The Internet can be a tool for increasing access to education while also maintaining or improving the quality of students’ learning. But if information technology is "bolted onto" existing programs, instructional costs increase. Instead, higher education must learn to use technology to disaggregate and disintermediate some of its current instructional programs and to recombine the resulting com...

Water Productivity (WP) of a crop defines the relationship between the economic or physical yield of the crop and its water use. With this concept it is possible to identify disproportionate water use or water-limited yield gaps and thereby support improvements in agricultural water management. However, too often important qualitative and quantitative environmental factors are not part of a WP ...

Nowadays, the expansion of the cities is an inevitable necessity; increasing the dependence of the citizens on motor vehicles and, consequently, making development of the transportation networks a necessity rather than an option. Thus, increasing car ownership and car use has created many problems for the cities, such as increasing greenhouse gas emissions, environmental pollution, casualties o...

Forest Watersheds provide timber and water, wildlife and fisheries habitat, and recreational opportunities. However, not an entire watershed is equally suited for each activity. Steeper slopes may be better left forested and used for wildlife habitat while more gentle slopes of the watershed could be used for timber production. Logging steep slopes can lead to soil erosion that can.seriously de...

the main factors affecting environmental sensitivity to degradation are soil, vegetation, climate and management, through either their intrinsic characteristics or by their interaction on the landscape. different levels of degradation risks may be observed in response to particular combinations of the aforementioned factors. for instance, the combination of inappropriate management practices an...

The growth of China's industry has been seriously depending on energy and environment. This paper attempts to apply the directional distance function and the Luenberger productivity index to measure the environmental efficiency, environmental total factor productivity, and its components at the level of subindustry in China over the period from 1999 to 2009 while considering energy consumption ...

Sustaining irrigated agriculture to meet food production needs while maintaining aquatic ecosystems is at the heart of many policy debates in various parts of the world, especially in arid and semi-arid areas. Researchers and practitioners are increasingly calling for integrated approaches, and policy-makers are progressively supporting the inclusion of ecological and social aspects in water ma...

grafting and mycorrhizal fungi have gained interest for the positive effects they can have on vegetable crops. the aim of this work was to study the combined effect of grafting with vesicular-arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (amf) inoculation on fruit yield and quality of mini-watermelon [citrullus lanatus (thumb.) matsum and nakai]. ungrafted plants or grafted onto rootstock rs 841 (cucurbita maxi...

Jordan is extremely water-scarce with just 167 m3 per capita per year to meet domestic, industrial, agricultural, tourism, and environmental demands. The heavy exploitation of water resources has contributed to declines in the levels of aquifers and the Dead Sea. Rapid growth in demand, particularly for higher quality water for domestic, industrial, and tourism uses, is significantly increasing...