An Ecological View: Earth = Life

Although definitions of the meaning of “life” are various, none recognizes the importance of context. A partial explanation of the attribution of “life” only to organisms is the fact that the ecosphere–the context and source of organisms–has, until recently, been invisible. Further, the metaphorical nature of abstract language has conflated “organisms” and “life.” But just as the living parts of an organism depend on the vitality of the whole, so living organisms depend on the energetics of planet Earth from which they evolved and by which they are maintained. From an ecological viewpoint, planet Earth, the inclusive supra‐organic ecosphere, is a logical metaphor for “life.”

Marianne Moore is a staunch advocate of the theory that writings are for conveying truth. Her animal poetry is frequently regarded as an allegory of humanity's weakness or barbarism, displaying her contemplation of the natural world. This paper focuses on the images in Marianne Moore’s “The Fish” to explore her ecological view. It tries to find out Moore’s basic views about nature by analyzing the images that she depicts and the way that she arranges them. It also demonstrates how Moore perceives the relationship between human beings and nature through the analysis of the symbolic meanings of “sea” and “cliff”, by which Moore calls attention for ecological peace.

PurposeThe island areas, in particular, are characterized by a more fragile ecological carrying capacity and higher value of resources and environment, which requires us to take Xi Jinping's green ecological development view as the theoretical basis and adhere to the high-quality development path of gradual development and ecological environment priority. Taking Shengsi and Daishan counties as examples, on the basis of their high-quality development evaluation and identification of the main influencing factors, this study explores the specific path of Xi Jinping's ecological development view in the high-quality development of typical island counties in China.Design/methodology/approachThis paper applies the interpretative structural model to construct an evaluation index system for the high-quality development of the island. In determining the factor weights of the index layer, the AHP hierarchical analysis method was combined with the Delphi method to increase the objectivity of the assignment process as much as possible. This study used the technique for order of preference by similarity to ideal solution to calculate island high quality development index. To measure the main obstacle factors, the index factor contribution rate, the index factor deviation, and the index factor obstacle degree were applied in this research.FindingsAs China intensifies its maritime strategy, the sustainability of coastal and island regions is critical, particularly given their fragile ecosystems and high resource value. Our study reveals a declining trend in the high-quality development index for Shengsi, peaking at 0.4262 in 2010 and dropping to 0.3261 in 2012. To reverse this, it's essential to align with President Xi Jinping's green ecological development framework and commit to a high-quality development pathway.Originality/valueThe connotation and extension of Xi Jinping's view of ecological development should be continuously studied in depth and enriched, with green development as the core idea to guide the correct direction of the high-quality development of the island. In this paper, it is suggested that researchers are supposed to focus on these problems, such as the changes of sea water quality, the reduction of urban greening, the continuous negative growth of population in island areas, the decline of forestry added value and air quality protection, so as to ensure the sustainable high-quality development of example islands.

