TERRAFORMING TERRA
We discuss and comment on the role agriculture will play in the containment of the CO2 problem and address protocols for terraforming the planet Earth.
A model farm template is imagined as the central methodology. A broad range of timely science news and other topics of interest are commented on.
What i find remarkable and unremarked as well is that this city sat smack on the water as a port. There must be an additional city nearby that is fortified and a few hours inland. In the event this city was located on the route from Italy around the Peloponnese on the way into Athens and Greece proper. It is exactly where an important port would arise.
That means it was part of the Atlantean trade system at least and the organization seen may well be Atlantean inspired. Just not big enough for a Pyramid. Its demise coincides with 1159 BC as well and may simply have not survived the loss of Atlantis. It certainly informs us that huge Earthquakes were felt in Greece. .
In the Peloponnesus region of southern Greece there is a small village
called Pavlopetri, where a nearby ancient city dating back 5,000 years
resides.
However, this is not an ordinary archaeological site – the city can be
found about 4 meters underwater and is believed to be the oldest known
submerged city in the world.
The city is incredibly well designed with roads, two storey houses with
gardens, temples, a cemetery, and a complex water management system
including channels and water pipes.
In the centre of the city, was a square or plaza measuring about 40x20
meters and most of the buildings have been found with up to 12 rooms
inside. The design of this city surpasses the design of many cities
today.
The city is so old that it existed in the period that
the famed ancient Greek epic poem ‘Iliad’ was set in. Research in 2009
revealed that the site extends for about 9 acres and evidence shows that
it had been inhabited prior to 2800 BC.
Scientists estimate that the city was sunk in around 1000 BC due to
earthquakes that shifted the land. However, despite this and even after
5,000 years, the arrangement of the city is still clearly visible and at
least 15 buildings have been found.
The city’s arrangement is so clear that the head of the archaeological
team, John Henderson of the University of Nottingham, and his team, have
been able to create what they believe is an extremely accurate 3D
reconstruction of the city, which can be viewed in the video below.
3D reconstruction image of the sunken city
Historians believe that the ancient city had been a centre for commerce
for the Minoan Civilization and the Mycenaean civilization.
Scattered all over the place there are large storage containers made
from clay, statues, everyday tools and other artefacts. The name of the
city is currently unknown as well as its exact role in the ancient
world.
The featured image shows the original foundations of the city behind
underneath the reconstructed pillars and walls of one of the buildings.
This is excellent work. by going out and doing what was done originally we discover just how the environment actually responds. Better yet this is an excellent way to exploit a hill sided with natural reentries already in place to carry off runoff. That allows a simple irrigation ditch set at the top of every terrace to allow seepage into the bed beneath. All that captures ample water from every shower or thunderstorm that passes through and forces the water into a retaining grid of channels.
I cannot imagine a better use of a hillside ever. Today we want wider terraces to allow equipment access but that should be mostly practical. The idea of simply using four inch stems to make up retaining walls is also dead simple and a great reason to properly groom your woodlot. Rebar will hold the stems in place as is done here.
You could even produce that irrigation ditch with a single blade plow.
I do not see direct evidence yet of these original farmers applying bio-char although the time frames appear very short. I do not think that it was necessary in this country using the methods i see here.
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LIDAR and infrared imagery reveals many more terrace complexes
Imagery provides convincing evidence that most terrace
complexes contained log retaining walls and perhaps all began as
log-walled earthworks. The majority of terrace complexes are at opposite
ends of the Blue Ridge Mountain Range in Georgia and Virginia. Go
figure?
The Track Rock Terrace Complex, near Blairsville, GA is massive.
Continued research by the volunteers of the People of One Fire have
revealed pre-European man-made structures far beyond the original site
plan of the Track Rock archaeological zone, created by a archaeological
consultants for the US Forrest Service in 2001.
One may visit these amazing stone ruins a dozen times and still find
man-made features that were missed before. It is also quite easy to
become disoriented any time of year because of the dense foliage and
undulating terrain.
