1. Eco System

Category Archives: Eco System

Concern over impact of thermal projects on eco-system

Posted on by

After the development of the Krishnapatnam Port, industrialists secured permissions for the construction of a plethora of thermal power projects in the vicinity of the port considering the ease in supply of imported coal.

In the beginning, six thermal projects were allotted lands in the Chillakur and Muthukur mandals surrounding the port area, which is located at 25 km from Nellore. Afterwards, seven more companies sought land for setting up their plants.

As of now, about 2,000 MW power is being generated from the Meenakshi, Gayatri, Simhapuri and AP Genco power stations. Another 1200 MW is expected to be added in the next two to three months after the completion of trial operations of the respective units.

Following the setting up of several power plants within 10 to 20 km radius of the port, concerns have been expressed over the cumulative impact of pollution from these plants on the temperature and eco-system here.

They are talking about pollution control measures being taken up. They should be implemented strictly. Green belts should be developed in letter and spirit, said Ch. Koti Reddy, general secretary, Krishna district, Confederation of Farmers Associations of India.

The managements of thermal power stations are asserting that pollution control measures are being taken and it is kept within manageable limits. High-rise chimneys and stringent green belt norms have been made mandatory to avoid any problems to the people living in the area.

Nearly 30 to 33 per cent of the allotted land should be kept under green belt. Power was once a luxury but now it is a necessity. Generation should have to be increased by taking extra precautionary measures, said Holi Ram, general manager, Simhapuri Thermal Power Project.

The peoples organisations have made fervent pleas to the government to consider the cumulative impact of pollution and then only take a look at the future proposals for setting up power projects in the surroundings of Nellore.

(Reporting by

G. Ravikiran)

See the original post here:

Concern over impact of thermal projects on eco-system

Manayunk's North Light is eco-friendly haven for kids

Posted on by

DAN GERINGER, Daily News Staff Writer geringd@phillynews.com, 215-854-5961 Posted: Sunday, February 22, 2015, 3:01 AM

LAST SUMMER, Irene Madrak, executive director of the North Light Community Center in Manayunk, was having nightmares about a dream playground turning into a giant bowl of mulch soup.

Her dilemma began when KaBoom! - the company that builds playgrounds in a day with the help of community volunteers - offered one to North Light, which has delivered social services to families and kids since 1938 on Green Lane near Wilde Street.

"If we wanted a new KaBoom! playground," Madrak said, "we had to remove our old playground and 2,500 square feet of asphalt.

"KaBoom! only does engineered wood-fiber [mulch] as the playground safety base, so we had to dig down 14 inches," she said.

"It would act like a big clay bowl," she said. "I was afraid that if we dig the asphalt out, and fill that hole with what is basically wood mulch, when it rains we're going to get this big soup bowl of stormwater with mulch floating in it, which would not be pretty. I had nightmares about it."

Madrak turned to Dan Meier, a civil engineer from Duffield Associates who volunteers his services through the nonprofit Community Design Collaborative.

Meier designed an underground drainage system of perforated pipes to carry stormwater from the new playground out to the existing catch basin.

KaBoom! and 300 volunteers from the North Light community built the spectacular new playground on Sept. 30. There have been many heavy rains since then, and no flooding.

Stormwater permeates the playground's mulch surface and into Meier's underground pipes which carry it to the catch basin.

Read the original here:

Manayunk's North Light is eco-friendly haven for kids

Marketing: Building A Customer-Centric Marketing Ecosystem …

Posted on by

Throughout last year, Ive talked a lot about one-to-one marketing and how with the rising tide of customer power marketers need to focus more on this personalized and empathetic approach. While its true that marketings main efforts have always been focused on gaining customers, in the past few years weve seen a shift where marketing has become more about bragging and less about value creation. However, with the Internet, social media, and mobile access there is more power than ever in the hands of todays consumers. Influence no longer lies with the suave, silver-tongued marketer and glossy marketing brochures. Consumers need to be marketed to in the way they want to be marketed to. I believe that the brags have lost their effectiveness and we are coming to the end of push-based marketing.

Customer-centricity: Not Everyone is Getting it Right

As more and more brands are vying for a slice of the consumers attention, businesses need to restructure themselves, and become more customer-centric to stay ahead in the race. While most companies today claim to put their customers first, a surprisingly small number are actually doing it right. So, where are they going wrong? The fact is: some businesses are treating customer-centricity as a set of strategies meant solely for the customer-facing units of a business. They often forget that a customized or one-on-one approach is more than just a marketing goal for customer service reps and sales people.

