NERD - Environment

I dreamed a Smiling farmer --(a selfish idea to ensure my 3 meals a day)

2016-03-29T00:00:00+05:30

Nagabhushanam is a peasant from adilabad growing onions on his leased 2 acre land for which he bought the seeds at INR 400/kg expecting he can sell the outcome for atleast INR 50/kg. 3 moths are over and the price dropped to 25. This was the case still going on since he started farming. How many times a small farmer can resort himself not to commit a suicide? A so called wise suggestion an educated analyst can give is to quit the farming. What can be the situation if all the farmers follow those wise advises. Can I (you) get 3 delicious full meals a day with with an extra privilege to complain on it.

Rajanna Reddy is another dryland farmer from Ananthapuram sowed Green Chillies at the same time when a few hundreds of farmers opted the same without knowing the actual demand. Right when their miserable day arrived they had no other option than selling the entire yield to a mere price of INR 10 a kg for which the cost of investment was INR 25/kg. What can all those hundreds of vexed and doomed farmers do? Launch a protest to force the Government to exempt their farm loans!

Paparayudu is a an old and experienced farmer from Eluru of West Godavari who has been growing paddy since last 30 years and every time he has to compromise in selling them at a 'no loss no gain' price for his toiling efforts of 90 days under the hide & seek game of seasonal rainfall. And the most difficult thing for him to digest is that the other vegetables and groceries are coming at a price as dear as gold or silver. Can somebody think of guiding him to choose other profitable crop for his demographic and soil quality conditions?

All the answers to these questions can only be answered by an Oracle only. Well, I am not talking here about the multi-national giant company Oracle, but a so called fortune teller. When the most intelligent Indian can forecast an equity price to profit a billionaire, can estimate a countries GDP growth and even the number of MP seats a particular party can win using statistics or other advanced science, should we really need an Oracle?

Can we address these poor farmers troubles as intelligently as a Facebook /Google developer can find an optimal buying choices for an on line customer to advertise on websites.

The fact is that we are indebted to them at least thrice a day for our food and parties involving pizzas and KFC chickens whenever we want. We are now living in a world where a meteorologist can effectively predict whether it will rain in this week or not for at least next month. Similarly, I ask the most advanced and intellectual community of India, Can we predict what the price of onions after 3 months for Nagabhushanam? or Can we suggest a better crop for Paparayudu to see him smiling for he got some profit through farming in his lifetime. Can we inform Rajanna Reddy that Green chillies have already been sowed by 100 more farmers than yesterday so that he can wait for some more days or chose another demanding seed?

Agri-Informatics is the lifesaving ‘Oracle’, I am going to propose. It can predict a particular crops price and demand from place to place and time to time (in space-time). It should be sensitive to all the key factors like,

Season-wise demand of an agri-product.
Acres of land under agriculture for a particular seed with their recorded age of growth.
The expected rainfall data from meteorology department.
International and national bans and lifts on exports and imports of specific goods
Related to a crop.
News on Minimum support price levied.
New food subsidy schemes. Subsidized costs of seeds and fertilizers.
Changes in Electricity tariffs for their effect on bore-well dependent irrigation for
Agriculture.
Variation in prices of alternate substitutes for an agri-product.
Existing stockpile in FCI and private go-downs.
Fuel costs on transportation.
The buying power of prospective consumers for some specific agri-goods.
Rise and falls in demand from food processing agencies and junk food sellers.
Natural disasters like floods, El Nino and droughts.

Mathematically one can establish relations between change in price and demand with respect to time and place, as well.

Denote P(t,x) and D(t,x) are the price and demand respectively for an agri-product 'A ' at time t and place x. Then in terms of partial derivatives of P and D a coupled simultaneous system of Partial Differential Equations (PDE) can be imagined as follows.

Suppose, if today, (i.e. at t=0 day), the price P(0, Nellore) and demand D(0, Nellore) are known for a place x=Nellore then the above stated PDE can calculate P(t, Nellore) and D(t, Nellore) for t=1 day (i.e. tomorrows price ). Once the price at t=1 is known the same above equation is iterated to find the price on t=2 day as well but with slight possibility of small errors. For solving these PDE it involves a lot of mathematical effort and super computational power on large grids such at the scale of a country and for a sequence of future 30 days. Some serious efforts have already been made in this regard by Tamilnadu Agricultural University.

For more information see- http://www.tnagmark.tn.nic.in/price_forecast.htm

Let us all wish our farmers a happy smile in future for their handsome profits being the reason.

Mimicking The Educator Muse- The Way Within

2016-03-29T00:00:00+05:30

COURTSEY: indianblogger.com

There's Music in the sighing of a reed;
There's Music in the gushing of a rill;
There's Music in all things, if men had ears:
Their Earth is but an echo of the Spheres.
- Lord Tennyson

Since the dawn of ages, Nature has always played Muse to humanity and the earliest expressions of that overpowering feeling gushed forth in form of various arts which seek to capture Beauty in some form or the other.