Next time, however, when you hike at Track Rock, take a look down the
mountainside about 100 yards past the point were the access trail
passes across a branch and ravine that mark the northern boundaries of
the terraces. You will see row after row of terraces that have no stone
retaining walls. This section of the complex was completely overlooked
as were the stone-walled terraces farther down the mountainside that
even extend across Track Rock Creek.
These terraces without stone walls were many of the puzzles that we
initially faced in 2012. Were they created by Native Americans or by
farmers, who owned the land prior to it being purchased by the US Forest
Service in the mid-20th century?
The answer came after several county governments in North Georgia
provided POOF with LIDAR and infrared imagery of suspected terrace
complexes in their locales. County leaders had been frustrated for years
by the response of Georgia archaeologists, when asked to help in
understanding their enigmatic ruins. In most cases, the archaeologists
refused to look at their sites. When they did, bitter schisms developed
within the profession. One faction interpreted the stacked stones to be
the work of early frontier farmers. The other and smaller faction
insisted that the stone walls and cairns were the work of Native
Americans.
Because of the schisms, the county leaders were unable to get the
precise archaeological descriptions that were necessary to save these
amazing sites from real estate developers. The parking lot of the Mall
of Georgia, one of the nation’s largest, was built over stone walled
terraces, because three archaeological firms refused to certify the
terrace complex as being either prehistoric or historic! No radiocarbon
testing was done. The refusals were based on biases, mainly that
Georgia’s Creek Indians lacked the intelligence to stack one stone over
another.
POOF researchers began noticing a feature at the terrace complexes in
Northeast and North-central Metro Atlanta that also occurs at Track
Rock Gap. All sites had stone cairns on the southwest slopes of hills or
mountains. All had at least some stone walled terraces near the tops of
hills. However, on the lower slopes, just like at Track Rock there were
still the vestiges of terraces that had no stone walls. Some stones
were laying on the earthen slopes of terraces, but they were definitely
not walls, just casual means of discouraging soil erosion.
Continuing analysis of these high resolution images in 2014 and 2015
have revealed many more terrace complexes that local officials and
preservationists missed in Union, Towns, Jackson, Gwinnett, White,
Gilmer, Dawson, Pickens, Cherokee and Lumpkin Counties, GA – plus
Meriwether County on the Flint River in west-central Georgia. Many of
these newest discovered terraces had no stone walls at all. They were
far too narrow to have been created by 20th century tractors. The US
Department of Agriculture under the Roosevelt administration encouraged
Southern farmers to construct contoured terraces on slopes of hilly
farms. However, these modern terraces look very different. They are 30
to 50 feet wide and have tractor access at each level.
Itza terrace complexes in the Chiapas Highlands
At this point I dug deeply into the cobwebs of my mind back to the
time that I was backpacking through the highlands of Chiapas State and
Guatemala. To be very honest with you, my only interest in the
agricultural terraces was esthetic. I was an architecture student and
these terraces obviously would never have any relevance to my career.
Most of the color slides that I took were of large terrace complexes
with stone walls and the ruins of temples on top.
Fortunately, they looked just like the Track Rock Terrace Complex.
However, when delving through old slides, I suddenly remembered that
most of the actively cultivated terrace complexes had very few stone
walls. They had the small streams on either side like the Track Rock
Terraces, but the terraces were either all dirt or else buttressed with
logs. So the all dirt terraces were merely what was left after log
retaining walls had rotted away. Below is a typical appearance of a
modern Maya terrace farm near Lake Atitlan, Guatemala. Those are beans
growing on the terraces.
This
site even has the ruins of temples and a plaza on top, just like Track
Rock Gap. Note that two small streams and ravines parallel the terraces-
also like Track Rock.
Log walls improve fertility
A contemporary Itza Maya terrace farmer
Out of necessity, all of my original terraces at the experimental
garden were supported by logs cleared from the forested hill side where
the terraces were excavated by hand. It was slash & burn agriculture
in its purest form.
