Probiotic food

Probiotic food is food that contains live bacteria, which is considered beneficial and not harmful to humans. The first example of probiotic food was the introduction of acidophilus to milk, which in some cases helped people who had difficulty digesting milk to be able to tolerate milk better. The specific bacteria used in probiotic food like acidophilus milk is Lactobacillus acidophilus. Such milk was available in the 1920s, and yogurt predates it, but was not specifically supplemented for probiotic effects.

One can still find probiotic food like acidophilus milk. However, the field has opened up to contain other strains of bacteria and other types of food. One naturally thinks of yogurt as a probiotic food, and it may contain lactobacillus acidophilus. One may also see other bacteria listed on probiotic food like yogurt, primarily Lactobacillus bulgaricus, lactobacillus GG, and variants of bifidobacteria.

Most probiotic food is fermented at least partially. A short list of probiotic food choices includes miso soup, some soft cheeses, yogurt products like kefir, sauerkraut and many pickles. Those who feel probiotic food is beneficial are now also interested in prebiotic food. It does not generally contain bacteria but appears to help healthy bacteria grow in the intestines. Prebiotic foods include Jerusalem and regular artichokes, oats, honey, many fruits, and goat’s milk. Human breast milk is also thought to have prebiotic properties that may explain why it so benefits the human newborn.

Many people add probiotic bacteria to their food or take it in capsule form. However, it is unclear how well probiotic bacteria work. Lactobacillus GG, one of the newest probiotics, has shown that it can survive processing by the gut and be especially beneficial to the colon. Not all probiotics have shown evidence that they promote better intestinal health. Some studies do show that eating yogurt during antibiotic treatment may help prevent diarrhea, and is beneficial in reducing risk of yeast infections in women.

Some experts in alternative medicine claim many other benefits to eating probiotic food or using supplements. Such claims include reduction in eczema, cessation or reduction in mental illness, improved immunity, and reduction of childhood allergies and asthma. These claims have yet to be verified, though in most cases few derive harm from probiotic food or supplementation.

Some people may experience mild stomach upset, diarrhea or flatulence during the first few days of probiotic supplementation. Further, some people may be allergic to or intolerant of certain probiotic supplements, or to the probiotic food in which they are presented. However, in most cases, probiotic food is well tolerated, and at the very least, may provide one with better intestinal health. Eating prebiotic foods may also be a good way to promote regularity, and certain prebiotic foods like oats have other benefits, like increasing one’s daily fiber and lowering cholesterol.

source:http://www.wisegeek.com

Resources from Ocean

Oceans cover 70 percent of Earth's surface, host a vast variety of geological processes responsible for the formation and concentration of mineral resources, and are the ultimate repository of many materials eroded or dissolved from the land surface. Hence, oceans contain vast quantities of materials that presently serve as major resources for humans. Today, direct extraction of resources is limited to salt; magnesium; placer gold, tin, titanium, and diamonds; and fresh water.
Ancient ocean deposits of sediments and evaporites now located on land were originally deposited under marine conditions. These deposits are being exploited on a very large scale and in preference to modern marine resources because of the easier accessibility and lower cost of terrestrial ..
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Volcano Again

More than 1,500 people have fled their homes in southern Chile after the Chaiten volcano erupted, throwing a huge cloud of ash and lava into the sky.
The volcano, 800 miles south of the capital Santiago, had not erupted for more than 450 years and was considered dormant.

