Intensified mineral consumption and reserve depletion means that it is becoming increasingly important for policymakers to account for and manage national mineral capital. Exergy replacement costs (ERC), an indicator based on the second law of thermodynamics, provides a physical value of mineral loss. When only a unit mass analysis is used, the role of scarcer minerals, such as gold, is obscure...

The self-assembly of lipid bilayer membranes to enclose functional biomolecules, thus defining a "protocell," was a seminal moment in the emergence of life on Earth and likely occurred at the micro-environment of the mineral-water interface. Mineral-lipid interactions are also relevant in biomedical, industrial and technological processes. Yet, no structure-activity relationships (SARs) have be...

Large amount of wastes is generated every year from the industrial processing of agricultural raw materials. Most of these wastes are used as animal feed or burned as alternative for elimination. However, such wastes usually have a composition rich in sugars, minerals and proteins, and therefore, they should not be considered “wastes” but raw materials for other industrial processes. The presen...

(a) in the short term, Africa should use its increased income from ‘booms’ in ‘traditional’ exports (eg, commodities and minerals) to invest in basic needs and infrastructure, and enhance its industrial and technological capacity. This can safeguard Africa from fluctuations in prices and demand in the world market for ‘traditional’ exports, while helping to build its economic capacity and take ...

Heavy minerals (HMs) are used in many high-tech applications (e.g. nuclear reactors, photovoltaic cells, electronics, green, and nano- space technology), thus global demand is increasing day by day. This review article focused on the distribution, genesis, economic geology, exploration exploitation, (i.e. past, present, future status of annual production, consumption, price), (geological indust...

Mechanization is the characteristic of the industrial era and computerization is the characteristic of the Information Era. Now we are facing on the transition from Industrial Era to Information Era. The spatial positioning character of Geo-spatial information is attracted by Information Technology (IT) industry. Map plays an important role in the phylogeny of humankind. Concomitance with the d...