View of the magic garden in April 2015
However, when I learned that a documentary for public television was
to be filmed in my garden, I intentionally built a stone wall along one
major terrace, so the film crew would have something to film that looked
like the Track Rock Gap terraces. They were also denied access to the
Track Rock Terrace Complex.That year the only crops that did well on the stone-walled terrace
were members of the squash and pumpkin family. They like hot,
well-drained soil. On the other hand the beans, peas and tomatoes were
stunted.
A load of charcoal is being worked into the garden soil in early spring.
There is another plus to timber walls that I didn’t think about in
2012. By the fourth season, all of the original timber walls have
rotted, turning into rich, saw-dust like loam. During the past two
years, my crowder peas, sugar snap peas and black-eyed peas (all
legumes) have grown 12 feet high. They would have grown higher, but the
bean poles were too unstable after that length, so I snipped the ends.
Another riddle about the Track Rock Terrace Complex has been solved
by the experimental terrace garden. If you recall in my book, I could
not understand why the builders at Track Rock expended so much labor to
build terraces, when there were ample stretches of river bottom land
within walking distance to the north and the south of the terraces. In
fact, these bottom lands contained conventional Muskogean towns with
platform mounds that were founded exactly in the same era as Track Rock.
The answer is that maize (Indian corn) loves river bottom lands, but
is anemic on terraces facing the southwest. After the second year, I
gave up trying to grow corn because it was stunted and the cobs, barely
had enough kernels on them to eat. What I do now is trade my surpluses
in tomatoes, winter squash and fordhook lima beans for roasting ears,
grown by neighbors in stream bottomlands. I strongly suspect that the
occupants of Track Rock Gap has a similar arrangement with their
neighbors. Now we know!
Below are LIDAR images of small terrace complexes at the edge of
Northeast Metro Atlanta, plus an infrared image of a terrace complex
near Coosa Bald Mountain that is about 6 miles southwest of Track Rock
Gap.
Small
terrace complex with a U-shaped plaza on right and a hill rising up
behind it with the stone ruins of a prominent building – all features
found at the Track Rock site.
Larger terrace complex overlooking North Oconee River.Infrared
image of very large terrace complex, about 6 miles southwest of Track
Rock Gap. This infrared spectrum picks up more fertile soil in steep
terrain, covered with shrubs.
Richard Thornton is a professional
architect, city planner, author and museum exhibit designer-builder. He
is today considered one of the nation’s leading experts on the
Southeastern Indians. However, that was not always the case. While at
Georgia Tech Richard was the first winner of the Barrett Fellowship,
which enabled him to study Mesoamerican architecture and culture in
Mexico under the auspices of the Institutio Nacional de Antropoligia e
Historia. For decades afterward, he lectured at universities and
professional societies around the Southeast on Mesoamerican
architecture, while knowing very little about his own Creek heritage.
Then he was hired to carry out projects for the Muscogee-Creek Nation in
Oklahoma. The rest is history.
Richard is a member of the Kaweta Creek Tribe and the Appalachian
Shawnee Tribe. In 2009 he was the architect for Oklahoma’s Trail of
Tears Memorial at Council Oak Park in Tulsa. He is the president of the
Apalache Foundation, which is sponsoring research into the advanced
indigenous societies of the Lower Southeast. He is also the National
Architecture columnist for the Examiner.
This possibly will even work in your kitchen when you have tasteless tomatoes. Five minutes in 125 degree water and a cool down to serve is practical for anyone.
This does not suggest that it will work but we all need to try it to see if it helps. winter is coming soon enough.
What it does mean though is that industry will be able to adjust their current process to produce better flavor and that is certainly welcome It is even a simple trick to implement.
Store bought tomatoes are notorious for having an insipid taste, so a team of scientists led by the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) is working on new methods to ensure that future supermarket tomatoes have more flavor. The research suggests this can be achieved by a simple, inexpensive alteration to conventional processing – a hot bath.