But it is now belching enormous clouds of thick ash that have drifted across a large area in both Chile and the Argentine province of Chubut, where an airport was forced to close.
Just six miles away, the town of Chaiten has a population of 7,000. Long used to the menacing form of the 3,000-foot mountain, it is now overshadowed by a towering column of ash.
Read more of this story at the UK Telegraph

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Petroleum

What Is Petroleum and History of Oil
Petroleum is a fossil fuel. It is called a fossil fuel because it was formed from the remains of tiny sea plants and animals that died millions of years ago. When the plants and animals died, they sank to the bottom of the oceans. Here, they were buried by thousands of feet of sand and silt. Over time, this organic mixture was subjected to enormous pressure, and heat as the layers increased. The mixture changed, breaking down into compounds made of hydrogen and carbon atoms--hydrocarbons. Finally, an oil-saturated rock-much like a wet household sponge was formed.
All organic material does not turn into oil. Certain geological conditions must exist within the oil-rich rocks. There must be a trap of non-porous rock that prevents the oil from seeping out, and a seal (such as salt or clay) that keeps the oil from rising to the surface. Under these conditions, only two percent of the organic material is transformed into oil.
A typical petroleum reservoir is mostly sandstone or limestone in which oil is trapped. The oil in it may be as thin as gasoline or as thick as tar.
Petroleum is called a nonrenewable energy source because it takes millions of years to form. We cannot make new petroleum reserves.
History of Oil
People have used petroleum since ancient times. The ancient Chinese and Egyptians burned oil for lighting.
Before the 1850s, Americans often used whale oil to light their homes and shops. When whale oil became scarce, people began looking for other oil sources. In some places, oil seeped naturally to the surface of ponds and streams. People skimmed this oil and made it into kerosene. Kerosene was commonly used to light America's homes before the arrival of the electric light bulb.
As demand for kerosene grew, a group of businessmen hired Edwin Drake to drill for oil in Titusville, Pennsylvania. After much hard work and slow progress, he discovered oil in 1859. Drake's well was 69.5 feet deep, very shallow compared to today's wells.
Drake refined the oil from his well into kerosene for lighting. Gasoline and other products made during refining were simply thrown away because people had no use for them. In 1892, the "horseless carriage" solved this problem since it required gasoline. By 1920 there were nine million motor vehicles in this country and gas stations were opening everywhere.
2. Producing Oil
Although research has improved the odds since Edwin Drake's days, petroleum exploration today is still a gamble. Geologists study underground rock formations to find areas that might yield oil. Still, even with advanced methods, only about 33 in every 100 exploratory wells have oil. The rest come up "dry."
When oil is found, a petroleum company brings in a 50 to 100-foot drilling rig and raises a derrick that houses the tools and pipes that go into the well. Today's oil wells average 5,000 feet deep and may sink below 20,000 feet.
To safeguard the environment, oil drilling and oil production are regulated by state and federal governments. Oil companies must get permission to explore for oil on new lands. Many experts believe that 85 percent of our remaining oil reserves are on land owned by the federal government. Oil companies lease the land from the federal government, which, in return, receives rental payments for the land as well as percentage payments from each barrel of oil.
Top Producers
Texas produces more oil than any other state. The other top producing states are Alaska, California, Louisiana, and Oklahoma--in that order. In all, 31 states produce petroleum.
From Well to Market
We cannot use crude oil in the state it's in when it comes out of the ground. The process is a little more complicated than that. So, how does thick, black crude oil come out of the ground and eventually get into your car as a thin, amber-colored liquid called gasoline? Let's find out.
Oil Refineries
Oil's first stop outside the well is an oil refinery. A refinery is a plant where crude oil is processed. Sometimes refineries are located near oil wells, but usually the crude oil has to be delivered to the refinery by ship, barge, pipeline, or train.
After the crude oil has reached the refinery, huge round tanks store the oil until it is ready to be processed. Tank farms are sites with many storage tanks.
An oil refinery cleans and separates the crude oil into various fuels and byproducts. The most important one is gasoline. Some other petroleum products are diesel fuel, heating oil, and jet fuel.
Refineries use many different methods to make these products. One method is a heating process called distillation. Since oil products have different boiling points, the end products can be distilled or separated. For example, asphalts have a higher boiling point than gasolines, allowing the two to be separated.
Refineries have another job. They remove contaminants from the oil. A refinery removes sulfur from gasoline, for example, to increase its efficiency and to reduce air pollution.
Shipping Petroleum Products
After processing at the refinery, gasoline and other petroleum products are usually shipped out through pipelines. There are about 230,000 miles of pipeline in the United States. Pipelines are the safest and cheapest way to move large quantities of petroleum across land. Pump stations, which are spaced 20 to 100 miles apart along the underground pipelines, keep the petroleum products moving at around five miles per hour. At this rate, it takes 15 days to move a shipment of gasoline from Houston, Texas to New York City.
Distributing Petroleum Products
Companies called "jobbers" handle the wholesale distribution of oil. There are 15,000 jobbers in the U.S., and they sell just about everything that comes out of a barrel of crude oil. Jobbers fill bulk orders for petroleum products from gasoline stations, industries, utility companies, farmers, and so on.
The final link in the chain is the retailer. A retailer may be a gasoline station or a home heating oil company. The story ends when you pump gasoline into your car's tank, and the engine converts the gasoline's heat energy into mechanical energy to make your car move!
3. Demand for Oil and Imported Oil