Las reflexiones que aquí se presentan nacen de las preocupaciones del área de investigación de “entramados comunitarios y formas de lo político” en torno a lo que hoy en América Latina significa defender la vida para un amplio y variado abanico de procesos organizativos y luchas comunitarias en medio de las renovadas dinámicas de apropiación, despojo, devastación y degradación de las naturalezas humanas y no humanas que las violentas lógicas de acumulación impulsan sin parar. Esta inquietud nos ha llevado a la tarea de dotarnos de una mirada analítica, ecológica, holística y relacional en torno a la noción de vida, que hemos ido componiendo en diálogo con la perspectiva de la ecología-mundo, la ecología política latinoamericana y la apuesta de algunas tradiciones del feminismo por poner en el centro la vida. En este texto, a modo de síntesis parciales, presentamos lo que, desde nuestras propias inquietudes políticas, implica pensar la vida, el Capitaloceno y las disputas planteadas por una multiplicidad de luchas en defensa de lo común con base en diversas investigaciones en diferentes países de América Latina, en particular en México y Bolivia, pero también en Ecuador, Guatemala, Colombia y Uruguay. El texto se compone de tres apartados. En el primero, explicamos qué entendemos por condición de interdependencia y cómo, a partir de esta idea, recuperamos la noción de trama/tejido de la vida propuesta por diferentes autores. En el segundo, nos preguntamos por la vida que el proyecto moderno-capitalista ha ido produciendo a partir de la lógica de dominio de carácter antropocéntrico, patriarcal y colonial y los modos en los que se ha buscado reorganizar la condición de interdependencia, poniendo a trabajar a las naturalezas humanas y no humanas para garantizar la lógica de acumulación. Un ejemplo a través del cual ilustramos estas dinámicas es la gestión capitalista de las relaciones de interdependencia en torno al agua en tiempos neoliberales. Y finalmente, exponemos sobre la base de numerosas investigaciones, enfocadas principalmente en experiencias comunitarias en oposición a algún proyecto extractivista, nuestro acercamiento al antagonismo social y la disputa que entablan las luchas por lo común en América Latina para defender la vida y gestionar las relaciones de interdependencia en contradicción con los términos de coproducción capitalistas.

The long-standing view in ecology is that disparity in overall resource selection is the basis for identifying niche breadth patterns, with species having narrow selection being classified “specialists” and those with broader selection being “generalists”. The standard model of niche breadth characterizes generalists and specialists as having comparable levels of overall total resource exploitation, with specialists exploiting resources at a higher level of performance over a narrower range of conditions. This view has gone largely unchallenged. An alternate model predicts total resource use being lower for the specialized species with both peaking at a comparable level of performance over a particular resource gradient. To reconcile the niche breadth paradigm we contrasted both models by developing range-wide species distribution models for Canada lynx, Lynx canadensis, and bobcat, Lynx rufus. Using a suite of environmental factors to define each species’ niche, we determined that Canada lynx demonstrated higher total performance over a restricted set of variables, specifically those related to snow and altitude, while bobcat had higher total performance across most variables. Unlike predictions generated by the standard model, bobcat level of exploitation was not compromised by the trade-off with peak performance, and Canada lynx were not restricted to exploiting a narrower range of conditions. Instead, the emergent pattern was that specialist species have a higher total resource utilization and peak performance value within a smaller number of resources or environmental axes than generalists. Our results also indicate that relative differences in niche breadth are strongly dependent on the variable under consideration, implying that the appropriate model describing niche breadth dynamics between specialists and generalists may be more complex than either the traditional heuristic or our modified version. Our results demonstrate a need to re-evaluate traditional, but largely untested, assumptions regarding resource utilization in species with broad and narrow niches.

Only recently have ecologists begun to recognize the fundamental importance of disease and parasites in animal and plant population dynamics (Scott and Dobson 1989). The study of disease dynamics is very old (Bernoulli 1760), but it remained confined for a long time in the epidemiological literature, with special reference to the human species and domestic animals. The traditional view in ecology was that parasites, especially if they were adapted since long time to their environment, did not have a very important impact on the demography of their hosts.

