Earth Day!

"Earth Day" is an event celebrated every year on the 22nd of April. The event is held worldwide to celebrate support for protection of the environment and has continuously drawn more and more people in each subsequent year. Earth Day brings attention to a large number of issues in requirement of attention, such as pollution of the ocean, debris left over on land, climate change, conservation of the Earth’s ecosystems, energy conservation, conservation of plants and animals, soil corruption, corrosion, overpopulation, nuclear issues, the depletion of the ozone layer, the depletion of the Earth’s natural resources, the introduction of wastes and toxicants into the wilderness and the seas, nanotechnology, and the deforestation of rain forests.

Earth day was founded by the United States Senator Gaylord Nelson on April 22, 1970, to focus on issues related to the environment.
Earth Day was first celebrated in 1970 and is celebrated in a total of 192 countries. This very first Earth Day in 1970 was celebrated primarily by students in colleges and universities in New York City. The end of the day received extensive coverage from all the major news castors and drew a crowd of just over one million people, an impressive feat.

Earth Day remains one of the largest events the world has ever seen and is only to continue to grow in future years to bring world attention to the even more environmental issues that will most certainly arise. It is absolutely critical that we take care of the Earth and its natural resources, and not only is Earth Day a time to celebrate that, but it is also a time to make a difference as well.

Daffodils by William Wordsworth

I wandered lonely as a cloud

That floats on high o'er vales and hills,

When all at once I saw a crowd,

A host, of golden daffodils;

Beside the lake, beneath the trees,

Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

 Continuous as the stars that shine

And twinkle on the milky way,

They stretched in never-ending line

Along the margin of a bay:

Ten thousand saw I at a glance,

Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.

The waves beside them danced, but they

Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:

A poet could not but be gay,

In such a jocund company:

I gazed—and gazed—but little thought

What wealth the show to me had brought:

For oft, when on my couch I lie

In vacant or in pensive mood,

They flash upon that inward eye

Which is the bliss of solitude;

And then my heart with pleasure fills,

And dances with the daffodils!

The Anatomy of a Tree!

Trees are among the most important natural resources on Earth. Without them, this planet would not be inhabitable. All living creatures need trees to survive, and trees need sun, nutrients, and water to live healthy lives. There are many more fascinating facts about trees to learn, but a great place to start is with a tree's basic anatomy. Continue reading to learn the 4 basic parts of a tree and how they work together to support healthy growth.

1. Leaves

A tree's leaves are what we notice the most. Their beautiful springtime blooms bring fresh greenery to our surrounding environments. From leaves and flowers to fruits and nuts, the yields of a canopy are frequently revered parts of trees. But leaves serve a much bigger purpose than simple aesthetics; they are the food factories of the tree. The green color we see in leaves is caused by a chemical called Chlorophyll. Chlorophyll absorbs sunlight and uses its energy to convert carbon dioxide and water into sugar and starch (carbohydrates). This process is called photosynthesis, and both trees and living creatures need it to survive. Without it, trees couldn't give off the much-need oxygen we need!

2. Branches

Behind tree leaves, you will find its twigs and branches. They grow up and outward from the tree trunk, and provide a supporting foundation for leaves and other yields. But they also play an important role in transferring nutrients and water back and forth from the trunk and the canopy.

3. Trunk

The tree trunk has 5 separate layers, all of which serving an important purpose. Starting from the outside and working our way in, these layers include the outer bark, inner bark, cambium cell layer, sapwood, and heartwood. Outer bark keeps out moisture and rain in wet seasons and retains it in dry seasons. The inner bark is also called phloem and serves as a food pipeline. The cambium cell layer is the part of the trunk that is growing, sapwood is the tree's water pipeline, and the heartwood is actually deadwood, but it serves as a tree's primary support structure.

4. Roots

The tree roots are where water and minerals are retrieved from the soil and sent upward through the tree, all the way to the leaves. There are two types: large perennial roots and small feeder roots. Roots are only as deep as the first three feet of soil, so it is important that they remain free from damage, such as lawn mowers, weed whackers, construction, and more.