The distinct flavor of tomatoes is due to a cocktail of chemicals produced by the fruits as they ripen, but, according to the team that includes the USDA, the Agricultural Research Service, and the University of Florida, conventional storage methods inhibit these flavors. If tomatoes seem more flavorsome when bought from a farm stand, that's because they're being sold in the ideal condition – fully ripe and immediately after picking.
However, commercially grown tomatoes need to be shipped hundreds, if not thousands of miles to reach market along with delays in packing and unpacking. Shipping ripe tomatoes over any distances risks unacceptable levels of spoilage, so the tomatoes are picked green, treated with ethylene gas to induce ripening, and then chilled for shipping.
According to team leader Jinhe Bai, this chilling prevents flavor compounds, such as 6-methyl-5-hepten-2-one, 2-methylbutanal, and 2-phenylethanol from forming and the tomatoes end up with a watery taste. To avoid this, the team added an extra step. Instead of sending Florida-grown green tomatoes straight on to chilling, the team plunged them into 125° F (52° C) water for five minutes, then cooled them to room temperature before a final chilling to between 41° and 55° F (5° and 13° C), which is the standard shipping temperature.
Compared to a control group, the team found that the treated tomatoes had more smell and flavor, as well as higher levels of flavor compounds. According to Bai, this is due to the heat treatment regulating certain ripening enzymes and activating the production of a protein that makes the tomatoes tolerant of cell decay.
"Chilling suppresses production of oxygen, nitrogen, and sulfur-containing heterocyclic compounds, ketones, alcohols and aldehydes, including 13 important aroma components of tomato flavor," says Bai."But hot water-treated fruit actually produced higher concentrations of these important aroma contributors, even with subsequent chilling.”
The team is currently testing the technique at various stages of ripeness to see how it affects flavor compound production.
Bai says the next step is to determine which method is the most effective before offering it to food processing firms. In addition, they're trying alternatives to hot water, such as methyl salicylate (wintergreen oil), which is an anti-fungal fumigant, and 1-methylcyclopropene when the tomatoes are at the slightly riper green/pink stage to make the fruit more tolerant to cell decay when at higher storage temperatures.
The transport mechanism is robust and powerfully suggests major enrichment taking place. Thus merely putting a premium of the commodity will quickly promote serious exploration.
However it is also likely that we are wasting a lot right now.
Thus conventional efforts will quickly increase supplies.
Vast new sources of could keep helium-filled balloons a party staple (Credit: Shutterstock)
Helium is the second most abundant element in the Universe, but it's relatively rare on Earth – so much so that some have called for a ban on party balloons to ward off a worldwide shortage. However, a team of scientists led by Diveena Danabalan of Durham University conducted a new study that indicates that there may be vast new sources of the gas in the western mountain regions of North America.
First detected in the spectrum of the Sun, in a century and a half helium has become a key resource in our high-tech world. The noble gas is used in cryogenics, MRI scanners, semiconductor manufacturing, welding, deep-sea diving, and blimps and balloons – though the latter makes up a surprisingly small fraction of the demand.
The problem is that even though helium makes up almost a quarter of all matter in the Universe, it's very rare on Earth with the main supply coming from natural gas wells in North America. This is because helium is a very light element that, once it escapes into the air, floats off into space. Hydrogen is lighter, but it's common on Earth because hydrogen is captured in molecules of water or organic compounds. Helium, on the other hand, forms no compounds even with itself except a few highly unstable ones under extraordinary laboratory conditions.
Recent studies have pointed to a drastic decline in known helium reserves and no large discoveries to replace them. This being the case, the fear is that we may run out of helium so soon that some scientists, such as Cambridge University chemist Peter Wothers, are calling for an end to its use in party balloons.
For the new study, a team of scientists from Durham and Oxford Universities looked at natural gas regions in North America, where they subjected gas samples from 22 wells in the United States and Canada to mass spectroscopy. By analyzing the isotopes of helium, neon, and argon, they were able to gain a better understanding of how helium is produced, transported, and trapped in the Earth.