In truth, it is actually part of an evolved marketing department that builds around a customer-centered approach. It is making customer-centricity the responsibility of the entire organization and not just a few departments. Customer-centricity cant be captured in a solo marketing environment, and a company should concentrate on building a marketing ecosystem to emerge as a fully functioning customer-centric entity.

How to Build a Customer-centric Marketing Ecosystem

For any organization in the world, the target customers need to be at the heart of that organizations marketing efforts and strategies. Brands, slogans, products, and media arent at the center; rather they are spokes that help to bridge the gap between the customer and the business. During many of our marketing classes, we learned about the 4Ps (product, place, price, and promotion). While they may still be relevant, todays marketing has evolved from focusing on the 4Ps to a more complex system where the 4Ps are intricately linked with creating a memorable customer experience along every point of the buyers journey.

Looking to create a marketing ecosystem within your organization? Below you will find three points to keep in mind as you get started:

Read more:

Marketing: Building A Customer-Centric Marketing Ecosystem ...

I think it’s a connected car eco system Apple is working on and not a car – Video

Posted on by


I think it #39;s a connected car eco system Apple is working on and not a car
There is a lot of talk about that Apple is working on their own car, but personally I don #39;t believe that. They are just working on a connected car eco system that will control our cars in a...

By: Stefan Svartling

Originally posted here:

I think it's a connected car eco system Apple is working on and not a car - Video

Fifth Innovation Centers Summit Workshop to be Held May 19-20, 2015 at Mayo Clinic Center for Innovation in Rochester …

Posted on by

CRANBURY, NJ (PRWEB) February 17, 2015

BluePrint Healthcare IT announced that its Fifth Innovation Centers Summit Workshop will be held at Mayo Clinic Center for Innovation (CFI) on May 19-20, 2015. Provider-based healthcare innovation centers will be invited to meet at CFIs facility on the Mayo Clinic campus in Rochester, Minnesota. The workshops theme, Engaging the Entire Healthcare Innovation Eco-system in TransformationInside and Out," will be explored over two days. The unique interactive forum will feature participant-generated content in master workshops and breakout brainstorming sessions as well as BluePrint's hallmark speed dating sessions between centers.

Barbara Spurrier, Administrative Director, Mayo Clinic Center for Innovation said, We are excited that BluePrints Summit Workshop will be held at the Mayo Clinic Center for Innovation. It will be a wonderful opportunity for healthcare innovation centers from across the country to share their best practices and learnings for engaging clinicians, patients, family caregivers, system leadership and external stakeholders in support of healthcare transformation. Just as Mayo Clinic and CFI focus on a collaborative and multi-disciplinary approach toward innovation in healthcare delivery, this event opens up the opportunity for collaboration across the entire landscape of the healthcare innovation eco-system. Attendees will be welcomed with a tour of CFI, added Spurrier, and will have the opportunity to take an optional tour of the Mayo Clinic campus.

The Summit Workshop builds on the participation of nearly 60 provider-based healthcare innovation centers in one or more of the first four Innovation Centers Summit Workshops, according to Mike Squires, Vice President, Innovation and Public Policy at BluePrint Healthcare IT. With the events continued focus on innovation centers and program operations as part of healthcare transformation, Squires said, participants will be inspired by the collaborative and engaged environment of Mayo Clinic and its Center for Innovation. Specific topics surrounding innovation center stakeholder engagement will be based on input from registrants prior to the Summit Workshop.

Potential topics for breakout brainstorming sessions include the role of innovation centers in building multi-disciplinary teams for innovation centers/initiatives; engaging physicians, clinicians beyond physicians, C-suite leadership, patients and family-caregivers; tools for measuring engagement, scaling innovation for diffusion, testing engagement for innovation, building collaborative engagement models, the ROI for engagement and collaborating with external partners.

Innovation center leaders will also lead master workshops in their field of expertise, which will include such topics as engaging patients on health and wellness, using technology to support patient engagement, using disruptive innovation to engage clinicians and patients, using incremental innovation to engage clinicians and patients, measuring engagement in innovation, building a multi-disciplinary team to lead innovation, building cross-collaborative engagement and engaging external partners. A special master workshop is being planned to engage all Summit attendees in a social networking experience.

Mike Squires, Vice President, Innovation and Public Policy of BluePrint Healthcare IT, will chair the event.

Squires said, "Emerging themes from the series of Summit Workshops surround engagement, process and measurement. By focusing on engagement in the upcoming event, the BluePrint Healthcare IT Innovation Exchange (BIX) Summit Series seeks to accelerate more robust communication and collaboration among healthcare stakeholders from CEOs to clinicians to patients and caregivers, and to external partners, with the goal of developing a continuous learning healthcare innovation (centers) eco-system. BluePrints public policy initiative grew out of our focus on innovation as central to healthcare transformation."