Noun: Definition & types

Nouns refer to persons, animals, places, things, ideas, or events, etc. Nouns encompass most of the words of a language.

A noun can be a/an - 

Person– a name for a person: - Max, Julie, Shane, Michel, etc.
Animal – a name for an animal: - dog, cat, cow, kangaroo, etc.
Place – a name for a place: - London, Australia, Canada, Mumbai, etc.
Thing – a name for a thing: - bat, ball, chair, door, house, computer, etc.
Idea – A name for an idea: - devotion, superstition, happiness, excitement, etc.

Proper Noun:
A proper noun is a name which refers only to a single person, place, or thing and there is no common name for it. In written English, a proper noun always begins with capital letters.

Example: Melbourne (it refers to only one particular city), Shane (refers to a particular person)

Common Noun:
A common noun is a name for something which is common for many things, person, or places. It encompasses a particular type of things, person, or places.

Example: Country (it can refer to any country, nothing in particular), city (it can refer to any city like Melbourne, Mumbai, Toronto, etc. but nothing in particular).

So, a common noun is a word that indicates a person, place, thing, etc. In general and a proper noun is a specific one of those.

Abstract Noun:
An abstract noun is a word for something that cannot be seen but is there. It has no physical existence. Generally, it refers to ideas, qualities, and conditions.

Example: Truth, lies, happiness, sorrow, time, friendship, humor, patriotism, etc.

Countable Noun:
The nouns that can be counted are called countable nouns. Countable nouns can take an article: a, an, the.

Example: Chair, table, bat, ball, etc. (you can say 1 chair, 2 chairs, 3 chairs – so chairs are countable)

Non-countable Noun:
The nouns that cannot be counted are called non-countable nouns.

Example: Water, sugar, oil, salt, etc. (you cannot say “1 water, 2 water, 3 water” because water is not countable)

Collective Noun:
A collective noun is a word for a group of things, people, or animals, etc.

Example: family, team, jury, cattle, etc.

Collective nouns can be both plural and singular. However, Americans prefer to use collective nouns as singular, but both of the uses are correct in other parts of the world.

The Ecology of Nitrogen Fixing Plants

Nitrogen is a key nutrient in life; it is one of the elements in amino acids, and thus occurs in proteins and is an essential part of all living organisms. Although nitrogen is abundant in the Earth's atmosphere (making up about 78% of the atmosphere), atmospheric nitrogen is extremely stable, owing to the triple bond between its atoms. In order to be used by living organisms, nitrogen must be processed into forms usable in biological processes, through a process called fixation.

The process of nitrogen fixation

Nitrogen fixers are plants that have evolved the ability to fix nitrogen, through a symbiotic relationship with anaerobic bacteria that live in special nodules on the plant's roots. The atmospheric nitrogen is processed into ammonia, which is then able to be used as a building block in larger molecules like amino acids or nucleic acids like DNA and RNA, which in turn build proteins and make life possible.

The bacteria that fix nitrogen can only carry out their process in the absence of oxygen. Because nitrogen and oxygen occur together in the atmosphere, these organisms have evolved mechanisms to create an oxygen-poor environment, such as using up the remaining oxygen via respiration or using special proteins to bind to the oxygen. Nitrogen fixing plants create a space in their root system in which these bacteria can thrive.

The competitive advantage of nitrogen-fixing plants

In environments where nitrogen is a limiting factor in plant growth, nitrogen-fixing plants have a huge advantage, as they have access to an essentially unlimited supply of nitrogen. This allows them to benefit from rapid growth, quickly and thoroughly out-competing neighboring plants that lack the ability to tap into the boundless reserves of nitrogen in the air.

Nitrogen fixing plants thus have an advantage in these environments, which include disturbed ecosystems, as well as arid desert ecosystems, barren rocky environments, or environments with sandy soil that does not hold nutrients well.

In nutrient-rich environments, where factors like light are more a limiting resource than nitrogen, nitrogen fixers often have a distinct disadvantage, because they have invested resources and growth into their root nodules and are not receiving many benefits from them.

