- Branche: Biology
- Number of terms: 15386
- Number of blossaries: 0
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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 ...
Term coined by Tim Lang to denote the distance food must travel from where it is grown or produced and where it is sold. Foods that must come a long distance often require more preservatives and generate more air pollution from the petroleum products used to ship them. For this reason food packaging does not usually say where something is grown. Buying from a local grower or farmer reduces or eliminates such environmentally unsound practices.
Industry:Biology
Over a hundred organic carcinogens produced by the incomplete burning of oil, coal, gas, tobacco, garbage, and even meat. Some are used in pesticides. Aside from causing cancer, their impact on humans is unknown, although test animals exposed to them lost the ability to reproduce.
Industry:Biology
* A littoral zone where shore plants grow
* An epilimnion, site of sunlight-driven photosynthesis
* A metalimnion below it, separating the upper waters from the
* Hypolimnion, cool bottom waters, where organic decomposition occurs in the relative dark. Lakes with little oxygen at this layer but abundant green algae might be eutrophic (rich in nutrients but often poor in animal life), whereas clear lakes with surpluses of oxygen in the hypolimnion might be oligotrophic (poor in nutrients), with mesotrophic lakes somewhere in between.
Industry:Biology
Term introduced (“ecofeminisme”) by Francois d’Eaubonne in the 1974 text Le Feminisme ou la Mort. Dissatisfied with ecological analyses that leave patriarchy out of account, ecofeminists out parallels between how men in the West mistreat women and how they mistreat the Earth: in both cases a relationship of power, control, a will to dominate, and a pervasive fear of of the fact of interdependency. A twist on this is the patriarchal habit of objectifying women while feminizing the environment; women are then seen as less mature or human because "closer to nature. " Not all ecofeminists agree on women's relationship to the natural world: Salleh thinks that feminine bodily experiences situate women more closely to nature, whereas Roach critiques this for reinforcing of the old nature-culture dichotomy. Many ecofeminists have criticized deep ecology's emphasis on unity (seen as a deemphasis on diversity and particularity) and on the need for elaborate philosophizing; for Plumwood, who sees the Western exaltation of rationality as a suicidal expression of ecological contempt, "identifying" with nature is an extended egotism that replaces relationship with psychological fusion. For Ynestra King, the tie with nature, though socially colored, should be celebrated rather than repudiated as "determinist" or "essentialist. "
Industry:Biology
A scale to measure the alkalinity or acidity. Substances with a pH below 7. 0 are acidic (high in free hydrogen ions), and those above 7. 0 are alkaline, with 7. 0 neutral. Acids tend to be sour and corrosives, and bases (alkaline compounds) the opposite, and slippery. Rainy climates tend to produce acidic soil, dry climates alkaline soil. For growing food, soil pH should fall between 6. 3 and 6. 8. Lime is sometimes added to acidic soil and sulfur to alkaline soil. The more humus in the soil to buffer it, the less pH impacts fertility.
Industry:Biology
A colorless atmospheric waste-product gas (one carbon atom joined to two carbon atoms) produced by combustion, fermentation, and respiration. Fossil fuel consumption and deforestation have almost doubled the quantity of it in the atmosphere. See Greenhouse Effect and Photosynthesis.
Industry:Biology
Chemical weathering in which chelates draw metallic cations (positively charged ions) out of rocks and rocky minerals. Ultimately, all forms of weathering have a hand in forming soils. Also: a controversial medical procedure in which the organic chemical EDTA is injected into the body to chelate heavy metals from the blood. The list of claimed benefits includes help for atherosclerosis and various kinds of vascular disease, decreased angina, nicer skin color, healing of gangrene, better blood viscosity and circulation, fewer free radicals, smoother cell and organelle functioning, heightened sensuality, healed ulcers, diminished arthritis, MS, Parkinon's, and Alzheimer's, and of course slower aging. Proponents whose praises for chelation are ignored claim to be victims of the medical establishment, their clinking heavy metals chelated by a disbelief freely played if not always radical.
Industry:Biology
A tunnel of water that forms when a lake on a sheet of ice begins to melt. The tunnel reaches downward until it spreads over the underlying bedrock. In the case of Greenland and Antartica, moulins are lubricating the remaining sheets of ice from below, making it easier for them to snap off and melt in the sea.
Industry:Biology
A long, threadlike structure that carries the bearer's genetic code (DNA), among other things. Humans have 23 pairs of chromosomes, 46 in all: 44 autosomes and two sex chromosomes, the X (female) and less complex Y (male). Offspring acquire half their chromosomes from the biological mother and half from the biological father. Each chromosome is shaped like an X, with a dot in the center (the centromere) and arms reaching out to the ends (the irreplaceable telomeres that keep chromosomes from sticking together accidentally; their gradual shortening from replication after replication during cell division sets the biological limit to a life). See Gene, DNA.
Industry:Biology
Characteristic of roughly 10% of any population. Recent evidence suggests a genetic component. Those who argue that homosexuality is "unnatural" are apparently unaware of the behavior in birds, sheep, beetles, bats, penguins, dolphins, orcas, macaques, bonobos (some 75% of whom are thought to be bisexual), black swans, orangutans, and roughly 1,500 species.
Industry:Biology
