- Industry: Biology
- Number of terms: 15386
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Terrapsychology is a word coined by Craig Chalquist to describe deep, systematic, trans-empirical approaches to encountering the presence, soul, or "voice" of places and things: what the ancients knew as their resident genius loci or indwelling spirit. This perspective emerged from sustained ...
Bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), a fatal, infectious disease that degenerates the central nervous system of cattle. It might have evolved from scrapie, a similar disease that infects sheep and goats. In Britain, the practice of feeding cattle with the remains of other cattle not known to have been infected helped spread the disease in the mid-1980s. (Given how the meat packing industry treats them anyway, no wonder the cows are mad. )
Industry:Biology
Using the same soil to grow different crops. Interrupts cycles of weeds, diseases, and insects; builds organic matter, improves soil structure. Useful rotations: nutrient-grabbing crops like corn, celery, and potatoes with those that need less, like garlic, mustard, or shallots; and shallow-rooting crops with deep ones. (Soil improvers: broad beans, lima beans, peanuts, peas, shell beans, snap beans, soybeans. )
Industry:Biology
Average atmospheric conditions over a long time interval. Energy from the sun drives climate, which sets limits on a biome's plant life and therefore on the animals that live there. The Koppen-Geiger classification sorts major climates into five types: humid tropical, dry, humid warm, humid cold, and cold polar.
Industry:Biology
The great loopings and returns of life-giving substances through the environment. The three most important are the gaseous (e. G. , the carbon, oxygen, and nitrogen cycles), the sedimentary (including the phosphorus, sulfur, calcium, magnesium, and potassium cycles), and the hydrologic (water vapor to rain to streams to oceans to vapor). Uninterfered with, these cycles tend to be self-organizing and self-renewing.
Industry:Biology
There are several types of earthquake faults including:
* normal: the hanging wall (the fault that moves) slides down the foot wall (stationary).
* reverse: the hanging wall slides up the foot wall.
* strike-slip: the hanging wall moves sideways.
* thrust: a reverse fault where the fault angle is 45° or less.
Industry:Biology
Nonburning chemicals made of carbon, chlorine, and fluorine and used in aerosol sprays, solvents, foams, refrigerants, and packing materials. When released into the air and exposed to ultraviolet radiation in the upper atmosphere, they form a gas that opens holes in the ozone layer.
Industry:Biology
Pesticides, fertilizers, wastes, erosion dust, runoff from fields, and animal infections are a few of the varieties. According to the Environmental Protection Agency, half the water pollution in the U. S. Is agricultural. (Most of the other half is industrial. )
Industry:Biology
The second stage in the breakdown of glucose (unprocessed sugar) into energy (ATP), carbon dioxide (as waste), and water Citric acid entering the Krebs cycle as a product of glycolysis (first stage) exits as NADH (reduced nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide), one molecule of GTP (guanosine triphosphate), and one molecule of FADH2 (reduced lavin adenine dinucleotide). NADH and FADH2 give their high-energy electrons to an electron transport system (third stage) that makes many ATP molecules. Named after German chemist Hans Krebs, who discovered the cycle in 1937. See Glycolysis, Carbohydrate Catabolism.
Industry:Biology
Along with natural selection, a key evolutionary process, whereby the frequency of certain genes (alleles, actually) varies randomly in a given population rather than being "pushed" by natural selection. Think about a population of rats in which all but one have striped tails. A catastrophe kills all but the one, who goes on to breed. Result: a majority with unstriped tails.
Industry:Biology
The gradual warming of a planet by an atmosphere's conversion of incoming solar radiation into heat (discovered in 1824 by Jean Baptiste Fourier). This natural effect is amplified by growing quantities of greenhouse gasses--carbon dioxide, nitroux oxide, chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), ozone, and methane--that trap reflected radiant energy as it tries to leave the planet. Some would see a tragic, bitter irony in using up topsoil, polluting the rivers and oceans, and blackening the atmosphere while unconsciously converting the entire world into a giant greenhouse. See Global Warming.
Industry:Biology
