SCIENCE is life

Trunk of a Palm tree A variety of plants and animals live on and sometimes in a palm tree. The plants are epiphytes most of which live in humus and dusts which collects in the leaf bases of a palm tree. The animals are there because of these epiphytes or of the palm tree itself. A palm tree maybe divided into three regions, the crown, trunk and aerial parts of the roots. The common epiphytes found on palm trees are orchids (Diaphanthe, Bulbophyllum) figs, ferns, mosses. The animals found here are small animals like insects and spiders. You can get a soft copy of this book by sending me mail. ukponifueko@gmail.com.

Transect This records the distribution of plants along a line and is useful for showing changes in the vegetation of places like hillside, a pond etc Procedure. Get a long measuring tape or length of string marked at convenient intervals using a marker pen. This is laid along the selected line and every plant which touches it is recorded. Plants that do not actually touch it are ignored. The string is attached to 2m rule held apart.

Exponential curve (J curve) Exponential growth occurs when population doubles in each generation i.e there is constant birth and death rates and age structure and there there is no immigration or emigration. The growth rates continues to accelerates hence the J curve.

Hygroscopic water This is the water present in an air dry soil held tightly by soil solids at a suction pressure greater than 3.1 bar. This type of water cannot be removed by evapouration and roots of higher plants. Only microbial activities have been found to take place here.

Pioneer communities Intermediate or transitory communities Climax communities

Dry season (scarcity of water) Birds, Z ebras and B uffaloes migrate to other regions that have more water. Their hoofed feet allow them to travel great distances. Elephant deal with this animal shortage of water by tearing away the bark of baobab trees to get the water found in the trunks .      

Soil formation is divided into three stages: Rock weathering Mineralization and humification Formation of organo mineral complex    

Nudation   This is the development of bare area without any form of life. Exposure of new surfaces may occur due to several causes such as landslides, erosion, deposition, or other catastrophic aging.

Nudation   This is the development of a bare area without any form of life. Exposure of new surfaces may occur due to several causes such as landslides, erosion, deposition or other catastrophic aging.

Mash This is a low flat land completely or partiallycovered by shallow water. The water is about knee deep in most parts while it is less in many parts. The clay soil holds the water while the grass and lilies help to reduce evapouration. There are two types of mash:  Temporal and permanent mash. Temporal mashes are seasonal occurring during the raining season and drying up during the dry season. Permanent mashes contain water throughout the year. They are close to the rivers or seas. Plants that live there include lilies, floating ferns, duckweeds, water lettuce, algae while animals include water birds, leeches, frogs, tadpoles, larvae of insects

Buoyancy The density of fresh water is considerably less than that of the sea and such floatation is a greater problem for fresh water plankton. There is occasional flooding which submerges the plants.  The water lilies, water lettuce, water hyacinth are able to stay afloat because of the air spaces in the lower part of the leaves as well as in the skins and roots.

The fish is slit and eviscerated and steeped in brine composed of 70-80% saturated salt solution. This reduces the water content of the fish and causes also the surface layer proteins to coagulate.  After treatment with brine, the fish is hung on racks in a kiln and exposed to smoke from burning wood. The tar and phenols from the smoke produce a desirable colour, flavour and odour while methanol provided preservatives effect.

The meat is hung on racks or shackle line in a smoke house in the presence of smoke for 4-8hours at a temperature of 35oC-40oC or by holding for several hours in a room to which smoke is ducted from a smoke generator consisting of a grinding wheel and a length of wo od. The smoke is generated from cured hardwood in order to avoid gums ass ociated with softwood.  The smoke contains an array of chemicals which impart their characteristic flavor and preservative effect on the meat. The high tem perature reduces the moisture in the meat.  

Operators regularly washed their hands, knife sterilizers and hand wash stations are located at work stations or slaughter floors and in processing areas for this purpose. Hand basins provide a flow of hot water (35-43oC), the flow is controlled by thigh or pedal operated, however, microprocessor controlled units are also used. Knife sterilizers can be bowl type or spray types system.

The term casings refer to the intestinal tract of the animal or gut set. For pigs it consist of the stomach, large and small intestines, middle cap, bladder and bung, for cattle the casings consist of the stomach,, bladder, small intestine, large intestine, bung. Certain parts of the cassings can be proce ssed into a number of value added products, such as sausage skins, surgical sutures and strings for musical instruments and tennis rackets. Processing of casings involve desliming to remove the inner lining "mucosa" and washing. If casings are not processed into value added products, they are generally sent for rendering with or without prior washing.

In the manufacture of butter, cream is first separated from the milk by centrifuge or cream separator operating at about 6000rpm, which remove up to 99.5% of the fat from the milk.  The cream is neutralized to a pH of 6 . 8-7.2and then pasteurized , either by the holder method (30 mins at 70-73oC) or the HTST method (25 sec at 80-85oC).  The pasteurized cream can be stored overnight and cooled to 10oCbeore it is churned to obtain a better textured butter ..........................

The milk is placed in bulk milk storage tanks. The tanks are  refrigerated or at least are  constructed with a cold wall or bottom that chills the milk as it enters the tank through a pipe line directly from the milking machine.  The milk is agitated to keep it at a uniform temperature and prevent formation of layers of warmt in which bacterial can grow. The temperature could be 4oC or less or even near freezing point

The homologous chromosomes appear to repel each other and partially separate. Each chromosome is now seen to be composed of two chromatids. The two chromosomes are joined at several points along their lengths. these points are called chiasmata. This occurs as a result of breakage and reunion between any two of the four strands present at each site. Thus resulting in the swaping of genes from one chromosomes (paternal) with genes from the other chromosomes (maternal)  leading to new gene combination in the resulting chromatids.