Most helium on Earth is helium-4 (4He), which is produced by radioactive decay deep inside the planet. Over hundreds of millions of years, it migrates up to the crust, where it is released during periods of tectonic activity. By comparing the ratios of 4He with neon-20 (20Ne) in the helium-rich Hugoton-Panhandle gas field running through Texas, Oklahoma, and Kansas, the team found that released helium dissolves in groundwater, which transports it to natural gas deposits. According to Danabalan, This mechanism indicates that much more helium is waiting to be tapped than previously thought.
"We identified neon isotope tracers which show a strong association between helium and groundwater," says Danabalan. "This means that in certain geological regions, groundwater transports large volumes of helium into natural gas fields, where trapping potential is greatest. This suggests that we have probably underestimated the volumes of helium which are actually available to explore.
"On a continental scale, and we are talking about a line running right down the Rocky Mountains, we are seeing processes which are releasing the existing helium which has been built up deep underground over hundreds of millions of years," she continued. "In some places, like in Yellowstone Park in Wyoming, the deep helium is released directly into the atmosphere. In others, we are seeing that the deep helium which was released when the Rocky Mountains formed has percolated via the groundwater into the same underground reservoirs where we find natural gas. This means that there are almost certainly reservoirs of helium which we had not anticipated. More importantly, understanding how and why helium arrives in these reservoirs means that we now know where to look for new helium resources."
The pleasant surprise is seeing Huffington step up on this one. There are thousands of radiation bands available and they are entirely precise. Our problem has been that we chose to use one name for a whole range of prospects and that has turned out to be stupid.
Today we are learning now to use coherent radiation as well and that promises excellent results..
The point this is the magic bullet provided we do not turn over control to someone trying to protect an inappropriate protocol. We need this technology and we will get it but not before we wade through mountains of ignorance.
Irradiated Food Sounds Like a Terrible Thing. It’s Actually Really Good.
Zapping food with radiation could prevent dangerous food-borne illness outbreaks—if only consumers would get behind the idea.
In 2002, the East Coast supermarket chain Wegmans
introduced a line of packaged ground beef that had been irradiated with
an electron beam to kill bacteria. Company executives expected the
product to do well; a series of food-borne illness outbreaks had rendered Americans' confidence in food safety dismally low. The launch came at the start of grilling season,
and executives thought it would be a hit with people who liked their
burgers rare but didn't want to get sick from undercooked meat. The
slogan: "Cook it the way you like it!"
"Some people even think their food is going to be radioactive, which is just totally not how this works."
But to their surprise, sales were unimpressive—and they remain so
today, says Wegmans' meat merchandising manager, Mark Spagnola. One
reason might be the higher price: Irradiated beef can cost as much as 80
cents more per pound. But Wegmans' customers are willing to pay a
premium for other special foods, like organics. So more likely, it's
irradiation itself that puts shoppers off. Many consumer surveys have
found that people consider irradiation—which the federal government approved
for some foods as early as the 1960s—creepy and unsafe. "Some people
even think their food is going to be radioactive," Spagnola says, "which
is just totally not how this works."
Here's how it does work: At a special irradiation plant—there are
just a handful in the United States—workers zap food with a machine
similar to the kind that administers radiation to cancer patients. Most
facilities use electron beams, but some irradiate with X-rays or gamma
rays. While the dose of radiation is high, it doesn't stay with the
food, and workers are protected from it with safety gear and massive
concrete walls. The result, says Michael Osterholm, a University of
Minnesota expert on food-borne illness who has studied irradiation
extensively, is that it kills as many bacteria as cooking at high
temperatures, but without any loss of taste. "Food irradiation shows
absolutely no detrimental impact on the food," he says.
Hundreds of studies have proved that irradiation neither adds compounds to food nor takes nutrients away.