Introduction: According to the ecological view, coordination establishes byvirtueof social context. Affordances thought of as situational opportunities to interact are assumed to represent the guiding principles underlying decisions involved in interpersonal coordination. It’s generally agreed that affordances are not an objective part of the (social) environment but that they depend on the constructive perception of involved subjects. Theory and empirical data hold that cognitive operations enabling domain-specific efficacy beliefs are involved in the perception of affordances. The aim of the present study was to test the effects of these cognitive concepts in the subjective construction of local affordances and their influence on decision making in football. Methods: 71 football players (M = 24.3 years, SD = 3.3, 21 % women) from different divisions participated in the study. Participants were presented scenarios of offensive game situations. They were asked to take the perspective of the person on the ball and to indicate where they would pass the ball from within each situation. The participants stated their decisions in two conditions with different game score (1:0 vs. 0:1). The playing fields of all scenarios were then divided into ten zones. For each zone, participants were asked to rate their confidence in being able to pass the ball there (self-efficacy), the likelihood of the group staying in ball possession if the ball were passed into the zone (group-efficacy I), the likelihood of the ball being covered safely by a team member (pass control / group-efficacy II), and whether a pass would establish a better initial position to attack the opponents’ goal (offensive convenience). Answers were reported on visual analog scales ranging from 1 to 10. Data were analyzed specifying general linear models for binomially distributed data (Mplus). Maximum likelihood with non-normality robust standard errors was chosen to estimate parameters. Results: Analyses showed that zone- and domain-specific efficacy beliefs significantly affected passing decisions. Because of collinearity with self-efficacy and group-efficacy I, group-efficacy II was excluded from the models to ease interpretation of the results. Generally, zones with high values in the subjective ratings had a higher probability to be chosen as passing destination (βself-efficacy = 0.133, p < .001, OR = 1.142; βgroup-efficacy I = 0.128, p < .001, OR = 1.137; βoffensive convenience = 0.057, p < .01, OR = 1.059). There were, however, characteristic differences in the two score conditions. While group-efficacy I was the only significant predictor in condition 1 (βgroup-efficacy I = 0.379, p < .001), only self-efficacy and offensive convenience contributed to passing decisions in condition 2 (βself-efficacy = 0.135, p < .01; βoffensive convenience = 0.120, p < .001). Discussion: The results indicate that subjectively distinct attributes projected to playfield zones affect passing decisions. The study proposes a probabilistic alternative to Lewin’s (1951) hodological and deterministic field theory and enables insight into how dimensions of the psychological landscape afford passing behavior. Being part of a team, this psychological landscape is not only constituted by probabilities that refer to the potential and consequences of individual behavior, but also to that of the group system of which individuals are part of. Hence, in regulating action decisions in group settings, informers are extended to aspects referring to the group-level.

Eastern mosquitofish, Gambusia holbrooki , is an invasive exotic fish for Iranian inland water. This study conducted to evaluate some reproductive traits of this species in six waterbodies from southeastern Caspian basin. A total of 8500 individuals were sampled from the AlmaGol Wetland, Alakooli Dam Lake, Gomishan Lagoon, Voshmgir Dam Lake, Golestan Dam Lake, and estuary of Gorgan River during February to September 2014. The maximum age in all areas was 1 + for males and 2 + for females. The highest mean GSI value was 2.6 for males in April-May and 29.6 for females in May. Egg diameter ranged from 0.5 to 2.5 mm with a mean value of 1.43 mm. Absolute fecundity varied between 2 to 212 eggs. Both ova diameter and absolute fecundity were positively correlated with females' size, while relative fecundity had no significant correlation with females' size (length and weight). The results showed a significant variations in reproductive characteristics among the populations inhabiting different habitats. This finding is important with respect to life history of the species and ecological view as well.

