Organic Farms Have Better Fruit and Soil

Posted on September 3, 2010 by Rashid Faridi

Side-by-side comparisons of organic and conventional strawberry farms and their fruit found the organic farms produced more flavorful and nutritious berries while leaving the soil healthier and more genetically diverse.The study is among the most comprehensive of its kind, analyzing 31 chemical and biological soil properties, soil DNA, and the taste, nutrition and quality of three strawberry varieties on more than two dozen commercial fields — 13 conventional and 13 organic.

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New View of Lunar Crater

Posted on September 2, 2010 by Rashid Faridi

NASA has released an interesting  geolologic map of moon.

NASA’s got something new for the geo-geeks in the house: a bedrock geologic map of Schrodinger Basin, a giant crater near the moon’s south pole that formed from a collision with a space rock 21-25 miles in diameter.

The green areas are huge swaths of melted material, while the black lines running through them are fractures formed as the whole hot mess cooled. Later on, smaller objects slammed into the crater and created their own mini-areas of devastation, highlighted here in yellow.

One of the things that makes Schrodinger interesting are the red and beige patches: evidence of some of the most recent volcanic activity near the moon’s south pole. The beige are lava flows, while the red — the youngest rocks pictured here — are deposits from explosive eruptions.
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Putting India on World Petroleum Map :India is now top exporter of petro products in Asia

Posted on September 1, 2010 by Rashid Faridi

According to the data compiled by oil and metal information provider Platts, India’s gross exports currently average 1 million barrels a day, inching past South Korea which exports 0.9 million barrels a day.

With the commissioning of a new refinery by Reliance Industries at Jamnagar and Essar Oil increasing refinery output at Vadinar, India overtook South Korea by mid-2009 and has since then consistently maintained the lead position.

Links:

Putting India on World Petroleum Map

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Carnivore Species Shrank During Global Warming Event

Posted on August 31, 2010 by Rashid Faridi

A new University of Florida study indicates extinct carnivorous mammals shrank in size during a global warming event that occurred 55 million years ago.The study, scheduled to appear in the December print edition of the Journal of Mammalian Evolution and now available online, describes a new species that evolved to half the size of its ancestors during this period of global warming.

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