The algae revolution 2.0: the potential of algae for the production of food, feed, fuel and bioproducts – why we need it now

Algae made our world possible, and it can help us make the future more sustainable; but we need to change the way we live and adopt new more efficient production systems, and we need to do that now. When the world was new, the atmosphere was mainly carbon dioxide, and no animal life was possible. Along came algae with the process of photosynthesis, and things began to change. Ancient cyanobacteria algae turned carbon dioxide into enormous sums of lipids, proteins and carbohydrates, while they secreted oxygen into the atmosphere. Over a billion years, as oxygen filled the air and algae filled the seas, animal life became possible. Eventually all that algae biomass became petroleum and natural gas, which for eons sat undisturbed in vast underground reservoirs, holding enormous sums of untapped energy. Less than 200 years ago humans learned to tap these energy reserves to create the world we know today, but in so doing, we have released millions of years of stored CO2 back into the atmosphere. Algae can again help make the world a better place, but this will require new thinking and new ways of producing our food, feed and fuels. We need an algae revolution 2.0.

Microplastics in the Food Chain

Currently, microplastics represent a widespread contamination found in almost every part of the environment. The plastic industry has generated waste since the 1950s, which unfortunately now counts in the millions. The largest share of plastic consumption is used to produce packaging materials, including those applied in the food industry. The versatility of plastic materials is mainly due to their lightness, flexibility, strength, and persistence. Although plastic materials are widely used due to their beneficial properties, contamination of the environment with microplastics and nanoplastics is an emerging problem worldwide. This type of contamination is endangering animal life and thus also the food chain and public health. This review summarizes the knowledge about microplastics in the food chain. The effect of microplastics on the food chain has been particularly studied in marine organisms, and research deals less with other food commodities. Therefore, based on the studied literature, we can conclude that the issue is still not sufficiently examined, and should be paid more attention to maintain the health of the population.

Animals as and on Resource Frontiers

This paper attempts to locate changing interspecies relations in the dynamism and violence of capitalist expansion on a world scale, setting out two primary ways that the rising exploitation of non-human animals contributed to the development of settler-colonial economies, destabilization of indigenous societies, and transformation of ecosystems. One path was set by burgeoning demand essentially turning some wild animal species into increasingly valuable commodities and driving the rising scale and systematization of extraction and trade, which tended to quickly undermine conditions of abundance and make these animal frontiers very mobile. The second way started from the introduction of domesticated animals, with the muscle power and bodily commodities derived from proliferating populations valued not only in the expansion of agricultural landscapes but also in the formation and functioning of other resource frontiers, and ultimately bound up in waves of enclosures and expulsions. This framework seeks to simultaneously pose challenges for historical analysis and provide insights that help to understand the trajectory of animal life today.

Investigating the effect of carbon dioxide on the acidity of the Ocean

There is a significant effect of carbon dioxide on the acidification of the ocean. This research focuses on the acidification of the ocean and its effect on the animal life in the ocean. Also, it focuses on the effect of carbon dioxide concentration in the atmosphere on the ocean acidification. The data are collected from the research institutions and laboratories, such as National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC), Japan, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), USA, Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawaii, and other sources of research about acidification of ocean. The results show that the acidity increases with increasing the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. This is because ocean absorbs nearly 50% of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Carbonate ions (CO32-) will be used in forming carbonic acid, which will increase the acidity of the water. Increasing the acidity of water will affect building of the animal Skeleton. It is recommended to reduce the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere; therefore the acidity will be decreased in the ocean.

Gothic Overtones: The Female Monster in Margaret Atwood’s “Lusus Naturae”

In “Lusus Naturae,” Margaret Atwood shows her predilection for the machinations of Gothic fiction. She resorts to gothic conventions to express female experience and explore the psychological but also the physical victimisation of the woman in a patriarchal system. Atwood employs the female monster metaphor to depict the passage from adolescence to womanhood through a girl who undergoes a metamorphosis into a “vampire” as a result of a disease, porphyria. The vampire as a liminal gothic figure, disrupts the boundaries between reality and fantasy/supernatural, human and inhuman/animal, life and death, good and evil, femme fatale and virgin maiden. By means of the metaphor of the vampire woman, Atwood unveils and contests the construction of a patriarchal gender ideology, which has appalling familial and social implications.