In post-Summit feedback, participants generally agreed that the speed dating sessions led to the start of new relationships or encouraged the continuation of existing relationships, and breakout sessions led to thinking through best practices for innovation centers. Attendees have continued to recommend this Workshop to their colleagues.

Twenty to thirty-two innovation centers have participated in each of the first four Summit Workshops. Most recently, the Fourth Summit Workshop took place at The Innovation Institutes Innovation Lab (Newport Beach CA) in fall 2014. The Innovation Institutes members include St. Joseph Health and Bon Secours Health System. Previously, the Third Summit Workshop in the spring of 2014 was held at Johns Hopkins Hospital, hosted by the Johns Hopkins Center for Bioengineering Innovation and Design (Baltimore, MD), the second at Kaiser Permanentes Center for Total Health (Washington, DC) in the fall of 2013 and the first at Kaiser Permanente Garfield Innovation Center (San Mateo, CA) in the fall of 2012.

Read more here:

Fifth Innovation Centers Summit Workshop to be Held May 19-20, 2015 at Mayo Clinic Center for Innovation in Rochester ...

Downswing in Pichavaram bird population: study

Posted on by

The Pichavaram mangroves and its associated wetlands are facing an alarming decline in bird population.

According to a study, Pichavaram the second largest mangrove wetland eco-system in the country and an important area for migratory birds has lost 40 per cent of waterbird species in the past three decades.

Located about 190 km south of Chennai, the count of migratory birds is plummeting in the mangrove wetlands, mainly because of habitat loss due to human disturbance, cattle grazing, over-fishing and reckless tourism.

The 1994 cyclone and 2004 tsunami hit the coast and structurally damaged to the mangroves. As a result, several bird species were lost from the eco-system, says the study by AVC College, Mayiladuthurai.

The three-year study recorded only 49 species of waterbirds, out of 82, which was recorded in an earlier study during 1984-1988. Lesser flamingos and Asian dowitcherno longer seem to appear in the area. Little green heron, Painted stork, Black headed Ibis, Oriental darterare four species out of 49 that were designated as near threatened.

The coastal wetlands are situated at the mouth of the Vellar, Coleroon and Uppanar rivers in Cuddalore district. About 50 per cent of the area is covered by mangroves, 40 per cent wetlands and rest comprises mudflats, which offers roosting and foraging grounds for the birds.

Obviously declining of birds is an indicator that Pichavaram mangrove is facing some threat, says S. Sandilyan, one of the authors, who now works for the National Biodiversity Authority in Taramani.

Excrement [guano] of waterbirds is a good source of nutrients. It is rich in nitrogen and phosphorus and plays a vital role in the development of a healthy mangrove system. If the birds decline,the food chain gets disturbed affecting the health of coastal mangroves, he says.

The study, co-authored by K. Thiyagesan and R. Nagarajan, was recently presented at a consultative workshop on restoring wetlands of Tamil Nadu.

In another study, Sandilyan and Kathiresan have found out that plastics pose a serious threat to Pichavaram mangroves and its associated wetlands. Tourists reckless attitude has been increasing over the years. Plastic carry bags clog aerial roots of mangroves, leading to death of young plants.

See more here:

Downswing in Pichavaram bird population: study

Marketo Adds Zerys to Their LaunchPoint Eco-System

Posted on by

Chardon, OH (PRWEB) February 12, 2015

Marketo recently added Zerys for Agencies to their LaunchPoint eco-system. Marketos LaunchPoint is a collection of powerful 3rd party applications and services designed to help Marketo users achieve even more marketing results.

Zerys is a comprehensive content strategy planner, content production platform, and professional writer marketplace all rolled into one. Zerys for Agencies is the only white labeled, fully scalable content creation and marketing platform designed specifically for agencies. They offer a comprehensive suite of content planning and production tools as well as access to a writer marketplace with over 40,000 professional writers, bloggers, journalists, and editors.

Steve Lazuka, President of Interact Media, the parent company of Zerys, stated, Were excited that Marketo has chosen to add Zerys to their popular Launchpoint program. Its an honor to be included in such an impressive list of cutting-edge marketing automation applications.

See more here:

Marketo Adds Zerys to Their LaunchPoint Eco-System

Holistic approach to healthcare needed to empower consumers: Gan Kim Yong

Posted on by

SINGAPORE: A holistic approach to healthcare needs to be taken to empower consumers to make the right choice, said Health Minister Gan Kim Yong at the ministerial roundtable of the Ministerial Meeting on Universal Health Coverage on Wednesday (Feb 11).

