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发表于 2013-6-24 08:48:57
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本帖最后由 MaxFeburarybird 于 2013-6-23 23:08 编辑
6.23
泛读:数学史第三,四章,这两章主要讲的是希腊的数论发展以及 无限 这个概念的由来。
精读:Discover 上的一篇科技文章: The Nitrogen Underground
The article talked about the research of a group of agronomists who are tracing nitrogen through the soil, so thatre they can reduce the nitrogen contamination from agriculture.
It begins with an introduction of the leading scientist-- Martin Burger-- they buried an array of instruments that can trace the trajectory of nitrogen. Then followed by an introduction about the problem they are facing, i.e. the Nitrogen pollution problem.
Nitrogen is an essential element on the periodic table that is indispensable for organisms (plants, animals and human), since there is a shortage in the natural supply of such element, in order to grow enough food for the world's population, scientists had created synthetic, mostly natural gas based fertilizer decades ago to improve the process of "fixing" nitrogen, but at the same time this kind of synthetic fertilizer is the main pollutant that the research group are dealing with. The fertilizer turn nitrogen found naturally in the atmosphere into ammonium and nitrate compounds which are the main components that works as fertilizer. The microbes eventually turn the ammonium into more nitrate. This water-soluble form of nitrogen can go from helpful to harmful when the excess leaks into lakes and streams of ground water. This is harmful in three ways: firstly, excess amount of such chemicals can choke fish and their habitat by stealing oxygen, they can also cause potable water pollution for human, which leads to "blue baby syndrome", thyroid cancer, respiratory tract infections, birth defects and premature births; secondly, nitrate can also be turned into gaseous nitrous oxide, a kind of gas that has 200 times more global warming potentials than that of carbon dioxide; and thirdly, crops use on average less than half of the nitrogen that farmers apply to the soil.
Next the author went on to introduce the group's research and experiments on how they are uncovering the migration of nitrate. First, they spent three years in doing experiments to compare how different cover crops can be used to improve soil quality and reduce fertilizer use. Second, they knew that crops weren't capturing much nitrogen when they were irrigated through furrow, and hence they suspected that different, more targeted irrigation methods would help reduce nitrate runoff and improve plant efficiency. And last, they developed methods to precisely track how nitrate travels under the soil and through the root zone of various crops.
They designed instruments and spread them out in the fields, which included soil moisture sensors (which show how much water has gone into the ground and how much has left) and electrical conductivity sensors (which can be used as a proxy for measuring nitrate since nitrate increases the electrical conductivity of the soil).
Then the initial results of the experiments were introduced, which said that nitrate is leaching past the root zone during the tomato growing season and that since triticale has deeper roots than fava beans, so despite not being nitrogen-fixing, tritilcale may be better at capturing leftover nitrate.
In the last part of the article, the author talked more about the future of the research and the things that are being implemented to reduce nitrogen runoff. Burger and Hopmans hope that the will ultimately be able to offer recommendations for irrigation methods.
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