On January 4th, 2009 American Astronomical Society in Washington D.C, the Kepler team announced that it had identified first new exo-planet and after that up to 2013, Kepler had identified nearly 4034 exoplanets or Super earth outside our solar system where some chemical conditions that the pre-biotic earth had might have prompted life, at least in form of microbes. Scientists so far announced the lists of earth-sized 4034 exo-planets with a duration of orbit around their stars from 6 hours to 632 days and from the list, Kepler team singled up to 20 candidates most likely to have characteristics necessary to sustain life. Of such planets are HD 1461 (76 light years away); GJ 1214b(40 light years away), GJ 452 b ( Which is one and half time sized in the earth and is around 40 light years away); Gliese 581 c and another is KOI -7923.01. This last Exoplanet is 97% of the size of our earth has an orbit period of 395 days of our earth days, likely surrounded by a cold atmosphere. Super-earth Wolf -1061 C is however habitable planet outside our solar system and could support also alien life. It is only 14 light years away from the earth. Statistics suggest that our own galaxy harbors at least 100 billion such exoplanets including planetesimals. Of the world’s found, today few closely resembles the earth. Instead, they exhibit truly enormous diversity, varying immensely in the orbit, their size, composition and circling a wide variety of stars including one significantly smaller than our sun. Diverse features of those exo-planets suggested us (the authors) and also to many others that earth may not be only where close to the pinnacle of habitability. In fact, some exo-planets are quite different from our own, could have much higher chances and can maintain stable biosphere. Of course our planet the earth possesses a number of properties at first seems to be ideal for evolving life, that earth revolves around a sedate middle-aged star, that has shined steadily for billions of years, giving life plenty of times to arose and evolved from RNA worlds to microbe worlds to prokaryotic to eukaryotics to multicellular organism life to modern planets, reptiles mammals, human through a process called Darwinian evolution. It has oceans of life-giving water, largely because it orbits within suns habitable zone, life-friendly size, big enough to hold a substantial atmosphere with its gravitational field but small enough to ensure gravity does not pull a smothering, opaque shroud of gas over the planet earth size its rocky composition, its volcanoes also gave rise to other boosters of habitability of life Wolf 1061 C is the closest Super-earth from our planet, only 14 light years away. But it has more than 4 times the mass of earth and the planet sits within the habitable zone, possible for water and life to exist. Others are in the habitable zone of cool dwarf star known as TRAPPIST -1 which is 39 light years away from earth and the planets have a surface temperature from zero to 100 degree Celsius - the temperature, which is perfect for supporting life. Earth-sized planets those are rocky, those are watery, NH3 has methane, and volcanoes can support the origin of life. The amonia methane, HCN and water are an essential components for the origin of life in any planet for RNA and DNA. To develop most earliest microbes it need methane-rich oxygen-poor mud at bottoms of river and lakes as microbes live on a diet of methane and nitrogen oxides like nitrites and nitrates or by other pathways like photosynthesis, bacterial reduction of chlorates and enzymatic conversion of reactive oxygen species and directly energy from methane through a chemical process linked denitrification which releases nitrogen and oxygen from nitrogen oxides. So life can begin in any of twenty super-earths where methane exists as free gas in the atmosphere or in the river or as a lake or asthe ocean. In such an environment, alien microbes can use any of the pathways to leave off carbon and energy supplied by methane. The bacteria may be called methanotrophs. Keywords: Gliese 581 c, glycine RNA/DNA life, habitable zone, HCN, HD 1461, KOI -7923.01, methane, methanotrophs, Miller Urey experiment, super earh, TRAPPIST-1 volcanos, water, Wolf 1061 C Cite this Article Rupak Bhattacharya, Pranab Kumar Bhattacharya, Upasana Bhattacharya, Ritwik Bhattacharya, Rupsa Bhattacharya, Dalia Mukherjee, Oaindrila Mukherjee, Ayshi Mukherjee, Debasis Mukherjee. Super-earths (Exo-planets): How Much Probability of Colonization of Life is There?. Journal of Aerospace Engineering & Technology. 2019; 9(1): 30–39p.

