PERMACULTURE: WHY NOT AN EXTRACURRICULAR ACTIVITY IN OUR SCHOOLS!?

When I was a student in the secondary school, in the middle of the 1950s, our school used to have extracurricular activities; and I chose photography, which helped me later in my professional activity: teaching and research in ecology.

This remembrance occurred to me as I accessed information in the internet about permaculture.

Its concept is given in the Wikipedia as follows:
Permaculture is a branch of ecological design and ecological engineering which develops sustainable human settlements and self-maintained agricultural systems modeled from natural ecosystems.
The core tenets of permaculture are:
Care of the Earth: Provision for all life systems to continue and multiply.
Care of People: Provision for people to access those resources necessary for their existence.
Setting Limits to Population and Consumption: By governing our own needs, we can set resources aside to further the above principles.

Permaculture draws from several disciplines including organic farming, agroforestry, integrated farming, sustainable development, and applied ecology. "The primary agenda of the movement has been to assist people to become more self reliant through the design and development of productive and sustainable gardens and farms. The design principles which are the conceptual foundation of permaculture were derived from the science of systems ecology and study of pre-industrial examples of sustainable land use."

The photos below show its practice:




Pet bottles can be easily reused for this purpose.


Plastic boxes are advantageously durable.



A bit of an 'exaggeration', maybe!



An apparently useless small site just shows the opposite.



Young students must get involved with Nature. It's not only a therapy, it builds communities!

ENVIRONMENTAL EDUCATION. That's it!!!

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SMALL PLOT INTENSIVE FARMING

"Innovation of the Week: Small Plot Intensive Farming", reproduced from NOURISHING THE PLANET ((http://blogs.worldwatch.org/nourishingtheplanet/innovation-of-the-week-small-plot-intensive-farming-growing-food-in-unlikely-places/?utm_source=The+Nourishing+the+Planet+Project&utm_campaign=5715698611-NtP_Draft_2_5_11_2012&utm_medium=email)

Earlier this year Olivier De Schutter, the UN Special Rapporteur on the right to food, submitted a report arguing that agroecological farming methods “outperform the use of chemical fertilizers in boosting food production,” particularly in developing countries where access to resources is limited. Practicing this low-input, diversified farming style on a small scale has been gaining popularity in the U.S. in recent decades due, in part, to rising fuel and land prices. Farming intensively on tiny acreages, particularly in urban areas, may offer a sustainable solution to many of the U.S. food system’s ills.

Farmers Wally Satzewich, Gail Vandersteen, and Roxanne Christensen have created SPIN Farming, a business that trains would-be farmers how to farm profitably on as little as 5,000 square feet, or roughly the size of two 4-bedroom homes. SPIN farming, or Small Plot INtensive Farming focuses on the business side of farming, from keeping overhead costs low to finding easy-to-access markets. Using SPIN’s model, farms are cropping up in unlikely spaces. Somerton Tanks Farm, for example, operates in the shadow of two five-million-gallon water tanks on land owned by the Philadelphia Water Department. And in Wilkes-Barre, PA, students at Wilkes University founded the first-ever campus-based SPIN farm by reclaiming an abandoned lot on the edge of the campus.

[This initiative is quite similar to the 'Projeto Mandala', developed in the state of Paraíba, northeastern Brazil]



- See vídeo, in Portuguese, by accessing: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GI3IgK-IAio&feature=youtube_gdata_player. Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

FIGHTING MALARIA WITH ENGINEERED SYMBIOTIC BACTERIA FROM VECTOR MOSQUITOES

[Reproduced from PNAS - Proceedings from the Academy of Sciences of the United States] [Published online before print July 16, 2012, doi: 10.1073/pnas.1204158109
PNAS July 16, 2012]

Abstract

The most vulnerable stages of Plasmodium development occur in the lumen of the mosquito midgut, a compartment shared with symbiotic bacteria. Here, we describe a strategy that uses symbiotic bacteria to deliver antimalaria effector molecules to the midgut lumen, thus rendering host mosquitoes refractory to malaria infection. The Escherichia coli hemolysin A [= an exotoxin that destroys erytrocytes] secretion system was used to promote the secretion of a variety of anti-Plasmodium effector proteins by Pantoea agglomerans, a common mosquito symbiotic bacterium. These engineered P. agglomerans strains inhibited development of the human malaria parasite Plasmodium falciparum and rodent malaria parasite Plasmodium berghei by up to 98%. Significantly, the proportion of mosquitoes carrying parasites (prevalence) decreased by up to 84% for two of the effector molecules, scorpine, a potent antiplasmodial peptide and (EPIP)4, four copies of Plasmodium enolase–plasminogen interaction peptide that prevents plasminogen binding to the ookinete surface. We demonstrate the use of an engineered symbiotic bacterium to interfere with the development of P. falciparum in the mosquito. These findings provide the foundation for the use of genetically modified symbiotic bacteria as a powerful tool to combat malaria.