But, a closer inspection would also reveal that Nature has always been a constant source of inspiration in our technologies too. Millions of years of natural selection often ensures very high level efficiency designs suiting various environs and challenges assosciated with them; so, in the recent years, scientists are very actively turning towards biological systems for inspiration and understanding of how these systems so efficiently employ resouces available to them for long-lasting solution with maximal perfomance using minimal resources.

One of the early giants in biomedical engineering, Otto H. Schmitt coined the term 'biomimetics' in 1969 (derived from 'bios', meaning life, and 'mimesis', meaning to imitate) to represent the study and imitation of nature’s designs, methods and processes.

COURTSEY : student.iitk.ac.in

Though, the idea of copying designs from nature is not new. Elaborate sketches of Leonardo da Vinci describe a bird's flight and inspired flying machine design, which has been successfully realised as 'ornithopters'.

While some of the basic configurations and designs can be copied (like a diver's fins or wings of ornithoraptor ), for most of the ideas from nature, proper adaptation of analogues from biology to technology is more often needed (like the wings of an aeroplane or a solar cell ).

Exciting new avenues are being explored even as you read these words and researchers are turning towards Nature to seek inspiration for better designs. Termite-mound inspired air-conditioning systems, strong fibres inspired from spiders' web, Gecko feet inspired self inspired adhesive tape,self-cleaning fabrics and even, robots shaped like jellyfish and hummingbirds for spying etc., are a few of many examples that show the progress of this dynamic discipline.

COURTSEY: festo.com

Biomimetic research starts with detailed investigation into structure–function relationships in biological systems or natural products. Based on the strategies and designs found in nature, bio-inspired systems may be developed and indeed, scientists have been able to systemise various strategies for the same investigation.

Following example of Spider silk may help in describing the aforementioned principles.

Spidey Strength

The silk produced by a spider is far superior in toughness and elasticity to Kevlar, which is widely used in bullet proof vests, aerospace structures, and other applications where there is a need for strong but lightweight fibers. The average tensile strength of the radial threads of spider silk is about 1150 MPa, while that of steel is about 400 MPa (Vogel, 2003); i.e., former can bear roughly three time more load than what it takes to snap a steel wire of identical dimensions. With such properties, spider silk can be an ideal substance for body armors, shock absorbers and even bandages (as it has antiseptic properties too!).

Spiders, unlike other silk producing insects, are capable of producing not of one but up to seven types of silk for various functions like for making temporary scaffolding during making web, protective sacs for cocoon, the capturing lines of the web, the outer rim of the web etc.

COURTSEY : textileartscenter.com

Spider silk has fibrous structure, mainly composed of repetitive units of alanine and glycine (very lightweight, closely packing units, resulting in very low densities ), which are further stabilised by interesting interplay of other constituents.

Pyrrolidine, a hygroscopic ('water-holding' ) substance keeps the threads from drying out and occurs in especially high concentration in glue threads (which are coated with very good bio-adhesives, worthy of a seperate discussion ), used for capturing prey. Potassium hydrogen phosphate helps keeping the silk acidic to protect it from microbes which would otherwise digest the protein. Potassium nitrate supposedly prevents the silk protein from being damaged in the acidic environment.

Here, we will focus only on general discussion of mechanical strength of spider silk and artificial replication of the same, with help of very basic models and processes.

Unique combination of lightness and strength of silk can be attributed to its structure which is really complex but a simple, though somewhat inaccurate model can help us understand its properties to a satisfactory degree.

Spider silk seems to be made up of protein chains which have very strong intermolecular connections, imparting it with strength but at the same time are interspersed with regions containing amorphous, unlinked proteins which can deform easily, thus making the fibre flexible and elastic too!

Unlike silkworms, spiders are quite agressive and protective of their territory, and hence, cannot be farmed. Moreover, the exact glandular mechanism of natural production of silk in spider cannot be feasibly replicated in a laboratory. So, various alternatives have been proposed and tried, some which are listed as the following:

Interestingly, silk glands of spiders and mammary glands of goats have remakable degree of similarity and with suitable genetic engineering, the mammary glands start producing milk which has a fluid which can be extracted from milk amd drawn to make spider silk.
Introduction of silk protein producing genes to certain bacterial cultures, causes them to produce required protein which can be spun in silk threads.
Artificial techniques which can produce spider silk (or resembling substance) out of biological systems are still at early developmental stage but some like microfluidics (involves use of capillary forces to handle very small amount of polymer liquid which then, can be drawn into fine fibres), electrospinning (involves drawing very fine fibres from a liquid polymer solution using electric charge) etc. are quite promosing.

