Kon Tiki Research Articles

Effect of biochar blended organic fertilizers on soil fertility, radish productivity and farm income in Nepal

Declining soil fertility and nutrient availability are one of the major threats to reducing crop productivity in Nepal. A field experiment was conducted to assess the potential of biochar (10 t ha-1) blended with organic and inorganic fertilizers on improving soil fertility and radish productivity in Morang district, Nepal. Biochar was prepared from locally available twigs, branches, and wood using the soil pit “Kon tiki” method. The experiment was laid out in Randomized Complete Block Design with 7 treatments having four replications viz., control (CK), biochar (BC), biochar + cattle manure (CM), biochar + poultry manure (PM), biochar + cattle urine (CU), biochar + commercial biofertilizers (BF) and biochar + inorganic fertilizers (urea-N). The nitrogen rate used in all the treatments was equivalent to 100 kg ha-1. The agronomic effect of biochar blended organic amendments was compared with control and inorganic urea-N treatments. Biochar amended plots showed significantly higher soil pH (6.5), organic matter (4%), total N% (0.8%), available P (80.1 kg ha-1), and K (203.6 kg ha-1) compared with control. CM increased marketable yield by 320% (63 t ha-1) and biomass yield by 198% (100 t ha-1) compared with control (15.0 t ha-1 and 34 t ha-1) of marketable and biomass yield, respectively. CM increased marketable yield by 44% compared with the urea-N treatment (44 t ha-1). Moreover, net return was observed highest with CM treatment among all the organic and urea-N treatments. The study suggests that the combination of biochar with locally produced cattle manure has the potential to increase radish productivity and could compete with mineral nitrogen fertilizers while producing similar or even higher crop yields and economic returns.

RESPONSE OF POTATO (SOLANUM TUBEROSUM L.) TO THE APPLICATION RATES OF BIOCHAR AND NUMBER OF IRRIGATIONS

A split-plot experiment was conducted to determine the response of potato to application rate of biochar (0, 2, 4 and 6 t/ha , main plots) and number of irrigations (once, twice and thrice a month, sub-plots) in 3 replications as a pot trial in a screen house at Khumaltar during winter season of 2018 and 2019. Biochar was produced from Lantana camara by semi-pyrolysed technique in a Kon Tiki drum. Plastic pots with 26 cm of diameter were used to meet the 25 cm plant spacing of potato recommended in Nepal. The early maturing (90 days) released variety ‘Desiree’ was used for the trial. Observations were recorded on plant and tuber attributes. The results revealed that the influence of biochar rates was positive over zero biochar on plant height, root fresh weight, root dry weight, stem fresh weight and tuber dry weight. The effect of biochar @ 2/ha had similar effects to the rates of 4 t/ha and 6 t/ha rates. Irrigation treatments were significantly different for plant height, number of tubers per plant, root fresh weight, stem and leaf fresh weight, tuber fresh weight, root dry weight and tuber dry weight. Among the irrigation schedules, irrigating twice and thrice a month had similar effects but they were different from one irrigation. Interactions of biochar @ 2 t/ha with one, two or three irrigations were superior to the interactions of biochar @ 0 t/ha with one and two irrigations for tuber dry weight and total dry weight.

Biochar from "Kon Tiki" flame curtain and other kilns: Effects of nutrient enrichment and kiln type on crop yield and soil chemistry.

Biochar application to soils has been investigated as a means of improving soil fertility and mitigating climate change through soil carbon sequestration. In the present work, the invasive shrub "Eupatorium adenophorum" was utilized as a sustainable feedstock for making biochar under different pyrolysis conditions in Nepal. Biochar was produced using several different types of kilns; four sub types of flame curtain kilns (deep-cone metal kiln, steel shielded soil pit, conical soil pit and steel small cone), brick-made traditional kiln, traditional earth-mound kiln and top lift up draft (TLUD). The resultant biochars showed consistent pH (9.1 ± 0.3), cation exchange capacities (133 ± 37 cmolc kg-1), organic carbon contents (73.9 ± 6.4%) and surface areas (35 to 215 m2/g) for all kiln types. A pot trial with maize was carried out to investigate the effect on maize biomass production of the biochars made with various kilns, applied at 1% and 4% dosages. Biochars were either pretreated with hot or cold mineral nutrient enrichment (mixing with a nutrient solution before or after cooling down, respectively), or added separately from the same nutrient dosages to the soil. Significantly higher CEC (P< 0.05), lower Al/Ca ratios (P< 0.05), and high OC% (P<0.001) were observed for both dosages of biochar as compared to non-amended control soils. Importantly, the study showed that biochar made by flame curtain kilns resulted in the same agronomic effect as biochar made by the other kilns (P > 0.05). At a dosage of 1% biochar, the hot nutrient-enriched biochar led to significant increases of 153% in above ground biomass production compared to cold nutrient-enriched biochar and 209% compared to biochar added separately from the nutrients. Liquid nutrient enhancement of biochar thus improved fertilizer effectiveness compared to separate application of biochar and fertilizer.