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SAVING FORESTS

[Reproduced from http://www.conservation.org/learn/climate/forests/Pages/overview.aspx] Protecting forests has always been central to CI's mission [CI, Conservation International]. Now it is more important than ever. Did you know the burning and clearing of forests contributes approximately 16 percent of the world's greenhouse gas emissions and fuels climate change? Human activity is the main cause of deforestation, usually tied to economic development, increasing consumption rates – in both developed and developing countries – and extractive industries such as logging. Pristine jungles are burned and cleared for farming and ranching, or for plantations to produce biofuel crops. Cities and villages expand, prompting industrial development that supplants forests. Loggers extract more trees than the forest can reproduce, destroying ecosystems and leaving roads that invite other exploitative forces. Science in Action: Putting out Fires The loss is irreplaceable. Tropical forests are home to more than half of all species on Earth, and their destruction means the extinction of countless plant and wildlife species, many still unknown to science. Burning and clearing forests emits approximately 16 percent of the greenhouse gases that cause climate change, more than all the world's cars, trucks, and airplanes combined. If left intact, these tropical forests are reservoirs of massive amounts of carbon. IPCC-Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change data Protecting and restoring forests then is an essential first response to climate change. According to the IPCC, halting deforestation and restoring already degraded areas while adopting more forest-friendly agriculture and management practices would prevent the emission of more than 300 billion tons of carbon dioxide over the next 40 years. That is more than total U.S. emissions over that same period, based on current levels. Forest Carbon Initiatives These nature-based initiatives aid in global mitigation efforts by preserving or restoring standing forests, which absorb massive amounts of carbon from the atmosphere. See illustrations below

CLIMATE CAUSES LEAVES TO NARROW

[Reproduced from BBC News in 4th July 2012 - US independence day - the day physicists revealed they obtained Higgs boson or the particle of God, coincidentally or not]




Herbarium samples helped the researchers compare leaf widths over more than a century.


Leaves are getting narrower on some plant species as a result of changes to the climate, a study has suggested.

A team of Australian researchers studies specimens from the wild and from herbarium collections stretching back more than 120 years.

Analysis of the herbarium samples found that leaf width had decreased by two millimetres.


Lead author, Greg Guerin, from the University of Adelaide, said the team chose narrow-leaf hopbush (Dodonaea viscosa subsp. angustissima) as it appeared to display different leaf characteristics in different climates.

The researchers looked at more than 250 herbarium specimens collected from one region: Flinders Ranges, southern Australia's largest mountain range.

Dr Guerin observed: "Historical herbarium collections provide immediate access to wide sampling throughout a geographic region and through time".

"You just can't replicate that kind of sampling, covering hundreds of kilometres... from one region over 130 years."

To support this data, the team gathered 274 field samples from a mountain, collecting specimens at every 50m drop in altitude.

"This gave us information on variation within populations and the local influence of altitude on leaf shape and size," Dr Guerin explained.

The analysis revealed a two-millimetre decrease in leaf width over 127 years across the region.

Between 1950 and 2005, the team added, there had been a 1.5C (2.7F) increase in the maximum temperatures in the region but there had been little change in rainfall patterns.

Next steps
Dr Guerin said: "The next step is to test whether similar patterns are emerging in other species and in other regions."

He acknowledged that because the study was the first of its kind, there was no comparable data at this stage.

"We chose a likely candidate species - one that appeared to vary in leaf shape with latitude - but given that the first species we tested revealed strong change over time, it may well be that similar shifts are occurring more widely."

Dr Guerin said that the shift in leaf shapes could, in some cases, have wider ecological consequences.

"The study is a new example of significant climate change responses to date," he said.

"We now know that every degree of warming is ecologically significant and generating ecological disequilibrium<"./b>

"There is some good news here in that some Australian plant species may have the potential to respond to and cope with increasing temperatures."

But he warned that other species might be less well suited to adapt.





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MAMMALS OF BRAZIL, AN ANNOTATED LIST FROM CONSERVATION INTERNATIONAL

Annotated list of mammals of Brazil. Conservation International, 2nd ed., IN Portugueses and English. Access site and download the pdf: http://www.conservation.org.br/publicacoes