Soil, Fertilizer, and Plant Silicon Research in Japan

Book Description

Silicon (Si) plays a significant role in the resistance of plants to multiple stresses including biotic and abiotic stresses. Silicon is also the only element that does not damage plants when accumulated in excess. However, the contribution of Si to plant growth has been largely ignored due to its universal existence in the earth's crust. From numerous intensive studies on Si, initiated in Japan about 80 years ago, Japanese scientists realized that Si was important for the healthy growth of rice and for stability of rice production. In a worldwide first, silicon was recognized as a valuable fertilizer in Japan. The beneficial effects of Si on rice growth in particular, are largely attributable to the characteristics of a silica gel that is accumulated on the epidermal tissues in rice. These effects are expressed most clearly under high-density cultivation systems with heavy applications of nitrogen. Si is therefore recognized now as an ''agronomically essential element'' in Japan.

Book Description

View the Table of Contents. Read the Preface.

"An important contribution to the contemporary critique of high tech industry."
— Contemporary Sociology

"Offers a lot for the general reader. The authors must be congratulated."
—International Migration Review

"Powerful and passionate exposé"
— Journal of American Ethnic History

"An important contribution to the environmental sociology literature."
— Choice

"Powerful, compelling and revealing. Pellow and Park weave a fascinating story of both the historical and current domination of gender, class and race in Silicon Valley."
— Alternatives Journal

" The Silicon Valley of Dreams . . . exposes the numerous inequities that plague the area, from the huge number of temporary workers, the highest per capita in the nation, to the obvious absence of union jobs."
—Conscious Choice

"The authors of [this] important [book] share a sense of compassion for and commitment to the struggle of labor, community, civil rights and environmental activists."
—Los Angeles Times

"The Silicon Valley of Dreams provides a progressive intervention into environmental sociology and into public discourse on the relationship between immigration and environment."
— American Journal of Sociology

"Critical reading for students and scholars in ethnic studies, immigration, urban studies, gender studies, social movements and environmental studies, as well as activists and policy-makers working to address the need of workers, communities and industry."
—Educational Book Review

Next to the nuclear industry, the largest producer of contaminants in the air, land, and water is the electronics industry. Silicon Valley hosts the highest density of Superfund sites anywhere in the nation and leads the country in the number of temporary workers per capita and in workforce gender inequities. Silicon Valley offers a sobering illustration of environmental inequality and other problems that are increasingly linked to the globalization of the world's economies.

In The Silicon Valley of Dreams, the authors take a hard look at the high-tech region of Silicon Valley to examine environmental racism within the context of immigrant patterns, labor markets, and the historical patterns of colonialism. One cannot understand Silicon Valley or the high-tech global economy in general, they contend, without also understanding the role people of color play in the labor force, working in the electronic industry's toxic environments. These toxic work environments produce chemical pollution that, in turn, disrupts the ecosystems of surrounding communities inhabited by people of color and immigrants. The authors trace the origins of this exploitation and provide a new understanding of the present-day struggles for occupational health and safety.

The Silicon Valley of Dreams will be critical reading for students and scholars in ethnic studies, immigration, urban studies, gender studies, social movements, and the environment, as well as activists and policy-makers working to address the needs of workers, communities, and industry.

Customer Reviews:

Groundbreaking.......2005-02-11

"The Silicon Valley of Dreams" by David Pellow and Lisa Sun-Hee Park is a groundbreaking book that connects the environmental justice (EJ) movement with struggles pertaining to immigration, gender, workplace, and globalization. The authors present a new historiography of Santa Clara County, California that reveals a pattern of exploitation of people and resources dating from the Spanish Colonial period to the present. The book makes a compelling case that sustainability will remain elusive as long as for-profit capitalism rules the day.

Pellow and Park study the area's historical development to find common threads between the past and the present. Each economic period was marked by the despoilation and depletion of California's natural resources, and in all cases, the production system was characterized by the exploitation of predominantly poor, immigrant and female labor.

Interestingly, the authors show how the powerful have been consistently supported by their government sponsors even as the rights of the poor have been systematically denied. We find that the Spanish government's funding of the missionaries was not substantially different from the U.S. government's support of the California gold mining industry of the 1800s, the canneries of the early to mid twentieth century or the highly lucrative defense industry of today. Yet the indigenuous peoples and the poor immigrant workers who have labored in the fields and the factories have been consistently denied their political and economic rights. In this light, the fact that the poor suffer disproportionately from environmental injustices should not be surprising, or that the struggle to overcome the powerful interests that profit from the system remains difficult.