Since World War II, petroleum has replaced coal as the United States' leading source of energy. Petroleum supplies more than 39 percent of the energy used in the United States. (Coal supplies 22 percent of our energy needs, and natural gas supplies 23 percent.)
Americans use almost 17 million barrels of oil (more than 700 million gallons) every day of the year. And experts say we will be using more and more oil, especially for transportation, in the coming years. Even now, we use almost 13 percent more oil for transportation than we did in 1973 when the first oil crisis hit the United States. This is true even though today's automobiles get more than 1.5 times as many miles to the gallon as their 1970s counterparts. There are 50 percent more vehicles on the road today than in the 1970s. Today we use about two out of every three barrels of oil to keep us on the move.
Imported Oil
To satisfy our appetite for petroleum, the United States has become increasingly dependent upon other countries for petroleum. In 1994 we purchased 45 percent of our petroleum from other countries.
Americans know this dependence can be dangerous. We were first alerted to the danger in 1973 when some Arab countries stopped shipping oil (called an embargo) to the United States. These countries belonged to an international trade group called the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries or OPEC for short.
OPEC members try to set production levels for petroleum. As a rule, the less oil they produce, the higher the price of oil on the world market. The more oil they produce, the lower the price. The OPEC countries don't always agree with each other. Some OPEC countries want to produce less oil to raise prices. Other OPEC countries want to flood the market with petroleum to reap immediate returns.
Americans learned some lessons from the 1973 oil shock. Gas-guzzling cars became about as wanted as last week's leftovers, and the nation raced to find ways to conserve energy. But more oil shocks followed.
The next shock came in 1978-79 when the Iranian Revolution cut off oil production. Again, world oil prices raced up. Our most recent crisis was the Persian Gulf War. Iraq invaded Kuwait, and again, Americans worried about oil shortages and skyrocketing oil prices.
The U.S. has taken some steps to prevent another big oil crisis. For one thing, the U.S. has almost a three-month supply of oil tucked away in the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR). Established in 1975, the SPR is only to be tapped during an energy emergency. The SPR was first used in January 1991, during the Persian Gulf Crisis.
The United States has also turned to non-Arab and non-OPEC countries for oil imports. Today, we import much of our oil from Canada and Mexico. This is good for us because we have friendly relations with our neighbors, and because the oil doesn't have to be shipped so far. Still, the amount of oil that we can import from Canada and Mexico is limited. By law, Mexico can only export half the oil it produces to the United States.
Even with the SPR and friends in the right places, the United States is not out of the woods. We still buy more than half our imported oil from OPEC countries, 11 percent of which comes from volatile Arab OPEC countries.
Some economists believe the United States is setting itself up for another oil crisis. Other analysts say a true oil shock--like those of the 1970s--is unlikely because the producing nations don't want to drive their customers away or encourage a shift to other forms Of energy.
Still, there are more steps we can take to help ensure our energy security. Depending on whom you talk to--whether an oil company representative or an environmentalist--opinions vary on the one or more steps we should take. Some experts believe we should decrease our demand for oil through increased conservation. Others say we should increase oil production and exploration in the United States, particularly in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) in northern Alaska. Still others say we should use alternative fuels, especially for transportation. Some experts believe will need to do all three to dodge another big oil crisis.
4. Oil Prices and the Environment
Most of the world moves on petroleum--gasoline for cars; jet fuel for planes; diesel fuel for trucks. Then there is petroleum for running factories or manufacturing goods. That's why the price of oil is so important. Oil prices have declined for the fourth straight year in a row. (In 1994, the price of a barrel of oil was $15.50.)
Low oil prices are good for the consumer and the world economy. Low oil prices act as a check on inflation.
But there is another side--the U.S. oil industry does not prosper during periods of low oil prices. Oil industry workers lose their jobs, many small wells are permanently sealed, and the exploration for new oil sources drops off.
Low oil prices have another side effect. People use more oil when oil products are cheap. This can create a Catch-22 situation because we may depend more and more on foreign oil to keep up with demand.
Oil and the Environment
Petroleum products--gasoline for cars, fertilizers, etc.--have brought untold benefits to Americans and the rest of the world's people. We depend on these products, and, as consumers, we demand them.
But there is a flipside--pollution.
Petroleum production and petroleum products can contribute to air and water pollution. Drilling for oil may disturb fragile ecosystems whether on land or sea. Transporting oil may endanger wildlife and the environment if it's spilled on rivers or oceans. Leaking underground storage tanks may pollute groundwater and create noxious fumes. Processing oil at the refinery may contribute to air and water pollution. Burning gasoline to fuel our cars contributes to air pollution. Even the careless disposal of waste oil drained from the family car can pollute streams, rivers, and lakes.
The situation is far from hopeless though, and many improvements have been made since the passage of the Clean Air Act in 1970. Oil companies have cleaned up their refineries by reducing air and water emissions. Gasolines have been reformulated to bum cleaner, dramatically cutting the levels of lead, nitrogen oxide, carbon monoxide, and hydrocarbons released into the air. And, in response to the oil tanker spill in Prince William Sound, Alaska, in 1989, oil companies formed the Marine Spill Response Corporation to ensure fast and effective clean-up of oil spills.
The situation presents a challenge. The future must balance the growing demand for petroleum products with protection of the global environment.

