1. Environmental science is the study of human interaction with the natural environment, including climate, air and water quality, soil, and other living organisms. It draws from multiple fields like economics, geology, engineering, and politics.
2. Major environmental problems include resource depletion as populations consume nonrenewable resources, pollution that degrades air and water quality, and loss of biodiversity as extinction rates increase due to human impacts.
3. There is an ongoing debate around environmental ethics between anthropocentrism, which prioritizes human interests, and ecocentrism, which believes nature has intrinsic value regardless of human use. Achieving sustainability requires balancing human needs with protecting the environment for future generations.
Human Ecology is the study and assessment of the mutual interconnections between people and their environments at multiple scales and multiple time frames [1]. The subject is informed by ecological and evolutionary theory in biology and by the predominant concepts of landscape and spatial relationships in geography; but recognizes that humans have gradually achieved partial ecological and geographical dominance through their culturally given but continually changing technology and social, economic, and political arrangements. Human ecology subsumes such specialized approaches to these relationships and links as cultural ecology, political ecology, geography, ecological anthropology, environmental sociology, environmental economics, environmental psychology, and environmental history [2].
6].
Human Ecology is the study and assessment of the mutual interconnections between people and their environments at multiple scales and multiple time frames [1]. The subject is informed by ecological and evolutionary theory in biology and by the predominant concepts of landscape and spatial relationships in geography; but recognizes that humans have gradually achieved partial ecological and geographical dominance through their culturally given but continually changing technology and social, economic, and political arrangements. Human ecology subsumes such specialized approaches to these relationships and links as cultural ecology, political ecology, geography, ecological anthropology, environmental sociology, environmental economics, environmental psychology, and environmental history [2].
6].
Effect of development on environment and population ecologyMegha Majoe
Brief idea on the Impact of ongoing human development on our environment and Describing and understanding population ecology - Patterns of dispersion, Survivorship curve, Population growth, Exponential growth, ecological footprint etc
Why and how do we evaluate ecosystems, Nature is the source of much value to us every day, and yet it mostly bypasses markets, escapes pricing and defies valuation. This lack of valuation is an underlying cause for ecological degradation and loss of biodiversity. Globally, efforts are being made to assess impact of conservation or degradation of ecological resources and a new term Green Gross Domestic Product (GGDP) has also been coined to reflect the same.
sustainable development & the water, energy food security nexus is discussed. The content throws light on sustainable development : Effects on the livelihood of common man.
Effect of development on environment and population ecologyMegha Majoe
Brief idea on the Impact of ongoing human development on our environment and Describing and understanding population ecology - Patterns of dispersion, Survivorship curve, Population growth, Exponential growth, ecological footprint etc
Why and how do we evaluate ecosystems, Nature is the source of much value to us every day, and yet it mostly bypasses markets, escapes pricing and defies valuation. This lack of valuation is an underlying cause for ecological degradation and loss of biodiversity. Globally, efforts are being made to assess impact of conservation or degradation of ecological resources and a new term Green Gross Domestic Product (GGDP) has also been coined to reflect the same.
sustainable development & the water, energy food security nexus is discussed. The content throws light on sustainable development : Effects on the livelihood of common man.
General Botany Group four presentation.
This presentation focus on so many biological related topics. It primarily focus on conservation of life in any biodiversity.
First Lecture delivered under the course - Poverty and Environment taught at the Department of Environmental Management, Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities, Rajarata University of Sri Lanka
This is the 5th lesson of the course - Foundation of Environmental Management taught at the Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities, Rajarata University of Sri Lanka
Introduction to Environment
Global environmental issues
National environmental issues
Food Scarcity in India
water Scarcity in India
Sustained development
Environmental science is the study of the interaction of humans with the natural environment.
The environment includes all conditions that surround living organisms:
Climate
Air and water quality
Soil and landforms
Presence of other living organisms
This pdf is about the Schizophrenia.
For more details visit on YouTube; @SELF-EXPLANATORY;
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCAiarMZDNhe1A3Rnpr_WkzA/videos
Thanks...!