The authors show how the electronics manufacturing that dominates Silicon Valley today is not the "clean" industry that is often promoted by corporate public relations firms. We learn how the so-called "immaterial" economy is in fact produced with enormous amounts of energy inputs and demanding physical labor. Management's criminal silence on issues pertaining to workplace safety and the pollution of the local environment clashes severely with the industry's oft-repeated hyperbole about the open and empowered society that is purportedly fostered through information technology.

The author's analysis is supported with moving testimonies from flesh-and-blood workers who have suffered the ill effects of toxic exposure. Their heart-wrenching stories bring home the human costs of our high-tech culture in a deeply compelling way. But the authors also relate how grass-roots organizations have won modest victories in their attempts to protect workers and the community from harm. Clearly, the empowerment of women and minorities and respect for the environment is critical to achieving a sustainable and egalitarian society.

I recommend this highly readable, insightful and important book to everyone.

Silicon content of wool in relation to dietary silicon (Bulletin / University of Arkansas, College of Agriculture, Agricultural Experiment Station)

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Silicon content of wool in relation to dietary silicon (Bulletin / University of Arkansas, College of Agriculture, Agricultural Experiment Station)
A. R Patton
Manufacturer: University of Arkansas, College of Agriculture, Agricultural Experiment Station
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Unknown Binding

Silicon in Agriculture (Studies in Plant Science)

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The unique book available covering Si in Agriculture

Silicon in Agriculture (Studies in Plant Science)

Manufacturer: Elsevier Science
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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Book Description

Presenting the first book to focus on the importance of silicon for plant health and soil productivity and on our current understanding of this element as it relates to agriculture.

Long considered by plant physiologists as a non-essential element, or plant nutrient, silicon was the center of attention at the first international conference on Silicon in Agriculture, held in Florida in 1999.

Ninety scientists, growers, and producers of silicon fertilizer from 19 countries pondered a paradox in plant biology and crop science. They considered the element Si, second only to oxygen in quantity in soils, and absorbed by many plants in amounts roughly equivalent to those of such nutrients as sulfur or magnesium. Some species, including such staples as rice, may contain this element in amounts as great as or even greater than any other inorganic constituent. Compilations of the mineral composition of plants, however, and much of the plant physiological literature largely ignore this element. The participants in Silicon in Agriculture explored that extraordinary discrepancy between the silicon content of plants and that of the plant research enterprise.

The participants, all of whom are active in agricultural science, with an emphasis on crop production, presented, and were presented with, a wealth of evidence that silicon plays a multitude of functions in the real world of plant life. Many soils in the humid tropics are low in plant available silicon, and the same condition holds in warm to hot humid areas elsewhere. Field experience, and experimentation even with nutrient solutions, reveals a multitude of functions of silicon in plant life. Resistance to disease is one, toleration of toxic metals such as aluminum, another. Silicon applications often minimize lodging of cereals (leaning over or even becoming prostrate), and often cause leaves to assume orientations more favorable for light interception. For some crops, rice and sugarcane in particular, spectacular yield responses to silicon application have been obtained. More recently, other crop species including orchids, daisies and yucca were reported to respond to silicon accumulation and plant growth/disease control. The culture solutions used for the hydroponic production of high-priced crops such as cucumbers and roses in many areas (The Netherlands for example) routinely included silicon, mainly for disease control. The biochemistry of silicon in plant cell walls, where most of it is located, is coming increasingly under scrutiny; the element may act as a crosslinking element between carbohydrate polymers.

There is an increased conviction among scientists that the time is at hand to stop treating silicon as a plant biological nonentity. The element exists, and it matters.

Customer Reviews:

The unique book available covering Si in Agriculture.......2002-01-17

For those people who have been working with Silicon, here is a good piece of information. In my opinion, it is the unique and most up to date book available covering many different aspects of this fabulous element. I would say that it is a bible because any other book covering this subject have been published yet. I strongly recommend you to have it in your shelf.