source:http://lsa.colorado.edu/summarystreet/texts/petroleum.htm

Melting glaciers will trigger food shortages

The irrigation water vital for the grain crops that feed China and India is at risk of drying up, as global warming melts the glaciers that feed Asia's biggest rivers.
"The world has never faced such a predictably massive threat to food production as that posed by the melting mountain glaciers of Asia," says Lester Brown of the Earth Policy Institute.
The Ganges, Yellow and Yangtze Rivers in India and China are fed by rains during the monsoon season, but during the dry season they depend heavily on meltwater from glaciers in the Himalayas. The Gangotri Glacier in the Himalayas alone supplies 70% of the flow of the Ganges in the dry season.
The dry season is precisely when water is needed most to irrigate the rice and wheat crops on which hundreds of millions of people depend for their staple calories. But the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reported last year that many Himalayan glaciers could disappear by 2035. According to Brown, Chinese glaciologists now estimate that two-thirds of the glaciers on the Tibet-Qinghai Plateau could be gone by 2060.
Severely diminished meltwater could make the flow of the three great rivers seasonal, warns Brown, who has long documented the effects of environmental damage on food production. China and India together produce more than half the world's wheat and rice, and the three river basins supply much of it, he says. The Yangtze irrigates half of China's annual rice harvest.
Flow river flow
The warning echoes another issued earlier this month by a former agriculture minister of Pakistan, Amir Mohammad, who warned that 60% of Pakistan's people depend on grain irrigated by the Indus river, which is also dependent on meltwater from Himalayan glaciers. "Melting of glaciers has already started affecting the water flow into Indus river system," he told local newpapers.
Meanwhile, much of the rest of the grain of China and India is fed by water that has for years been pumped from ancient underground aquifers faster than it can be replaced. The water tables under both the main grain-growing regions irrigated this way, the North China Plain and the Punjab, are sinking, says Brown.
Losing both sources of irrigation "could lead to politically unmanageable food shortages", he says, especially since rising populations in both countries require more food production, not less.
"In India, where just over 40% of all children under five years of age are underweight and undernourished, hunger will intensify and child mortality will likely climb."
Planet grain
The threat goes beyond the two countries directly affected. Grain is traded globally, and grain prices around the world are at record highs due to increases in demand all over the world.
"The alternative to this civilisation-threatening scenario is to abandon business-as-usual energy policies and cut carbon emissions 80% by 2020," says Brown. The first step, he says, is to ban new coal-fired power plants.
Ironically, China and India are the countries now planning to build the most new coal-fired plants. But Brown says China can double its current electrical generating capacity from wind alone.
Climate Change - Want to know more about global warming: the science, impacts and political debate? Visit our continually updated special report.
Energy and Fuels - Learn more about the looming energy crisis in our comprehensive special report.
source:http://environment.newscientist.com