Multi-source connectivity as the driver of solar wind variability in the heli...Sérgio Sacani
The ambient solar wind that flls the heliosphere originates from multiple
sources in the solar corona and is highly structured. It is often described
as high-speed, relatively homogeneous, plasma streams from coronal
holes and slow-speed, highly variable, streams whose source regions are
under debate. A key goal of ESA/NASA’s Solar Orbiter mission is to identify
solar wind sources and understand what drives the complexity seen in the
heliosphere. By combining magnetic feld modelling and spectroscopic
techniques with high-resolution observations and measurements, we show
that the solar wind variability detected in situ by Solar Orbiter in March
2022 is driven by spatio-temporal changes in the magnetic connectivity to
multiple sources in the solar atmosphere. The magnetic feld footpoints
connected to the spacecraft moved from the boundaries of a coronal hole
to one active region (12961) and then across to another region (12957). This
is refected in the in situ measurements, which show the transition from fast
to highly Alfvénic then to slow solar wind that is disrupted by the arrival of
a coronal mass ejection. Our results describe solar wind variability at 0.5 au
but are applicable to near-Earth observatories.
Observation of Io’s Resurfacing via Plume Deposition Using Ground-based Adapt...Sérgio Sacani
Since volcanic activity was first discovered on Io from Voyager images in 1979, changes
on Io’s surface have been monitored from both spacecraft and ground-based telescopes.
Here, we present the highest spatial resolution images of Io ever obtained from a groundbased telescope. These images, acquired by the SHARK-VIS instrument on the Large
Binocular Telescope, show evidence of a major resurfacing event on Io’s trailing hemisphere. When compared to the most recent spacecraft images, the SHARK-VIS images
show that a plume deposit from a powerful eruption at Pillan Patera has covered part
of the long-lived Pele plume deposit. Although this type of resurfacing event may be common on Io, few have been detected due to the rarity of spacecraft visits and the previously low spatial resolution available from Earth-based telescopes. The SHARK-VIS instrument ushers in a new era of high resolution imaging of Io’s surface using adaptive
optics at visible wavelengths.
(May 29th, 2024) Advancements in Intravital Microscopy- Insights for Preclini...Scintica Instrumentation
Intravital microscopy (IVM) is a powerful tool utilized to study cellular behavior over time and space in vivo. Much of our understanding of cell biology has been accomplished using various in vitro and ex vivo methods; however, these studies do not necessarily reflect the natural dynamics of biological processes. Unlike traditional cell culture or fixed tissue imaging, IVM allows for the ultra-fast high-resolution imaging of cellular processes over time and space and were studied in its natural environment. Real-time visualization of biological processes in the context of an intact organism helps maintain physiological relevance and provide insights into the progression of disease, response to treatments or developmental processes.
In this webinar we give an overview of advanced applications of the IVM system in preclinical research. IVIM technology is a provider of all-in-one intravital microscopy systems and solutions optimized for in vivo imaging of live animal models at sub-micron resolution. The system’s unique features and user-friendly software enables researchers to probe fast dynamic biological processes such as immune cell tracking, cell-cell interaction as well as vascularization and tumor metastasis with exceptional detail. This webinar will also give an overview of IVM being utilized in drug development, offering a view into the intricate interaction between drugs/nanoparticles and tissues in vivo and allows for the evaluation of therapeutic intervention in a variety of tissues and organs. This interdisciplinary collaboration continues to drive the advancements of novel therapeutic strategies.
The increased availability of biomedical data, particularly in the public domain, offers the opportunity to better understand human health and to develop effective therapeutics for a wide range of unmet medical needs. However, data scientists remain stymied by the fact that data remain hard to find and to productively reuse because data and their metadata i) are wholly inaccessible, ii) are in non-standard or incompatible representations, iii) do not conform to community standards, and iv) have unclear or highly restricted terms and conditions that preclude legitimate reuse. These limitations require a rethink on data can be made machine and AI-ready - the key motivation behind the FAIR Guiding Principles. Concurrently, while recent efforts have explored the use of deep learning to fuse disparate data into predictive models for a wide range of biomedical applications, these models often fail even when the correct answer is already known, and fail to explain individual predictions in terms that data scientists can appreciate. These limitations suggest that new methods to produce practical artificial intelligence are still needed.
In this talk, I will discuss our work in (1) building an integrative knowledge infrastructure to prepare FAIR and "AI-ready" data and services along with (2) neurosymbolic AI methods to improve the quality of predictions and to generate plausible explanations. Attention is given to standards, platforms, and methods to wrangle knowledge into simple, but effective semantic and latent representations, and to make these available into standards-compliant and discoverable interfaces that can be used in model building, validation, and explanation. Our work, and those of others in the field, creates a baseline for building trustworthy and easy to deploy AI models in biomedicine.