We can see how one can try to understand how fantastic natural systems work and then, try to mimic the 'educator Muse' to tackle analogous challenges.

Wetlands: Sources or Sinks of Greenhouse Gases

2016-03-23T00:29:35+05:30

Wetlands are an interface between terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems. They are often termed as 'nature's kidneys', because they cleanse our environment. In wetlands, soil is saturated with moisture either permanently or for a period long enough to support aquatic plants. It is an ecosystem whose formation, processes and characteristics are determined largely by water. Wetlands are a very sensitive ecosystem that are fully dependent on the hydrological conditions. They can be affected by both water stress as well as water surplus conditions. There is a definite hydrological condition, peculiar to each wetland type. The inflow and outflow of water should be in balanced form for a healthy wetland. But nowadays, this balance is under threat, primarily due to global warming and thus, wetlands are under severe pressure. Sometimes, they get heavy precipitation resulting in flooding, while sometimes they suffer from an acute drought condition, in any case leading to their degradation. A degraded wetland could pose grave danger to the environment as explained later. In ecosystems, the transportation and transformation of chemicals is known as biogeochemical cycling. Wetlands, owing to their diverse hydrological conditions, influence these cycles prominently. There is a definite chemical mass balance in wetlands. They act as a source of chemicals to the atmosphere, as a sink or "holder" for chemicals from the atmosphere and transforms them from one form into another.

Wetlands are usually known for mass carbon storage and sequestration in form of biomass, however they are also a prominent source of GHGs (Greenhouse Gases, e.g. $N_2O$, $CH_4$ etc.). This dual nature of wetlands is a very peculiar property and not so well understood, even though it is very clear that under certain circumstances same wetlands could either be net sink or net source of GHGs. The circumstances are usually anthropogenic, i.e. improper wetland management, ignorance of wetlands etc., which lead to their degradation.

Plants in wetland have a high growth rate, so they capture (or sequester) large amounts of carbon dioxide ($CO_2$). Furthermore, their soils are largely anaerobic so carbon that gets incorporated into the soil decomposes very slowly and can persist for hundreds or even thousands of years (carbon storage). Thus under these circumstances, wetlands are aptly considered a GHG sink. Now, let us see how they could act as GHG source. There are two prominent GHGs, methane and nitrous oxide which are natural products of wetlands. Wetland also store a much huge amount of methane: methane is currently 2nd most important anthropogenic GHG. Methane possesses 25 times higher global warming potential (GWP) per molecule than $CO_2$ over a time period of 100 years. Wetlands are single largest natural $CH_4$ source with a median emission of 164 Tg yr-1. Furthermore, temperature response of $CH_4$ production is much higher than respiration or photosynthesis i.e. its productions increases with rise in temperature, thus constituting a positive feedback system. Wetlands are place where excess Nitrogen got fixed by process of nitrification. The source of this excess nitrogen could be fertilizers from farmlands, plant biomass nitrogen (proteins etc.) or direct nascent nitrogen from atmosphere. Nitrogen fixation is processed in aerobic zone of wetlands but at the same time, in anaerobic zone, a complementary process also occurs, which is known as denitrification where nitrite transforms to Nitrous oxide. This Nitrous oxide when reaches to atmosphere starts behaving as GHG. The GWP per molecule of Nitrous Oxide is 298 times than $CO_2$ over 100 year time periods. Thus, the dual nature of wetlands are evident in terms of GHG sink and source. But, it is should not be inferred that wetlands are culprits of Global Warming. The main culprits are humans. The natural balance in wetlands is such that the net GHG productions and annihilation is nearly balanced. Problems occur when this critical balance is disturbed and the existence of wetlands is threatened.

There are many factors threatening the existence of wetlands. Some of the major ones which are usually caused by human actions are agriculture, encroachments, mining, dumping, global warming, dam constructions, draining, and development of springs etc. The anthropogenic impacts which are identified by IWRB (International Waterfowl and Wetlands Research Bureau) are, loss of wetland areas, changes in water regime, changes in water quality, unsustainable exploitation of wetland products and introduction of new species. We are encroaching the wetlands, filling them up, making townships and colonies over them. We are disturbing this very critical and important ecosystem in every manner. By threatening their existence,inadvertently, we are threatening our own existence. It seems a need of this time that we start caring about the nature and natural phenomena. We need to see the climate change as a consequence our own deeds. Incorporation of wetland management practices with climate change studies should be done in India. As of now, in India, very few wetland management studies addressing climate change exist. There should be a protocol encapsulating the climate change scenario in the management procedures for all other wetlands in India. With 1.25 Billion population, it is really taxing to implement something suddenly, but we should understand that everything needs beginning.