Blaming on India, China : US Does it Again

Better diets in India behind world food crisis: Rice

The "improvement in the diets of people in India and China", which is forcing the governments there to keep food "inside" is a cause for the current global supply shortage, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice [Images] has said.

In an interactive session at the Peace Corps 2008 Country Directors Conference, Rice said the ongoing food crisis was mainly due to "four causes", even as she specifically pointed out the exchange rate and the simple "inability" of getting food to the people.

"There are, kind of, four causes that we really have to look at. We've got to understand better what is happening in some conflict areas in terms of the distribution of food. It's obvious that there are places like Sudan, where we've had a sudden uptick in the inability to distribute food," Rice said.

The top Bush administration official said: "We obviously have to look at places where production seems to be declining and declining to the point that people are actually putting export caps on the amount of food.

"Now, some of that is not so much declining production as apparently improvement in the diets of people, for instance, in China and India, and then pressures to keep food inside the country. So, that's another element that we have to look at," she said.

The "incredible cost" that fuel prices, everything from fertilizer to transportation costs, was bringing on the ability to distribute or to get food to people, was identified as another factor by Rice.

The fourth factor was the one relating to "biofuels", which was "not a large part of the problem, but it may, in fact, be a part of the problem," she added.

source:http://ia.rediff.com/news

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Launch of Indias First Digital Environmental Atlas

India's first Digital Environmental Atlas is just a click away. This Interactive Sate of Environment Atlas of India is an innovative interactive atlas. The Atlas is a compilation of categorised thematic maps on green (forest, biodiversity), blue (water resources) and brown (air pollution) environmental issues and provides flexibility and versatility for users to visualise environment spatial data using simple Geographic Information System (GIS) functionalities. The data used in preparation of the spatial maps and atlas are taken from various government sources. The unique feature of the Atlas is the Pressure � State � Impact � Response (PSIR) framework analysis, where all the maps are presented and displayed in the PSIR framework. The Atlas will regularly provide the public, government, non-government organization, and decision makers with accurate, timely and accessible information on the state of environment. The status of the environment and the contribution of conventional development strategies to achieve sustainable development have been a matter of increasing concern over the last few decades. For development planning and policy making ready and quick availability of related information is an essential pre-requisite. Decisions relating to sustainable development can be taken more effectively if environment and socio-economic data over certain period of time, and for specific geographical areas are collected, presented and disseminated. Spatial database becomes vital for judicious use of natural resources. Now with the help of State of Environment Atlas all these issues are addressed. Realising the need of digital translation of work in every sphere, Development Alternatives (DA) with the support from Union Ministry of Environment and Forests designed and developed the first Interactive State of Environment (SoE) Atlas of India. The Atlas is the first of its kind in India with regular updates and is available both as a CD and as an interactive website. This will help holidayers, environmentalists and others to know topographic conditions, most brown (polluted areas), Green cover, water sources etc .
Source : http://pib.nic.in/