Symptoms of plant malnutrition: Silicon, an agronomically essential nutrient for sugarcane (Illustrated concepts in tropical agriculture)

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Symptoms of plant malnutrition: Silicon, an agronomically essential nutrient for sugarcane (Illustrated concepts in tropical agriculture)
Robert L Fox
Manufacturer: Dept. of Agronomy and Soil Science, College of Tropical Agriculture and Human Resources, University of Hawaii
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Unknown Binding
ASIN: B00072ZCZ4

Customer Reviews:

Boyd Byrd is a genius.......2006-11-06

The illustrations add so much to the simple beauty of this book. The story is sweet and uplifting. Well done.

not the same ol' children's book.......2004-08-30

Longtime collaborators Byrd Baylor and Peter Parnall again offer kids a new look and sound, this time in the service of starting the day with a ritual to greet the sun. Illustrations are flowing and colorful, more abtract than most children's books, and the text encourages connections to the past and to the earth.

this is a good example.......2002-12-11

this is a good example on how to start your life and how to face it

Morning Rituals.......2002-01-26

I am an elementary school teacher. Byrd Baylor has helped me teach reading, and loving to read, to first through fourth grades. It seems the more reluctant readers are most easily hooked!
Each school morning in September, I read The Way To Start A Day to my class. By the end of September, children are saying the words with me. Soon, kids volunteer to read the book, alone, or in pairs, depending on their abilities.
The children take extra copies from the classroom book baskets, and read them to their families. They are surprised at how many of the words they can read. But the book has become so familiar to them, it doesn't surprise me at all!
The Way To Start A Day flies off the school library shelves, and Byrd Baylor becomes a favorite author to my students. They innovate on the text, writing stories, poems, picture books, and more.
Peter Parnall's illustrations are as captivating as Baylor's lyrical text, and as fascinating to children as "Where's Waldo?"!
I love this book!

Peoples and their ways of greeting the new day........1999-05-17

This book for children shows how so many different peoples and cultures (from American Indians to African tribes to ancient Egyptians) have greeted the rising Sun with songs and praise. This book, illustrated by Peter Parnall, was a 1979 Caldecott Honor book (i.e., a runner-up to the Medal winner) for best illustrations in a book for children.

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A picturebook about a young girl living in Alaska who looks forward to the longest day of the year - the solstice
Charmingly whimsical

Under Alaska's Midnight Sun
Deb Vanasse
Manufacturer: Sasquatch Books/Paws IV Children's Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 1570614229

Book Description

In the far northern parts of the world, near and above the Arctic Circle, summer days are very long. In Barrow, Alaska, for example, the sun rises in May and sets 83 days later, in early August. During this time, the sun shines all through the night. People call it the midnight sun. When the midnight sun is shining, people and animals stay active even at night. This sweet poetic narrative, illustrated by award-winner Jeremiah Trammell, showcases the many pleasures of this unique time as a little girl dances, fishes, plays games, watches moose and fox, and communes with family and nature.

Customer Reviews:

A picturebook about a young girl living in Alaska who looks forward to the longest day of the year - the solstice.......2005-09-12

Featuring a skillfully written text in the form of a kind of prose poetry by Deb Vanasse, which is perfectly framed by the full color artwork of Jeremiah Trammell, Under Alaska's Midnight Sun is a picturebook about a young girl living in Alaska who looks forward to the longest day of the year - the solstice. During this time the sun never sets on Alaska, people and animals are reluctant to sleep, and the midnight sun shines brightly. The playfully exuberant illustrations are the perfect complement to this read-aloud storybook that will introduce young readers to how different day and night can be at far northern latitudes.

Charmingly whimsical.......2005-07-03

This story brings me back to childhood and brings back forgotten memories of how fun it was to stay up late with my family as a child. In this story you follow a little girl and her little brother on a journey through a world of majestic sceneries and wildlife which is brought to life by Trammell's beautiful paintings.
I beleive that a succesful children's book needs to inspire a childs imagination and keep them interested and involved from cover to cover, this book does all of these and has my highest recomendation for children of all ages and adults alike.

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Sunpainters: Eclipse of the Navajo Sun
Baje Whitethorne
Manufacturer: Salina Bookshelf, Inc.
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 1893354334

Book Description

Kii Leonard sits in his favorite juniper tree. While listening to the radio, Kii Leonard's grandfather, Pipi, announces that the sun has died. Kii Leonard saw a strange gloom all around him. Everywhere he looked, the deep purple and red darkness was there. Join Kii as he learns about the Naa'ach'aahii, or painters, who visit during this astronomical event.

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watch a sunflower grow
Adorable pop-up book!