The fundamental problem that we raise and address in this paper is the problem of understanding our relationship with our afflictions in ways that are uniquely shaped by such afflictions. We capture our need to shifting our attention from our dominant Western epistemology to systems thinking. In this article, we argue that systems theory and thinking reminds us of the pathologies of epistemology that may preclude learning from our relationship with Covid-19. offers us a way to examine the relationship between an uninvited guest like Covid-19 guests and hosts (human beings) particularly in the light of Rumi’s formulation of being human, namely, as being a “guest house”. While we may never get to a place where we invite Covid-19 into our lives, we can at least respect the fact that it will exist in our lives, as afflictions do, and with this awareness we can begin to find ways to co-exist with it, in the same way that we must do with all other creatures and nature on our only home – Mother Earth. opens us to telling a story about our afflictions in ways that are uniquely shaped by such afflictions. In this regard the authors examine several human responses (stories) to Covid-19 within the context of our system that continues to change and evolve. uncovers the need to recover from our state of addiction to a state of sobriety. The state of sobriety returns us to an awareness that we cannot just do one thing because each movement or perturbation necessarily resonates throughout the system. allows us to shift to an ecological rather than a solely political or economic view of Homo Sapiens. This ecological shift moves us into a moral/ethical realm (we use them interchangeably here) whereby humankind learns to abide by another law. It is a law that is itself punctuated by the distinction between control and restraint. The punctuation of this distinction enables us to become more aware of our attempts to establish a unilateral control over that which is multilateral. These attempts will not only fail, but they would also create different, and perhaps more serious problems. This development of another law to abide by, suggests that we surrender ourselves to being governed by the law of restraint.

To study the effects of rare earth exposure on human telomerase and apoptosis of human peripheral mononuclear cells (PBMNs). Rare earth mine lot in Xunwu county, the biggest ion absorptive rare earth mine lot of China, was selected as the study site. Another village of Xunwu county, with comparable geological structure and social environment was selected as the control site. Thirty healthy adults were randomly selected from the study site as exposure group and another 30 healthy adults randomly selected from the control site as control group. The blood content of 15 rare earth elements, including La, Ce, Pr, Nd, Sm, Eu, Gd, Tb, Dy, Ho, Er, Tm, Yb, Lu and Y, were determined by inductive coupled plasma-source mass spectrometry (ICP-MS). The total contents of rare earth elements in the blood were calculated. The TRAP and FCM assays were carried out to analyse the telomerase and apoptosis of human PBMNCs respectively. In the exposure group, the concentration of La, Ce, Dy and Y were significantly higher (P<0.001), and Pr, Nd, Sm, Gd and Yb were higher than those in the control group (P<0.05). The total content of rare earth in the blood of exposure group showed significant difference compared with control group (P<0.001). Telomerase activity in PBMNs of the exposure group was higher than that in the control group (P<0.05); there were 11 adults in the exposure group (30 adults) and 5 adults in control group (30 adults) showed positive telomerase activity. The average age of the exposure group was (38.69 +/- 8.02) years-old, while the control group was (40.45 +/- 9.02) years-old (P >0.05). It was found that there was a significant relationship between telomerase activity and the total content of rare earth elements (P <0.01). 3. The proportion of apoptosis was not different between the two groups (P >0.05), but the cells in the S-phase and G2-M phase were increased (P <0.01) in the exposed group. The telomerase activity of PBMNs in the rare earth elements exposed group was higher than that of the control group, and there is no effect on apoptotic rate of PBMNs, but may promote the diploid DNA replication, and increase the percentage of G2/M and S phase cells.

Social order would be the conditions which would permit every human being the opportunity for full individual development while living in a way which enhances the welfare of the human race and of the physical and biological environment. Tension and conflict under such conditions would lack the gross, disabling, deforming and degrading consequences so evident in the present condition of social disorder. In this perspective, alcoholism is seen as but one of the symptoms of social disorder. Tendencies toward social order are discussed and contrasted with the delinquent aspects of western society. A typology of individual strategies for dealing with stress situations is offered, in which alcoholism is related to other evasive and punitive strategies. The contention of some that alcohol may reduce tension by “facilitating communication” is attacked.