Bio
Dr. Michel Dumontier is the Distinguished Professor of Data Science at Maastricht University, founder and executive director of the Institute of Data Science, and co-founder of the FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Reusable) data principles. His research explores socio-technological approaches for responsible discovery science, which includes collaborative multi-modal knowledge graphs, privacy-preserving distributed data mining, and AI methods for drug discovery and personalized medicine. His work is supported through the Dutch National Research Agenda, the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research, Horizon Europe, the European Open Science Cloud, the US National Institutes of Health, and a Marie-Curie Innovative Training Network. He is the editor-in-chief for the journal Data Science and is internationally recognized for his contributions in bioinformatics, biomedical informatics, and semantic technologies including ontologies and linked data.
Richard's entangled aventures in wonderlandRichard Gill
Since the loophole-free Bell experiments of 2020 and the Nobel prizes in physics of 2022, critics of Bell's work have retreated to the fortress of super-determinism. Now, super-determinism is a derogatory word - it just means "determinism". Palmer, Hance and Hossenfelder argue that quantum mechanics and determinism are not incompatible, using a sophisticated mathematical construction based on a subtle thinning of allowed states and measurements in quantum mechanics, such that what is left appears to make Bell's argument fail, without altering the empirical predictions of quantum mechanics. I think however that it is a smoke screen, and the slogan "lost in math" comes to my mind. I will discuss some other recent disproofs of Bell's theorem using the language of causality based on causal graphs. Causal thinking is also central to law and justice. I will mention surprising connections to my work on serial killer nurse cases, in particular the Dutch case of Lucia de Berk and the current UK case of Lucy Letby.
3. Environmental Science
• Environmental science is the study of the
interaction of humans with the natural
environment.
• The environment includes all conditions that
surround living organisms:
• Climate
• Air and water quality
• Soil and landforms
• Presence of other living organisms
3
4. Environmental Science Cont’d
• Environmental science and the
issues that it studies are complex
and interdisciplinary.
• Includes concepts and ideas from
multiple fields of study.
• Decisions have impacts in all these
fields of study.
4
Source: Principles of Environmental
Science, Cunningham, 2005.
5. • A community decides to use coal for
electricity, as it is the cheapest source
available. (Economics)
• The coal must be mined from under the soil.
(Geology)
• The coal must be transported to the
population center by road or rail.
(Engineering)
• When it is burned at a power plant, air
pollution is released. Some of that pollution is
converted to acid in the atmosphere.
(Chemistry)
• This falls as acid rain somewhere downwind.
(Meteorology)
• The acid stresses plants by affecting their
nutrient absorption. (Ecology)
• Laws are passed requiring the plant to install
pollution scrubbers. (Politics)
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6. Major Environmental Problems
• Resource Depletion
• A great deal of resources are needed to support the human population (~7
billion).
• Renewable resources can be replenished within a human lifetime.
• Timber, water.
• The supply of nonrenewable resources is replenished extremely slowly, if at all.
These can be used up.
• Coal, oil, minerals.
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7. Major Environmental
Problems
• Pollution
• Pollution is a degradation or an
undesired change in air, water,
or soil that affects the health of
living things.
• Biodegradable pollution will
break down naturally over time.
• Nondegradable pollution does
not break down.
• Pollution, whether in air or
water, can move and affect
ecosystems far away from the
source.
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9. Loss of Biodiversity
• Assuming no catastrophic events occur, extinctions
normally occur at a pretty slow rate, called the
background rate.
• Normal background extinction rate for mammals is 1 every
200 years.
• Scientists believe we may be in the midst of the next
major extinction event, due to human influences.
• Australia has experienced 27 mammal extinctions
since 1788, primarily due to the influence of European
settlers.
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The short-tailed hopping
mouse, now extinct in
Australia.
10. Environmental Ethics
• Environmental ethics is the discipline that studies the moral
relationship of human beings to the environment.
• What is the value of the environment?
• What moral responsibility do we have in dealing with the major
environmental problems that result from our resource consumption?
• Which needs should be given the highest priority in our decision making?
• Two main categories of ethics have emerged in human culture in
modern history.
