Tag: effort

One community’s algal bloom research effort

Vera
One community’s algal bloom research effort

By Megan May

Coastal Review Online

At the end of a gravel road, tucked deep into the woods, bald cypress trees dot the shoreline of Bennett’s Mill Pond. Great blue herons wade in the shallows, searching for their next meal. It’s July in North Carolina, and time on the water would be the perfect way to enjoy some peace and quiet. But not today.

Haley Plaas pulls on a pair of rubber gloves. She lays on the dock and gently reaches her hand in. A mucus-like substance clings to her glove as she pulls back, leaving stringy threads on the water’s surface. While brilliant in color, the network of blue scum across the pond is dangerous cyanobacteria, a type of harmful algae.

Sometimes confused with aquatic plants like duckweed, cyanobacteria can vary from looking like green or blue-green opaque, thin mats to translucent paint or dye. Blooms pose a threat to the local environment — leading to fish kills, ecosystem damage, and drinking water contamination. They can also cause illness in humans and death among pets and wildlife.

Harmful algal blooms, often called HABs, occur naturally, but human activities increase their frequency and intensity.

HABs feed on nutrient runoff — anything from leaky septic tanks to fertilizers and industrial waste. While the U.S. South has dealt with this for years, it’s a growing global environmental issue exacerbated by climate change. Increased surface temperatures lead to warmer waters, and more extreme storms are followed by periods of drought. That combination is a perfect recipe for the algae — storms increase nutrient runoff into waterways, and then drought leads to stagnant, warm water.

While cyanobacteria directly impact water quality, less is known about how they affect air quality. Enter Plaas, a doctoral candidate in environmental science and engineering at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill.

Harmful algal blooms emit cells and chemical compounds that travel as tiny atmospheric particles, called aerosols. Plaas has partnered with the Chowan Edenton Environmental Group, or CEEG, to deploy PurpleAir air sensors along North Carolina’s Chowan River, part of the Albemarle-Pamlico estuarine system. Their goal is to see if blooms correlate with poor air quality due to an increase in these aerosols, and generate a wealth of accessible data in areas that are underreported.

The PurpleAir project examines air and water quality in the Albemarle-Pamlico estuarine system, with a focus on the Chowan River. Credit:
… Read More

Nutritious feeding on is a behavior takes time but worthy of the effort

Vera
Nutritious feeding on is a behavior takes time but worthy of the effort

How a lot of periods have you reached for a cookie with no even recognizing you ended up executing it? Or perhaps you find you routinely stopping for rapidly food on your way household from function?

We normally consider that our foods decisions are a aware decision we make each individual working day. In fact, quite a few of the foodstuff we purchase, prepare dinner and eat are largely based on practice, made by weeks, months or many years of repetition — patterns we could not even be mindful of.

What is a habit?

Practices are steps or behaviors done instantly with out conscious believed — factors we do without having even contemplating about it. In accordance to Wendy Wood, writer of “Good Patterns, Negative Habits,” research demonstrates about 43% of behaviors are pushed by routine, which signifies about 43% of what persons do each individual working day is recurring in the exact same context, generally when they are pondering about something else.

Patterns are internalized behaviors figured out as a result of knowledge. They consist of three factors: contextual cues, repetition and benefits.

Contextual cues commonly relate to a certain time or location — consider of going for walks into your kitchen just about every early morning and producing a cup of coffee or pouring a bowl of cereal. They can also be connected to a situation or action. Cues are like triggers they sort a “mental association” with the action.

Repetition is an additional vital factor, as a habits will have to be repeated several periods ahead of it gets to be automated.

Eventually, there ought to be a reward, some thing that will strengthen the action and make you want to do it once more and again. Rewards can be intrinsic or extrinsic.

“When it arrives to foods, flavor is the most fast reward. Consider of a ripe strawberry or a juicy peach,” suggests Wendy Reinhardt Kapsak, president/CEO of Generate for Greater Wellbeing Foundation, “Second would be the good emotion you get from feeding on wholesome. It can make you delighted, makes you really feel superior about on your own and provides you a sense of pleasure,” claims Kapsak.

Building wholesome ingesting behaviors does not occur right away. Initially this will get some time and hard work but inevitably it will pay out off and you will do it effortlessly.

Here are some strategies to get you

… Read More