except the belly. The lizard is known for its strong and venomous bite. When it bites its prey, the lizard doesn’t loosen its grip for several seconds and this allows the venom to flow into its prey. These lizards live in desert and semi-desert areas and are large-bodied, with short, fat tails.

PANGOLIN

Solitary, nocturnal creatures, pangolins are known for their body covered in an armour of scales. These scales help in protection. When threatened, the pangolin will use its front legs to cover its head and expose its scales. It can roll itself into a ball when it is touched. Pangolins are called scaly anteaters because of their diet which includes ants, termites, and larvae. They have no teeth and use their tongues to gather food. They live on the ground while some can climb trees. As many as eight species are found, with a distribution of four species each in Asia and Africa.

SEA URCHINS

 Sea urchins are spiny marine invertebrate animals. These sea animals live in tidal areas and the deep ocean and are seen on the seafloor. They are noted for their round-shaped spiked shell called “test”. They move across the ocean floor using their tube feet, which are small anatomical features seen on their undersides. The spines stretch out of the test and are used to move when they come across obstacles such as rocks. The largest urchin is the Sperostoma giganteum and is seen in Japan. As many as 950 species of sea urchins exist.

ARMADILLO

Armadillo is Spanish for “little armoured one”. The name refers to the bony, armour-like plates that the animal has. The set of plates covering the animal’s body is called the carapace. An animal found in the tropical and subtropical regions of Central and South America, the armadillo lives in open areas such as grasslands while some live in forests. In all, over 20 species of armadillo exist. Did you know that two species of armadillo are able to roll up completely into a ball? The animal uses this technique to protect itself.

DIABOLICAL IRONCLAD BEETLES

With an extremely tough outer shell that justifies their name, the diabolical ironclad beetles are considered to withstand a lot of pressure and are almost unbreakable. The outer wing case of these beetles are called elytra. They inhabit the woodlands of western North America. They live under tree bark and cannot fly. Their elytra is fused together tightly and from a shield. When compression tests were carried out by scientists to test how much force the shield could withstand without cracking, it was found that force up to 149 newtons could be withstood by their shields.

LONGHORN COWFISH

The Longhorn cowfish is known for its uniquely shaped body. Its cubical body is encased in a protective hard shell called carapace and is made up of hard, bony plates. It is a solitary species and is found among seagrasses, reefs, harbours, estuaries, and so on. Its tiny fins and tail jut out from its shell. It received its name from the pair of horns that project from its eyes.

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