Performing a Viking History of America: The 1893 Voyage and Display of a Viking Longship at the Columbus Quadricentennial

Performing a Viking History of America:The 1893 Voyage and Display of a Viking Longship at the Columbus Quadricentennial Axel Andersson (bio) and Scott Magelssen (bio) "The World celebrated the Trip, except for the Columbus adherents." —"Verden jublet over ferden—unntatt Columbustilhengerne"1 "In this way, Viking theorists inverted a discourse of discovery that usually limited the options of immigrants. For Scandinavians, discovery did not begin with Columbus and did not end in genocide." —J. M. Mancini2 "It was the Kon Tiki of the 19th Century." —Jon Hahn3 In 1893 sea captain and newspaper publisher Magnus Andersen led a group of Norwegians in reconstructing a Viking ship based on the remains of a thousand-year-old vessel unearthed the previous decade from a burial mound near the south coast of [End Page 175] Click for larger view View full resolution Figure 1. Viking in New York Harbor (1893). Note the Swedish Union maritime flag. (Source: Collection of the Bergen Maritime Museum, reproduction from Vesterheim Norwegian-American Museum, Decorah, Iowa.) Norway (see fig. 1). Appropriately named Viking, the ship sailed to the United States to appear at that year's world's fair, the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago.4 [End Page 176] On the clear day of April 30th, Viking set sail from Bergen to cross the Atlantic Ocean from Norway to New England. From there, Andersen's crew continued through the Erie Canal and the Great Lakes and on to Chicago, where the ship performed navigational history alongside other vessels, including reconstructions of Christopher Columbus's three caravels, Niña, Pinta, and Santa Maria, which celebrated the quadricentennial of the famous inaugural moment of encounter between the so-called Old and New Worlds. Along the way, Andersen and his crew were ambushed by a mob of "Columbus adherents" in Brooklyn and wound up in jail for the night, crashed with a tugboat in the canal, and dealt with jeers from naysayers along banks and bridges. They also bested the fastest yachts in impromptu races in the Great Lakes, received high-profile supporters, and drew record crowds in Chicago. How does one make sense of a Viking ship re-performance at Columbus's anniversary party? The Norwegians arrived ostensibly claiming that Leif Eriksson had set foot on American shores centuries earlier than Columbus, an inconvenient counter-narrative to the story of the Spanish-financed Italian explorer discovering America. Moreover, they dared a north Atlantic Ocean crossing in an open ship to prove it—with neither ship-to-shore communication nor accompanying vessels to rescue these nineteenthcentury Vikings should anything go wrong with the reconstructed ninth-century craft. A closer look at the Viking enterprise reveals, however, that the symbolic dimension of performing a "Viking" journey to the United States was deeper than merely competing for the honor of first Europeans in the Americas in three main ways: first, for the Norwegians, the project performed fierce nationalism at a time when a large part of the society was actively propagating for independence from Sweden; second, for the traditional elites of the East Coast, a successful Viking voyage could prove the historical existence of a Viking colony in New England, and thus constitute a whiter and more northern origin of the United States; and third, for Midwestern Scandinavian immigrants struggling to perform their own place in the American story, Viking stood to legitimize and reify their birthright as Americans. And Andersen, always playing his intentionality close to the vest, strategically allowed for each of these narratives to exist simultaneously. Of particular interest for broader conversation, however, is the way in which Viking engaged in a kind of performative historiography on the shores of Norway, in the drawing rooms of Cambridge and Boston, in the carnivalesque atmosphere of the Chicago Columbian Exposition—and indeed in the very itinerary cut by Viking's dragon-headed prow as it crossed the Atlantic and navigated the American waterways as no vessel had done before. In so doing, it provided an earlier example of "performance as research," engaging in a network of reconstructive dramaturgical techniques that seem to emerge concomitantly with the rise of the modern "nation," and appears constitutive of that construction. The...