Hundreds of studies have proved that irradiation neither adds
compounds to food nor takes nutrients away, and that it can help prevent
the food-borne illnesses that sicken 48 million Americans and kill 3,000 every year. The World Health Organization and the US Department of Agriculturehave deemed the technology safe for food, as has the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention,
which asserts that in addition to eliminating dangerous bacteria in
human food, the technique could also be used to prevent the spread of
disease in livestock through its feed.
Yet some food advocacy groups have campaigned vociferously against the technique. Food and Water Watch, for example, argues
it might induce manufacturers to zap food instead of maintaining a
clean plant. "This could be a gateway to faster line speeds at meat
facilities and sloppier handling practices," says Patty Lovera, the
organization's assistant director. But Rick Holley, a food
microbiologist and irradiation expert at the University of Manitoba,
sees the technique as an extra tool, rather than a crutch; irradiation,
he points out, doesn't get rid of all bacteria, just most. "You
can't make bad food good using irradiation," he says. "If your plant is
dirty and not inspected and overtaxed, the food is going to be bad in a
way that irradiation can't fix."
About a third of dried herbs and spices are
irradiated to prevent salmonella, and imported fruits like mangoes and
papayas are sometimes zapped to kill invasive insects.
In fact, you're probably already eating irradiated products. About a third
of dried herbs and spices are irradiated to prevent salmonella, and
imported fruits like mangoes and papayas are sometimes zapped to kill
invasive insects. The technique is also used to sterilize medical
equipment like gloves, bandages, and syringes, as well as personal-care
products like contact lens solution and baby bottle nipples. Several
European countries regularly irradiate all kinds of food; the French even do it
to Camembert cheese to cut down on pathogens from raw milk. In South
Africa, safari operators eat irradiated meat because it has a long shelf
life, even in hot climates.
To be sure, the technology isn't cheap—but that, says Harlan
Clemmons, who runs an irradiation facility in Sioux City, Iowa, is
mostly because it costs a lot of money to ship all that meat to the
special plants. Although the equipment is expensive (about $18 million
up front), Clemmons calculates that if meat processors did irradiation
in-house, over time they could bring the cost down "to next to nothing."
But that's unlikely to happen anytime soon unless consumers start
embracing the technique, which might require more public attention. In a
2005 study,
484 shoppers at grocery stores in four Texas towns were asked about
their opinion of irradiated foods. Then they read material about how an
electron beam works and watched a short video on the topic. Initially,
about 18 percent of the shoppers described themselves as "doubters" or
"rejecters" of irradiation. But after the statements and video, that
number dwindled to just 3.8 percent. Osterholm likens the public
mistrust of irradiation to the anti-vaccine movement. "We know we could
eliminate many food safety problems with this technique," he says. "And
yet people are still fighting it."
What i find astonishing is the lack of regulatory oversight here. It is totally in everyone's self interest. Yet here we are with fools playing at been fools.
What i find even more nauseating is that this chemical is easily neutralized to been harmless with the addition of a simple reagent. The only problem is that it produces a purple dye which is harmless but obviously unsightly in a river.
So here we are creating mess after mess year after year. Storage has never worked out because dams must fail. Yet neutralization and steady leagage could clean them all up.;
Toxic Cyanide Pollution From Extracting Gold Is Widespread in China
After two devastating
chemical explosions in the city of Tianjin on Aug. 12, Chinese
authorities revealed the presence of about 700 tons of sodium cyanide at
the site. Some of it is thought to have spilled into the surrounding
environment, causing angry responses and questions. Many wanted to know
what such large quantities of toxic material are used for. Wang Yang,
the editor of Tencent Weibo’s “Daily in Touch” channel, attempted to answer the question. The following article is an abridged treatment based on his post of Aug. 15.
Cyanide is a well-known, highly toxic
chemical. A tiny amount can kill a person. But few people know that it
is used in huge quantities in modern gold mining. Almost all gold
producers depend on it to separate gold from other ores. Cyanide is also
an essential reactant in jewelry plating.