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11. • Anthropocentrism literally means
“human-centered”.
• This set of ethics protects and promotes of
human interests or well-being at the expense
of all other factors.
• Often places an emphasis on short-term
benefits while disregarding long-term
consequences.
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12. • Ecocentrists believe that nature
deserves to exist for its own sake
regardless of degree of usefulness to
humans.
• The preservation of ecosystems or other
living things takes priority over human
needs.
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13. Modern Environmentalism
• Rachel Carson published a
book in 1962 entitled Silent
Spring about the effects of
pesticides on large predatory
birds, particularly the bald
eagle.
• This began a public
awakening to threats of
pollution and toxic
chemicals to humans as
well as other species.
• This movement is called
Modern Environmentalism.
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14. Global Environmentalism
• Increased travel and communication enables people to know about daily
events in places unknown in previous generations.
• Global environmentalism explores issues and problems over the entire world,
not just within the local community.
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Live streaming footage of
the Deepwater Horizon oil
spill in 2010 was watched
worldwide.
15. The Tragedy of the Commons
• A great deal of progress has been made since the birth of modern
environmentalism, but many debates still rage on.
• An ecologist named Garrett Hardin wrote an essay called “The
Tragedy of the Commons”, describing the source of environmental
problems as a conflict:
• Short-term interests of individuals
versus…
Long-term interests of civilization and the Earth itself
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16. •A small village consists mostly of
farmers that raise and sell sheep at
a nearby city.
•The only place for the sheep to
graze is a commons in the center of
the village.
• A commons is an area that belongs to
no individual; it is shared by the entire
society.
•Likely outcome: Villagers obtain as
many sheep as possible, allow to
graze in the commons.
• Maximize short-term financial gain.
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17. •What if the commons was instead divided into sections
that was owned by each villager?
•Because the land is owned, individuals are much more
likely to plan and use it for the long-term.
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18. • The Tragedy of the Commons describes the likeliness of a commons area
being exploited for short-term economic gain.
• Modern examples include the atmosphere and oceans.
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Norilsk, Russia
Source: ecojunk.wordpress.com Zadar, Croatia
Source: Agence France-Presse
19. Economics and the Environment
•Economics has a huge influence in environmental
decision-making.
•One of the most basic principles of economics is supply
and demand.
• The greater the demand for a limited resource, the higher the price.
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20. Case Study: Bhopal Pesticide Plant
• In December of 1984, a pesticide factory located
near the town of Bhopal, India leaked a large
amount of toxic chemicals into the air.
• The chemicals resulted in an immediate death toll
of about 3,000 people, with 8,000 more dying of
long-term health ailments.
• A total of 558,125 injuries were reported to the Indian
government.
• A settlement of $470 million was reached by Union
Carbide and the Indian government.
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21. Ethics and Economics
• The settlement was not sufficient to treat all of the long-term health
issues stemming from the disaster.
• The site itself was also not remediated.
• In 1999, Union Carbide was purchased by Dow Chemical.
• To properly compensate and treat all individuals affected by this disaster,
Dow Chemical would have to pay billions of dollars in settlements.
• Dow Chemical has a yearly profit of over $2 billion, with total assets
worth nearly $70 billion.
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22. Developed and Developing Countries
• One of the factors that led to the Bhopal
disaster and lack of cleanup is that at the
time, India was a developing country.
• Developing countries have lower incomes,
shorter life spans, and rapid population growth.
• Developing countries, overpopulated and
desperate for economic gain, tend to have
less regulations on their industries and
fewer environmental protections.
• Developed countries on average have
higher incomes, longer life spans, and
slower growth rate.
• These countries are more economically
stable, educated, and have more
environmental protections.
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23. Population and Consumption
• Developed countries, while smaller in size and growth, consume
resources at a greater rate.
• About 20% of the world’s population uses 75% of its resources.
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24. Ecological Footprint
• An ecological footprint is one measurement of a person’s resource use.
• Includes the amount of space needed to support each person in a nation, including
forests, farms, cities, etc.
• Developed countries have a much larger footprint, reflecting a much larger
use of resources.
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25. The Goal: A Sustainable World
•Sustainability is when human needs are met
so that the population can survive
indefinitely.
•“Meeting the needs of the
present without
compromising the ability of
future generations to meet
their own needs.”
• Brundtland Commission, 1987
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