Max Loves Sunflowers (Jump at the Sun)
Ken Wilson-max
Manufacturer: Jump At The Sun
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Board book

General | Baby-3 | Children's Books | Subjects | Books

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ASIN: 0786804130

Customer Reviews:

watch a sunflower grow.......2002-01-11

Very colorful, and wonderfully written. This book is about a little boy Max and his pig. As you turn each page it takes you through all of the steps in growing a plant from the seed to the final flower. Whats better is that each page has some type of activity like moving tabs, pop up pictures or lift the flap. Overall with few lines to a page it is a wonderful story for all youngsters, and its scientific!

Adorable pop-up book!.......2001-04-19

Our Children's Librarian used this book for my daughter's ToddlerTime class the day that we planted sunflower seeds, and all the children LOVED "Max Loves Sunflowers." The bright colors, simple line-drawings and movement on every page captured the interest of all the two-year-olds in the class. I highly recommend this book for youngsters; kids can watch the sunflower "grow" from seed to seedling to a huge plant. Very entertaining, colorful, and fun!

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Hello Sun: A True African Travel Tale
Marcia Trimble
Manufacturer: Images Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | Baby-3 | Children's Books | Subjects | Books

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ASIN: 1891577514

Book Description

Clicky steps into the limelight in HELLO SUN, awakening children to shutter bug fun. Boasting that he is the greatest eye in the land, Clicky captures the images of four lion cubs that a safari guide spots for Malinda Martha and her family in the Ngorongoro Crater. Filled with wonderful images, Clicky rests his eye only when day is done. Teaming again with Marcia Trimble (Smiling Stone '98) Susan Arciero with her usual whimsy, has subtly animated a camera that clicks off poetic lines as he clicks his eye at the images in the wild. Children will catch on to the fun of observing their own travels through the eye of a camera. Susan's exquisite borders of Kanga cloth designs are enriched with authentic birds and animals native to Aftrica.

The Sun Islands: A Natural History of the Isles of Scilly

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The Sun Islands: A Natural History of the Isles of Scilly
Patrick Coulter , and Patrick Coulcher
Manufacturer: Guild (WI)
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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General | Nature & Ecology | Science | Subjects | Books

Sun Song (Trophy Picture Books (Paperback))

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Captivating illustrations and beautiful story

Sun Song (Trophy Picture Books (Paperback))
Jean Marzollo
Manufacturer: HarperTrophy
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

Picture Books | Ages 4-8 | Children's Books | Subjects | Books

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ASIN: 0064434761

Book Description

Rich oil paintings and a lyrical text sing the praises of the farm country sun—as it wakes the turtles and the sheep in the morning, rises high over the crops at noon, and when, at dusk, it bids good night to all creatures and slips away with the promise of a brand new day.

1995 "Pick of the Lists" (ABA)

Customer Reviews:

Captivating illustrations and beautiful story.......1999-07-28

My two-year old daughter reached to pet the puppy and smell the flowers in the book every time we read it together.

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The Sun's Place in Nature
Norman Lockyer
Manufacturer: Kessinger Publishing, LLC
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

Astronomy | Astronomy | Science | Subjects | Books

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Book Description

1897. Contents: Book I. Introductory: Our Present Observing Power; The Prismatic Camera; The Discovery of Helium; The Discovery of a Terrestrial Source of Helium. Book II. Nebulae and Stars: The Relation of Nebulae to Stars; The Chemistry of the Nebulae; The Nature of Nebulae; Many So-Called Stars are Nebulae; Double Swarms. Book III. New Stars: Eye Observations of New Stars; The Meteoritic Theory of the Origin of Novae; Photographic and Eye Observations of Nova Aurige; How the Hypothesis has Fared. Book IV. The Sun's Place Among the Stars: The New Classification of Stars and Nebulae; The New Classification Tested by Photographs; Some New Laboratory Work; Application of the New Laboratory Work to Stellar Classification; Application of the New Criteria; and A Test Case between the Rival Hypotheses. See other titles by this author available from Kessinger Publishing.

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The Sun's Place in Nature
Norman Lockyer
Manufacturer: Kessinger Publishing, LLC
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: 0548035423

$The Sun\'s Place in Nature$
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The Sun\'s Place in Nature
Joseph Norman Lockyer
Manufacturer: Adamant Media Corporation
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

Astronomy | Astronomy | Science | Subjects | Books

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ASIN: 054399967X
Release Date: 2002-12-17

Book Description

This Elibron Classics book is a facsimile reprint of a 1897 edition by Macmillan and Co., Ltd., London.

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