China is the world’s largest producer of gold. The enormous amount of cyanide used in gold mining in China is shocking. China Gold News
once ran a detailed report about a gold production company in Inner
Mongolia. It indicated that the company mined 23.1 million tons of ore
in 2014, producing 5.1 tons of gold. To support its production capacity,
the company consumed over 2,000 tons of sodium cyanide each month,
which is equivalent to approximately 4.7 tons of sodium cyanide for every 10kg
of gold. Taking into account the many smaller gold mining companies and
the jewelry industry, China’s annual consumption of cyanide is
shocking.
Lax Supervision
Modern industry has developed a
sophisticated procedure for cyanide degradation. China, too, is aware of
the technology. One way is to effect degradation during the earlier
phase of separating gold from the other ores, and then achieve natural
degradation by exposing the depleted tailings to the sun at the end of
the process. Isolation and anti-infiltration measures are essential. The
natural degradation process of cyanide is fast. With good contingency
plans, and by isolating people, animals and important water sources, it
is possible to prevent catastrophic consequences.
But without strict environmental protection measures, toxic leaks may cause ecological disasters. In June 2013, China Economic published a report titled Shaanxi Maanqiao Tailing Warehouse Approved for Licensing Despite Multitude of Potential Dangers.
The article stated at the beginning that Shaanxi Maanqiao Ecological
Mining Ltd. has produced 12,000 tons of gold each year, while the
tailings have caused pollution and safety problems. Villagers said there
were sediments in their well water and people dared not to drink it,
for fear of cyanide poisoning. In addition, the protective plastic
liners in the tailings warehouses were damaged; so how could it achieve
anti-infiltration, the article questioned.
Another famous case involves Zijin
Mining. As early as the end of 2006, a dam collapsed at their Shuyindong
Gold Mine in Guizhou Province. About 200,000 cubic meters of waste
potassium cyanide leaked out of the tailing warehouse, threatening two
freshwater reservoirs downstream.
With lax supervision and severe local
protectionism, it is indeed worrisome to trust in corporate
self-discipline for environmental protection. In fact, it is common for
some companies to ignore environmental protection all together in order
to reduce costs.
Illegal Mining
You could say that registered
businesses still follow certain management procedures and are concerned
about rules and regulations. But illegally run mining companies are a
mess across China; even death cases have been reported.
In May 2015, Beijing News
published a report titled “1,000 Meter-Long Gold Cave With Hidden
Underground Gold Factory Discovered.” The report exposed private gold
mining enterprises in Beijing Pinggu. Reporters found that illegal
miners secretly used chemicals to repeatedly wash and soak mountains to
absorb gold through activated carbon.
An article titled “Properties and Safe Disposal Methods of Yunan Cyanide Waste” was published in the industry journal Yunnan Metallurgical
in June 2015. The article stated that nearly 10 tons of cyanide
tailings were left by private and illegal miners in a county in east
Yunnan Province without any protective measures. The waste was scattered
across excavation sites in the woods, some of them located in local
government’s secondary water protection areas. These waste piles
contained toxic materials and posed a big threat to nature as well as
people.
Cyanide Black Market
The jewelry electroplating industry
also uses cyanide. Small workshops that are not licensed to purchase
cyanide get it from the black market. In many cases, heavily
contaminated wastewater is directly released into the environment.
Yiwu City in Zhejiang Province has
many jewelry electroplating businesses and a serious cyanide pollution
problem. In 2013, a safety supervisor in Chi’an Township of Yiwu City
noticed a heavily polluted small river in town. He also discovered a
large black resale market for cyanide.
Although the rate of cyanide degradation is fairly fast, continuous release of large amounts of cyanide does cause damage.
Light Punishment
Punishment for illegal discharge of cyanide is not nearly as severe in China as it is in the U.K. and the U.S.