Speaking during the Ministerial Roundtable discussion, Mr Gan said there is a lot of scope for Singapore to move upstream in health promotion.

In fact, going upstream in health promotion does not require a lot of money and investment, because money and investment is not the key determining factor in health promotion, said Mr Gan. It's got to do with our programming, our environment, many factors. We want to find a way to encourage healthy living to become natural.

Mr Gan said such a strategy is easier and more sustainable in encouraging healthy habits than implementing regulations.

The World Health Organization's director-general Dr Margaret Chan also called on the medical community to pay closer attention to their patients when it comes to consumer behaviour.

"The sugary drink industry - they invest so much money in terms of R&D, understanding consumer behaviour, taste preferences and what takes them to buy their products, said Dr Chan. So this is another lesson we have to learn. We always talk about being patient-centred but we ignore our patients. How many doctors look at the patient and do a proper physical check? They just look at the screen of their computer. Please look at your patients and not the screen."

Closing the discussion, Mr Gan outlined how universal health coverage must be affordable, accessible and sustainable. To achieve this, he said the economy must remain robust.

"All our countries, all our governments will have the resources to implement universal healthcare and all our people will have income, will have employment, will help them afford the healthcare, said Mr Gan. And in fact, employment and economic growth is a key driver for our universal healthcare.

During the ministerial roundtable discussion, health ministers from several countries such as Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia and Thailand shared the lessons they had learned about universal health coverage. This included the importance of having a good database for administrative work, encouraging health promotion and having food and beverage industry players take a larger role in promoting healthy choices.

Mr Gan also shared his thoughts on the lessons learned from the ministerial meeting.

Read the rest here:

Holistic approach to healthcare needed to empower consumers: Gan Kim Yong

Eco-warriors appeal against eviction is thrown out

Posted on by

Eco-warriors appeal against eviction is thrown out

First published in News

AN appeal by a group of campaigners who set up camp in the Poole green belt has been thrown out at the county court.

The Bearwood and Merley Organic Energy Community, who moved onto land in Magna Road owned by Poole and Bournemouth councils, were ordered to leave after Borough of Poole took them to court.

A county court judge ruled they were trespassing and granted the council a possession order. After their appeal was dismissed as having no merit, the order granted on February 3 stands.

Poole council is now in talks with bailiffs as to when to move in and evict the small group, which has set up a straw bale structure with a log burning stove, plus a couple of tents and a tool shed.

The group had announced its intention to establish an environmentally-friendly settlement and provide vegetables to the local community.

The rest is here:

Eco-warriors appeal against eviction is thrown out

Subterranean Sprinklers Not Saturating The Market, Yet

Posted on by

SANTA BARBARA, Calif. -

"Gold is the New Green" and "Stay Sandy Santa Barbara" are two catchy slogans that have popped up during the record drought.

But two new phrases are drawing the attention of local landscapers: "Bold Innovation" and "Eco-Mat."

The Eco-Mat system is a way to keep your grass green, year round, from the roots up. Think of it as a waterbed of sorts, with holes in it for the roots of your lawn.

The underground watering system is manufactured and sold worldwide by Hunter Industries.

The poly-propelene felt blanket evenly disperses water laterally, not from above, but beneath grass.

"The roots of the sod actually come in and attach to this mat, and they get a lot of the water," said Kim True, owner of True Nature Design in Goleta. "They can go down below it as well to get deeper water."

The installation process is fairly easy and arguably, less time consuming than installing a traditional sprinkler system. But, it is not a one person job.

The Eco-Mat comes in a roll measuring 295 feet long by 38 inches wide. Pre-drilled emiter tubing, spaced every 14 inches, runs through channels in the fleeze. The mat system is installed three inches below sod, with a layer of amended soil in between.

A growing number of local contracters and landscapers say this type of sprinkler system is quickly becoming a "must-have" in a variety of turf settings, including that strip of grass between the street and sidewalk.

See the article here:

Subterranean Sprinklers Not Saturating The Market, Yet

Rawat seeks Centres help

Posted on by

Paying Uttarakhand a green bonus for the eco-system services it provides, lifting the ban on construction of hydro-power projects in the State and scrapping the 100-km area along the Bhagirathi river which has been notified as eco-sensitive zone, were among the requests that Chief Minister Harish Rawat placed at the first meeting of the Governing Council of NITI Aayog in New Delhi on Sunday.