Microbiota Influences Fitness and Timing of Reproduction in the Fruit Fly Drosophila melanogaster

The ability of associated microorganisms (“microbiota”) to influence animal life history traits has been recognized and investigated, especially in the past 2 decades. For many microbial communities, there is not always a clear definition of whether the microbiota or its members are beneficial, pathogenic, or relatively neutral to their hosts’ fitness.

Pop-Up Book Media on Animal Life Cycle Topic

The lack of teacher creativity in developing learning media that is by the characteristics of students makes learning less than optimal. Therefore, it is necessary to develop suitable media in learning. The purpose of this study was to develop a pop-up book on the topic of animal life cycles. This type of research is development research. The model used is ADDIE. The subject of this research is one material, design, media expert, two practitioners, and five students. The methods used to collect data are observation, interviews, and questionnaires. The instrument used to collect data is a questionnaire. The method and instrument used is the twig scale. The technique used in analyzing the data is descriptive qualitative and quantitative analysis. The analysis results show that the developed pop-up book media received excellent qualifications from experts and students. So, the pop-up book media on animal life cycles deserve to be used with excellent qualifications in the learning process. This research implies that pop-up book media can be used to increase science learning knowledge.

The Evolution of Suffering, Epiphenomenalism, and the Phenomena of Life: Evidential Problems for Naturalists

Paul Draper argues that the central issue in the debate over the problem of suffering is not whether the theist can offer a probable explanation of suffering, but whether theism or naturalism can give a better explanation for the facts regarding the distribution of pain as we find them. He likewise maintains a comparison of relative probabilities considering the facts of suffering; atheological naturalism is to be preferred. This essay proceeds in two phases: (a) It will be argued that mainstream positions in naturalistic philosophy of mind make it difficult to take pain as anything but epiphenomenal and therefore not subject to evolutionary explanation. While the distribution of suffering is a difficulty for the theist, the naturalist has equal difficulty explaining the fact that there is any suffering at all in the first place. Thus, the facts of suffering offer no advantage to the atheist. (b) Phenomenologists suggest that there is an intrinsic connection between animal life, pain, and normativity (including a summum bonum). The mere occurrence of life and normativity are, at least prima facie, more likely on the assumption of theism than atheism, so the theist may have a probabilistic advantage relative to the atheist. Phases (a) and (b) together support the overall conclusion that the facts of pain as we find them in the world (including that there is any pain at all) are at least as great, if not greater, a challenge for the atheist as they are the theist.

Wetlands, Fishes and Pandemics with Special Reference to India

Water is life, life is water. Water is indispensably important for sustenance of life. Wetlands serve as potential water bodies, harbouring coveted bioresources, which sustain animal life. Fish is a significant bioresource for nutrition and avocation of the people. There are various types of wetlands in the Indian sub-continent. India has c 67,429 wetlands covering c 4.1 million ha. Concomitantly, c 21,723 living species of fish have been recorded out of 39,900 species of vertebrates. Of these, c 8411 are freshwater (FW) species and c 11,650 are marine. India recorded c 2500 species of fishes; of which, c 930 live in FW and c 1570 are marine. The hitherto unknown dreadful, virulent, enigmatic Epizootic Ulcerative Syndrome (EUS), has been sweeping the FW fishes in an epidemic dimension, unhindered, unimpeded and unabated, almost semi-globally; and, has been causing large-scale mortality among them, since 1988, rendering many of them endangered. Concomitantly, the outbreak of SARS-CoV-2, among the human, was first reported at Wuhan, China, in late December 2019. The first 54 reported cases of COVID-19 were observed in December 2019 at Wuhan, China, and this, subsequently, had spread across the globe. India has been facing much impacts of COVID19 pandemic since its inception in China.