Trouble in Paradise: Revising Identity in Two Texts by Thor Heyerdahl

Research Article| October 01 2016 Trouble in Paradise: Revising Identity in Two Texts by Thor Heyerdahl Jenna Coughlin Jenna Coughlin University of California, Berkeley Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Scandinavian Studies (2016) 88 (3): 246–269. https://doi.org/10.5406/scanstud.88.3.0246 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Permissions Search Site Citation Jenna Coughlin; Trouble in Paradise: Revising Identity in Two Texts by Thor Heyerdahl. Scandinavian Studies 1 January 2016; 88 (3): 246–269. doi: https://doi.org/10.5406/scanstud.88.3.0246 Download citation file: Zotero Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All Scholarly Publishing CollectiveUniversity of Illinois PressScandinavian Studies Search Advanced Search The text of this article is only available as a PDF. Copyright 2017 by the Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois2017 Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.

Emissions and Char Quality of Flame-Curtain "Kon Tiki" Kilns for Farmer-Scale Charcoal/Biochar Production.

Flame Curtain Biochar KilnsPyrolysis of organic waste or woody materials yields charcoal, a stable carbonaceous product that can be used for cooking or mixed into soil, in the latter case often termed "biochar". Traditional kiln technologies for charcoal production are slow and without treatment of the pyrolysis gases, resulting in emissions of gases (mainly methane and carbon monoxide) and aerosols that are both toxic and contribute to greenhouse gas emissions. In retort kilns pyrolysis gases are led back to a combustion chamber. This can reduce emissions substantially, but is costly and consumes a considerable amount of valuable ignition material such as wood during start-up. To overcome these problems, a novel type of technology, the Kon-Tiki flame curtain pyrolysis, is proposed. This technology combines the simplicity of the traditional kiln with the combustion of pyrolysis gases in the flame curtain (similar to retort kilns), also avoiding use of external fuel for start-up.Biochar CharacteristicsA field study in Nepal using various feedstocks showed char yields of 22 ± 5% on a dry weight basis and 40 ± 11% on a C basis. Biochars with high C contents (76 ± 9%; n = 57), average surface areas (11 to 215 m2 g-1), low EPA16—PAHs (2.3 to 6.6 mg kg-1) and high CECs (43 to 217 cmolc/kg)(average for all feedstocks, mainly woody shrubs) were obtained, in compliance with the European Biochar Certificate (EBC).Gas Emission FactorsMean emission factors for the flame curtain kilns were (g kg-1 biochar for all feedstocks); CO2 = 4300 ± 1700, CO = 54 ± 35, non-methane volatile organic compounds (NMVOC) = 6 ± 3, CH4 = 30 ± 60, aerosols (PM10) = 11 ± 15, total products of incomplete combustion (PIC) = 100 ± 83 and NOx = 0.4 ± 0.3. The flame curtain kilns emitted statistically significantly (p<0.05) lower amounts of CO, PIC and NOx than retort and traditional kilns, and higher amounts of CO2.ImplicationsWith benefits such as high quality biochar, low emission, no need for start-up fuel, fast pyrolysis time and, importantly, easy and cheap construction and operation the flame curtain technology represent a promising possibility for sustainable rural biochar production.

Ancient and historic dispersals of sweet potato in Oceania

On his voyages across the Pacific, Captain James Cook encountered geographically disparate Polynesian societies, including those living on Easter Island, Hawai’i, and the north island of New Zealand. These far-flung communities cultivated a South American domesticate, the sweet potato (Ipomoea batatas). Subsequent debates concerning the timing and nature of the dispersals of sweet potato into and across the Pacific have proven contentious, including Thor Heyerdahl’s famous Kon Tiki voyage from South America to Easter Island (1). Archaeological research has now conclusively shown that the sweet potato was introduced to Central Polynesia by approximately A.D. 1200 to 1300 (2), most likely by Polynesian voyagers who reached South America and subsequently spread the crop to the widely dispersed islands of the Polynesian triangle (e.g., ref. 3). Now, Roullier et al. (4) use genetic analyses (chloroplast and nuclear microsatellites) of modern and historically collected herbaria samples to clarify longstanding questions concerning historical dispersals of sweet potato across the Pacific. In sum, their research confirms key aspects of the “tripartite hypothesis” for sweet potato dispersal, with major implications beyond Oceania.