Applicability for human uses

Humans can benefit from nitrogen-fixing plants in gardening and agriculture, especially when the continual harvest of material takes nitrogen out of the ecosystem. Crop rotation, the intermingling of crops, or using cover crops or nitrogen-fixing trees spaced in between rows of crops, are all ways in which gardening, farming, or agriculture can benefit from these plants. These plants can also be used in ecological restoration when dealing with degraded lands that have been stripped of soil.

Photosynthesis in Green Plants.

What do plants and animals need to grow?

Almost all plants and animals need air, water, light, and nutrition to grow. Green plants use a complicated chemical process, called photosynthesis, to create energy for survival and growth. Since plants create their own energy, they are the first link in the food chain. Animals need to drink water and eat plants or other animals to get energy. Therefore, they are present at the next step in the food chain. There are some animals, like camels, that can survive for days without drinking water. Since they live in deserts with very little water, they have adapted to the special conditions of their habitat.

How do plants get food?

Unlike animals, plants produce their own food. Green plants use water, nutrients, sunlight, carbon dioxide and green pigment in their leaves called "chlorophyll" to produce their food. Normally water and nutrients are absorbed from the ground through their roots. Some plants, however, have developed other methods for obtaining water and nutrients. Many plants make funnel-shaped 'containers' with their leaves to catch water.

What happens when we keep plants in the dark?

In the absence of light, plants shed their leaves and die, leaving only their roots and stems. Plants grow slowly at night and in winters. Most animals are also dependent on light, although some have adapted to their dark habitats. For example, the moles living below the ground are almost blind because they do not need their eyes underground. We humans also need sunlight to help produce vitamin D in our skin, which in turn is needed for building bones.

What is photosynthesis?

"Photosynthesis is the process of making food by green plants by the use of water and carbon dioxide in the presence of sunlight and chlorophyll".

The chloroplast inside the green leaves of plants is the 'workshop' where photosynthesis takes place. Water is supplied to the leaves by the roots, and carbon dioxide is absorbed from the air through tiny pores on the lower side of the leaf and thus these tiny pores are known as "Stomata". Both these are broken down into the elements hydrogen, carbon, and oxygen with the help of chlorophyll and sunlight. Plants build "Glucose"(grape sugar) from these elements and oxygen is released in the atmosphere as a by-product. Photosynthesis has been the source of oxygen in the air since the origin of life on the Earth.

In nature, there are 'producers' that build the biological mass and 'consumers' that eat. Producers are the plants, which grow and create energy with the help of photosynthesis that is "Green Plants".

Parts Of Speech

These are the group of words which are used together in a specific manner to write or speak a sentence.

To understand the sequence of words so that the sentence delivers the correct message, the words are categorized into 8 categories, which are called "Parts Of Speech."

Eight Parts Of Speech:

1. Noun: It is a Naming word. Name of person, place, animal, thing, ideas, feelings and emotions.

Examples: Rohan, Ronak, boy, India, city, dog, cow, book, pen, etc.

2. Pronoun: The words that are used in place of a noun or the Substitute of a noun.

Examples: He, she, it, they, we, me, her, you, etc.

3. Adjective: It is a Describing word. It describes a noun or a pronoun in a sentence. The group of words that tells/describes the quality, size, shape, and color etc. of a noun or pronoun in a sentence.

Examples: Big, small, tall, short, good, bad, beautiful, ugly, blue, red, neat, etc.

4. Verb: It is an Action word. It describes the action or the state of the subject.

Examples: Eat, sleep, play, sit, come, stand, etc.

5. Adverb: It is an Action describing word. Adverbs are the words that describes /modifies a verb, or adjective, or another adverb.

Examples: Fast, slowly, neatly, early, etc.

6. Prepositions: It is a Relation showing word. It describes the relationship between a noun or pronoun and other words in a sentence.

Examples: In, out, on, at, near, below, behind, etc.

7. Conjunction: It is a Joining word. It joins two or more words in a sentence.

Examples: And, but, or, so, because, etc.

8. Interjection: It is a Mood showing word. It describes the happy, sad, angry, and surprised mood of a subject in a sentence.

Examples: Wow, oh, hurrah, alas, bravo, etc.