Populations. Communities. Symbiotic Relationships. Powering villages with renewable energy co-ops. Only localised power generation can make India fully electrified The power sector in India has grown significantly over the years, but it still cannot meet the ever-increasing demands of the population.
India accounts for a third of the world’s population that does not have access to electricity. A recent study from Bihar suggests that a critical determinant of electricity access in rural India is proximity to the Central power grid. This essentially suggests that remote villages in rural India would be deprived of access to power. Hence, it is imperative that rural India develops and adopts self-sustaining community-managed local generation, storage and grid-connected electricity models (popularly termed microgrids).
Success stories Take the case of Grossbardorf in Germany. Excess power is fed back to the main electricity grid through a feed-in tariff system, and the revenue generated is shared equally among the various stakeholders. Capital requirement Forging partnerships. Lord of the Ants. Planet Ant - Life Inside The Colony - BBC. Ants of the Desert : Documentary on the Honeypot Ants of the Arizona Desert. Ants of the Desert : Documentary on the Honeypot Ants of the Arizona Desert. Individual actions benefit group: white-fronted bee-eater. "Helena Cronin, codirector of the Centre for Philosophy of Natural and Social Science at the London School of Economics, has a new approach to Darwinism: Only the altruistic survive.
Smart evolution, Cronin says, involves self-sacrifice to aid the greater cause. Darwin himself recorded numerous examples of animals giving up their time, their food, their mates, and even their lives to help others in the population. By applying these principles to the economy, Cronin says, we can evolve to new heights. Cronin suggests stressing cooperation, putting renewed emphasis on policy, and understanding that competition is to be approached not as mortal combat, but as a display--similar to lekking behavior exhibited by male grouse. " (Courtesy of the Biomimicry Guild) "White-fronted African bee eaters will face spitting cobras, forage tirelessly for bees and delay having their own young--all to help close relatives raise a clutch of baby birds.
White-fronted Bee-eater Merops bullockoides A. Collaborating for group decisions: honeybees. Limited nutrients recycled: benthic communities. Limited nutrients recycled: benthic communities. Beak snaps shut: hummingbird. "The hummingbird beak, specialized for feeding on floral nectars, is also uniquely adapted to eating flying insects.
During insect capture the beak often appears to close at a rate that cannot be explained by direct muscular action alone. Here we show that the lower jaw of hummingbirds has a shape and compliance that allows for a controlled elastic snap. Furthermore, hummingbirds have the musculature needed to independently bend and twist the sides of the lower jaw. According to both our simple physical model and our elastic instability calculation, the jaw can be smoothly opened and then snapped closed through an appropriate sequence of bending and twisting actions by the muscles of the lower jaw. " (Smith et al. 2011:41) Part of the trick lies in how the hummingbird's beak is built. Watch video Trochilidae Trochilidae Learn more at Organism/taxonomy data provided by: Species 2000 & ITIS Catalogue of Life: 2008 Annual Checklist. Understanding Benthic Communities. Vonda Cummings on Antarctic Benthic Communities.