Seeing/Loving Animals: André Bazin's Posthumanism

French film theorist André Bazin was fascinated by films in which humans and animals are framed together, especially in circumstances in which the presence of one signals the endangerment of the other. By putting Bazin and two films he admired ( Kon Tiki and Umberto D) in conversation with Jacques Derrida's writing on the animal and Walter Benjamin's infrahuman optics, this article argues that Bazin's commitments to cinematic realism and the recurrence in his writing of human/animal propinquity signal a distinctly posthumanist ethics. Jacques Perrin's Winged Migration realizes Bazin's interest in a cinema that de-centers and even absents the human. It may also be a film that answers Derrida's call that we not just look at animals, but feel ourselves seen by them.

Physical reality: the role of the empirical in the film theory of Siegfried Kracauer, John Grierson, André Bazin and Georg Lukács

The article explores conceptions of empirical filmic representation in the film theories of Grierson, Bazin, Kracauer and Lukacs. The article begins by exploring the concept of ‘intuitionist cinematic realism’, then turns to Kracauer's analysis of documentary films by Paul Rotha, and Ruttmann's Berlin: Symphony of a Great City. Following this, the article looks at Bazin's analysis of Dreyer's the Passion of Joan of Arc, and Heyerdahl's Kon Tiki. The article closes with an exploration of the thought of Georg Lukacs in relation to questions of empirical representation and filmic realism.

Heyerdahl’s Kon Tiki Theory and the Denial of the Indigenous Past

On 28 April 1947, a nine-balsa-log raft, its Norwegian flag fluttering, was towed out of the Peruvian port of Callao far enough to be swept westwards across the Pacific Ocean by strong ocean curren...

With Don and Phil at the End of the World

WITH DON AND PHIL AT THE END OF THE WORLD / Emily Newland STANDING UP STRAIGHT is getting to be more and more difficult these days; always I am leaning into the gray south wind, the land and the sea are leaning, creaking like Greenland ice teetering, everything pale and on tiptoe and leaning downhill all the time. I wouldn't be surprised if I were to wake up tomorrow morning and find the whole thing tilting a bit too steeply and myself sent tumbUng head over heels through Guatemala, Colombia, Peru, straight past the copper mines of Chile. What would happen if I were to just keep right on going, tumbUng like a drunkard down the stairway of the world, all the way down to the bottom? What would happen then? Maybe Td send a postcard to Don and Phil. Maybe on the back Td write: When Will I Be Loved? This evening, when the wind dies and the night lies down on the land and the sea, I will sit down in the doorway of the only cantina in Salobre and say, in Spanish 101, Please, Sir do I want a beer? The proprietor—a brown man, thin as a Christ and not much older than my brother—will very kindly in Spanish reply, Yes, Miss, at once. Very kindly he will bring, in a thick brown bottle, beer that smells like the salt marsh I can see gleaming in the distance as I try to stand up straight on the seaward side of the dune. I shouldn't be here. I have no papers, and not even 1968 is a safe year to be walking alone just out of sight of the old coast road three days south of Matamoros. Exactly twenty-four years from today, on the first of February 1992, at a cocktail and cigarette party— Mix & Mingle With The Pros Eight 'Til Ten In The Kon Tiki Room— on the opening night of a writers' convention in Los Angeles, I will meet a fourth-generation Japanese-American named Mel who will have written, and will be attempting to find an agent for, his combination autobiography/how-to book, Translating Rock-And-Roll Lyrics For Fun and Profit. How extremely, I'll say, bUnking down into the shallows of Mel's fourth martini. Will you excuse me? He wiU not; he'll begin to sing Love Me Tender in Japanese and I will turn and sail away through the clatter and fumes of the Kon Tiki Room with Mel bobbing 246 · The Missouri Review along in my wake. And then, just as I round the piano bar and chart a course for the elevators, Mel will segue into the refrain of Wake Up, Little Suzie, the song Don and Phil sang so many times, so many years before. And my heart will stand still, becalmed in the sea of noise. In a voice bright with hope and gin, Mel will ask me to marry him; I'll tell him Tm not ready to get married, which will be a lie because I will be ready, I most assuredly will be ready. But not to him. Not to him. Even today, here in the sand just out of sight of the road half a day north of the only cantina in Salobre, even today I know that after all those years I will still be in love with Don and Phil. I know also that I wUl not finish out the rest of my senior year at the university in Little Rock; and, because neither Don nor Phil is even remotely aware that I exist, I know also that if I die here on the seaward side of the dune, I will die unmourned by anyone except my tabby, Claudette, and my landlady, Mrs. Foley, a wide pink woman who lives in the house next door and who, the Tuesday after Thanksgiving, went out and bought a hundred and twenty-seven boxes of crayons and now stays up nights perched on a ladder in her living room crayoning on the walls. Two months from now, just before Easter of 1968, Mrs. Foley will stand up on the...