For example, on the website of
China’s Ministry of Environmental Protection one can access the
“Environmental Impact Report Approval for Heilongjiang Baoshan Mining
Ltd. Gold Resources Development Project.” Right in the beginning it
states: “The environmental impact assessment filed for the project was
not approved by the ministry. Unauthorized construction was begun in
violation of relevant provisions in the Environmental Impact Assessment
Law. The illegal acts have been investigated and punished. The company
must learn lessons, improve awareness of the laws and prevent violations
from happening again.”
It seems, the punishment was nothing more than a light slap on the wrist.
This is a really good beginning that makes me finally bullish on 3D print technology. From this we leap quickly into metglas and this produces an array of characteristics otherwise difficult to manufacture.
It is taking years to advance these technologies ,but that is prehaps inevitable. We are certainly getting there.
Sooner that later we must peroduce a real star ship and we need all of this..
.
New 3-D Glass Printer Is a Lot Like What They Did 4,000 Years Ago
In the world of 3-D printing,
plastic has been the base material of choice for most purposes. Metal,
ceramics, and graphite are also used, but on a smaller scale. Now, that
list is being expanded to include transparent glass.
The basic concept of 3-D printing with glass is the same as with
other materials: the glass is heated until it becomes a liquid, and is
then extruded in 0.4 inch thick filaments through a software-controlled
nozzle.
Ironically, the production of glassware by coiling strands of molten
glass is a throwback to the earliest methods of glass-making that
originated in Mesopotamia more than 4,000 years ago, before
glass-blowing and molding was discovered.
The production of glassware by coiling strands of molten glass is a throwback to the earliest methods of glass-making
The manufacturing of glass products through extrusion is already in
use in different industries, but researchers at MIT were only recently
able to come up with a way to produce optically transparent glass.
The researchers had to overcome a number of challenges posed by the
qualities of glass: they relied on gravity to pull the molten glass out
of a crucible, which was heated to 1,800 degrees Fahrenheit, so the
diameter of the filaments were inconsistent as the pressure changed; the
glass would often stick to the nozzle instead of the preceding layer;
and the glass would often cool prematurely.
To make things work, the researchers had to switch to a ceramic
nozzle and keep the production in a temperature controlled chamber to
maintain even cooling.
In addition, the ceramic nozzle has to be manually shut off with
compressed air as a cooling agent and turned on with a propane torch.
Lime glass was used by the researchers because of its low
melting-temperature, but the researchers wrote that they plan on
experimenting with different glass materials in the future, but the
print would have to be modified first to raise its temperature
tolerance.
Caustic patterns of a 3-D printed glass structure. (Andy Ryan)
As a demonstration of the method, the researchers produced a number
of decorative glassware, mostly vases of various shapes and colors, a
selection of which will be exhibited at the Cooper Hewitt Design Museum,
located in New York City, in 2016.
As with plastic, 3-D printing would give hobbyists and enthusiasts
the capability to toy with their own designs for glassware, and empower
suppliers to produce objects on a nonindustrial scale. Glass bottles,
for instance, are manufactured with cast-iron molds, encouraging
standardization in shape and design of the products.
“Additional complexity in product scale is now possible without
negatively affecting its production rate, cost, or quality,” the
researchers wrote in a paper detailing their invention.
The biggest breakthrough accomplished by this discovery may
ultimately be aesthetic. The caustic light patterns created by glass are
often things of remarkable beauty, one that could be greatly enhanced
by calculated distortions designed to project shapes and figures.
(Andy Ryan)
If the thickness of the filaments appear rather crude and inelegant,
that’s because the products serve only as a proof of concept that 3-D
printing of transparent glass is possible. As the technology is refined,
the diameter of the extrusion will become smaller if needed, and the
designs more complex.
The researchers’ finished products were limited by a number of
resource restraints. The reliance on gravity as the pulling mechanism
forced the crucible to be constantly filled. A plunger or compressed air
is being considered as a replacement for that force. Different
materials are also being considered for the nozzle, and a disposable
foil has been considered.
The printer’s software also faces needs to undergo consolidation of
the several programs that are being run simultaneously, so that there’s
more control of the process in real time.
