22 MAR 2012 by ideonexus
Pump CO2 into Greenhouses
In the Ne± Netherlands, a unique partnership between Shell Oil Company and Dutch greenhouse businesses enables surplus carbon dioxide produced at the Shell refinery in Pernis, outside Rotterdam, to be pumped into greenhouses as an alternative to pumping it directly into the atmosphere as waste. The partnership was made possible because of an existing pipeline (built a decade ago but never used) activated to pump gas from Rotterdam to Amsterdam. Dutch entrepreneurs bought the pipeline from th...An unique collaboration between an oil company and fruit growers benefits both.
14 JAN 2012 by ideonexus
The Difference Between Vegetable and Animal
Thus it might be said, that the vegetable is only the sketch, nor rather the ground-work of the animal; that for the formation of the latter, it has only been requisite to clothe the former with an apparatus of external organs, by which it might be connected with external objects.
From hence it follows, that the functions of the animal are of two very different classes. By the one (which is composed of an habitual succession of assimilation and excretion) it lives within itself, transforms i...A lovely description.
09 SEP 2011 by ideonexus
An Ancient Observation of Life from Lifelessness.
Nature proceeds little by little from things lifeless to animal life in such a way that it is impossible to determine the exact line of demarcation, nor on which side thereof an intermediate form should lie. Thus, next after lifeless things comes the plant, and of plants one will differ from another as to its amount of apparent vitality; and, in a word, the whole genus of plants, whilst it is devoid of life as compared with an animal, is endowed with life as compared with other corporeal enti...From Aristotle's "History of Animals". From mineral to plant to animal; this could be seen as an early view of evolution.