A Stochastic Model of Ocean-Drift Migration

At this stage of the conference it seems a good idea to introduce some history, geography and perhaps a dash of anthropology. The historical content is concerned with the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries when European explorers 'discovered' the Pacific Ocean and found that almost all the habitable islands were or had been occupied. At first this may not seem very startling. But since then, anthropologists have established that the Pacific islands, typically thousands of miles from any continental coastline, were first inhabited about 3,000 years before Europeans had either the technology or the confidence to even attempt trans-oceanic voyages. So it is understandable that the question of the origins of the Pacific islanders has been a centre of debate among Europeans for several centuries. As one author has written '... the controversy has generated much heat, some light and innumerable papers, monographs and books.' Over the years the argument has developed, intensified and particularly centred on the settlement of Polynesia, the triangular region bounded by the Hawaiian Islands in the north, New Zealand in the south and Easter Island in the east (see Figure 1). Until half way through this century the most popular theories for the settlement of Polynesia suggested island-hopping routes from Asia via Melanesia or Micronesia. Any other route from a continent was considered impossible, due to the long ocean voyages involved. It was this attitude which faced Heyerdahl in the 1940's when he postulated the settlement of Polynesia by ocean-drift voyages from the Americas. His theory was not taken seriously until the famous Kon Tiki expedition, in which he sailed a balsa raft from Peru to the Tuomotu Archipelago, which is at about the centre of the Polynesian region. However, as Heyerdahl himself noted, although the Kon Tiki expedition established the plausibility of his theory it was not conclusive proof. In fact such a theory is impossible to prove-all one can do is build up evidence for or against it. That is, one aims to establish the probability of the theory. Levison, Ward and Webb (1973) set up a model for Monte Carlo simulation to estimate the probabilities of successful ocean-drift voyages to and between the islands of Polynesia. Their model had the advantage of simplicity, at least in concept, but suffered from the disadvantage of requiring a very large

Sheraton-Cleveland's Kon Tiki

Sheraton-Cleveland's Kon Tiki

AN APPRAISAL OF THE KON TIKI THEORY

OceaniaVolume 29, Issue 2 p. 127-131 Article AN APPRAISAL OF THE KON TIKI THEORY Lowell D. Holmes, Lowell D. HolmesMissouri Valley College, Missouri.Search for more papers by this author Lowell D. Holmes, Lowell D. HolmesMissouri Valley College, Missouri.Search for more papers by this author First published: December 1958 https://doi.org/10.1002/j.1834-4461.1958.tb02949.xCitations: 1 AboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditWechat Citing Literature Volume29, Issue2December 1958Pages 127-131 RelatedInformation

ETHNOLOGY AND ETHNOGRAPHY: American Indians in the Pacific: The Theory behind the Kon Tiki Expedition. Thor Heyerdahl.

ETHNOLOGY AND ETHNOGRAPHY: <i>American Indians in the Pacific: The Theory behind the Kon Tiki Expedition.</i> T<scp>hor</scp> H<scp>eyerdahl</scp>.