Geography studies earth science is that the study of the lands in habitation and method of earth and planets. earth science secular info on understanding of earth and it's human and natural complexities that changes time to time. Geography classified into many branches like human earth science, geography, integrated earth science, reasonable earth science, geomatics. Human earth science are often outlined because the study of individuals and their communities, cultures, economics and their relation with the environments supported Their living places Physical geography are often outlined because the study of the phenomenon’s and pattern of natural atmosphere like atmosphere, biosphere, layer and lithosphere. It is study of earth's seasons, climate, soil, oceans etc

Count Buffon published his Les epoques de la nature in 1778. On the initial page, we find a parallel between the history of Earth and the history of civilization and we find the statement of the brief character of human history in contrast to the boundless times of natural history. These statements seem completely obvious to us today. Yet many opinions, theses and theories have become “obviously true” after long and complicated processes that required profound changes in the ways we think, and in the ways we conceive the world and the relationships between us and the world. A first point concerns the very notion of a history of nature and a history of Earth. When we use the term “natural history”, we usually forget that, for many centuries, the meaning of this expression had nothing to do with the processes of time. It was what Aristotle and Pliny had attributed to it: an historia or an atemporal description of immutable entities. In our postdarwinian world, the history of the universe, the history of the solar system, the history of Earth, the history of the human species are entities constructed on enormously different chronological scales. That nature very greatly preceded man, that man emerged from nature, that a lot of “nature” is still present in his behaviour, is now common sense (or should be). Yet for many centuries, the history of man was conceived as co-extensive with the history of Earth. Time began with the Creation and the biblical chronology fixed the age of the world at ca. 6,000 years. A cosmos not built for human creatures, an Earth not populated by human beings, long appeared as a reality without sense, pure imagination. The expansion of time between the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries greatly affected the sciences of nature and the sciences of man in the same period. Invoking the great antiquity of the Chaldeans, the Mexicans, the Peruvians, the Chinese, and contrasting the chronology of those peoples to that of the Hebrews, Isaac de La Peyrere maintained, in 1655, the existence of Pre-Adamites, i.e. men that had populated Earth before Adam. The orthodox chronology of 6,000 years appeared completely insufficient to La Peyrere: “even the smallest part of the past greatly exceeds the epoch of the Creation commonly made to coincide with Adam”. The present time is separated from the beginning of the world by a boundless distance. The students of chronology “have cancelled from the memory of the human species the centuries of which they have no knowledge”. Beyond the few millennia of the traditional chronology extends a history of thousands and thousands of centuries constructed by different peoples, as manifested in the different civilizations. Thus the Deluge lost its characteristics of a universal catastrophe and the biblical text was reduced to the account of the particular history of the Jewish people. Beyond the 6,000 years of the traditional chronology now extended a kind of unexplored continent. During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, that broad territory would be populated not only by the wise Chaldeans, the mysterious Egyptians and the refined Chinese but also by barbarians, by “beasts full of astonishment and ferocity”, even by “apes” destined to become men. Included in a much broader and totalizing perspective than the characteristic one of postdarwinian geology, the debate on fossils took into consideration “facts” of a very heterogeneous nature between the mid-1600s and mid-1700s. This debate clashed and mingled with the story of Genesis, with the cosmological topics of the formation and destruction of the universe, with millenarianism and catastrophism, with the theological-natural principles of plenitude and the chain of being, with the problems related to the Deluge and to the existence of the first men on Earth. The parallel between the history of Earth and the history of civil life, based on analogy and metaphor, gave rise to an “historical” type of methodology and epistemology that interacted, in turn, with the historiographic constructions related to the most ancient civilizations. A rich production of theories (reaching a peak between 1680 and 1705) raised problems of a general character, caused philosophical and religious assumptions to be questioned, and generated theoretically complicated situations that set difficult alternatives before natural philosophers and theologians.

This paper underlines the origin and evolution of earth system science and the opportunities and challenges China will face in earth system research. While elucidating the ideology of the earth system research in China, we propose eight key strategic issues: evolution and adaptation of regional climate environment system; water system, water cycle and water security; ecological system and global carbon cycle; human activities and earth surface system; earth interior dynamics and earth system evolution; earth catastrophic events and life process; earth system observation, earth system simulation,and coupling process dynamics, response dynamics and theory for adaptation and prediction.