He said that the Centre must help the Uttarakhand government with policies that would help in swapping forest land needed for the rehabilitation.

Mr. Rawat added that the Central government must allot all projects with a funding that would be paid for in a ratio of 90:10 between the Centre and the State.

Please Wait while comments are loading...

1. Comments will be moderated by The Hindu editorial team. 2. Comments that are abusive, personal, incendiary or irrelevant cannot be published. 3. Please write complete sentences. Do not type comments in all capital letters, or in all lower case letters, or using abbreviated text. (example: u cannot substitute for you, d is not 'the', n is not 'and'). 4. We may remove hyperlinks within comments. 5. Please use a genuine email ID and provide your name, to avoid rejection.

See the article here:

Rawat seeks Centres help

Ecosystem services – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Posted on by

Humankind benefits in a multitude of ways from ecosystems. Collectively, these benefits are known as ecosystem services. Ecosystem services are regularly involved in the provisioning of clean drinking water and the decomposition of wastes. While scientists and environmentalists have discussed ecosystem services implicitly for decades, the ecosystem services concept itself was popularized by the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (MA) in the early 2000s.[1] This grouped ecosystem services into four broad categories: provisioning, such as the production of food and water; regulating, such as the control of climate and disease; supporting, such as nutrient cycles and crop pollination; and cultural, such as spiritual and recreational benefits. To help inform decision-makers, many ecosystem services are being assigned economic values.

The notion of human dependence on Earths ecosystems reaches to the start of homo sapiens existence, benefiting from the products of nature to nourish and shelter from harsh climates. Recognition of how ecosystems could provide more complex services to mankind date back to at least Plato (c. 400 BC) who understood that deforestation could lead to soil erosion and the drying of springs.[2][pageneeded] Modern ideas of ecosystem services probably began with Marsh in 1864 [3] when he challenged the idea that Earths natural resources are unbounded by pointing out changes in soil fertility in the Mediterranean. His observations and cautions passed largely unnoticed at the time.[citation needed] It was not until the late 1940s that three key authors Henry Fairfield Osborn, Jr,[4]William Vogt,[5] and Aldo Leopold [6] awakened and promoted recognition of human dependence on the environment. One[who?] coined the idea of natural capital.[citation needed]

In 1956, Paul Sears [7] drew attention to the critical role of the ecosystem in processing wastes and recycling nutrients. In 1970, Paul Ehrlich and his wife called attention to "ecological systems" in their environmental science textbook [8] and the most subtle and dangerous threat to mans existence... the potential destruction, by mans own activities, of those ecological systems upon which the very existence of the human species depends. The term environmental services was introduced in a 1970 report of the Study of Critical Environmental Problems,[9] which listed services including insect pollination, fisheries, climate regulation and flood control. In following years, variations of the term were used, but eventually ecosystem services became the standard in scientific literature.[10]

The ecosystem services concept keeps expanding and includes socio-economic and conservation objectives, which are discussed below. A complete history of the concepts and terminology of ecosystem services as of 1997, can be found in Daily's book "Natures Services: Societal Dependence on Natural Ecosystems".[2]

As of 2010[update] there are various working definitions of ecosystems services in the literature.[11] The most recent revision by The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity (TEEB) to synthesize work in this field and prevent double counting in ecosystem services audits, has revised the MA definition to remove "Supporting Services" and replace it on the one hand with "Habitat Services" and on the other hand with "ecosystem functions" that "are defined as a subset of the interactions between ecosystem structure and processes that underpin the capacity of an ecosystem to provide goods and services".[12]

There is discussion as to how the concept of cultural ecosystem services can be operationalized. A good review of approaches in landscape aesthetics, cultural heritage, outdoor recreation, and spiritual significance to define and assess cultural values of our environment so that they fit into the ecosystem services approach is given by Daniel et al.[13] who vote for models that explicitly link ecological structures and functions with cultural values and benefits. There also is a fundamental critique of the concept of cultural ecosystem services that builds on three arguments:[14]

The Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (MA) report 2005 defines Ecosystem services as benefits people obtain from ecosystems and distinguishes four categories of ecosystem services, where the so-called supporting services are regarded as the basis for the services of the other three categories.[1] The following lists represent the definition and samples of each according to the MA:

Ecosystem services "that are necessary for the production of all other ecosystem services".[17][18] These include services such as nutrient recycling, primary production and soil formation.[19] These services make it possible for the ecosystems to provide services such as food supply, flood regulation and water purification.

"Products obtained from ecosystems" [17]

"Benefits obtained from the regulation of ecosystem processes" [17]

Follow this link:

Ecosystem services - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


  1. Eco System