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Mango, why mango?

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New Mexico, 6 pm of a sunny day in 1998.  Two soldiers find a spacecraft in the middle of the desert. It looks very dangerous, with unknown materials in the inside. They enter the spacecraft. They can't believe their eyes when they find an Arbre Magique. And at some point they smell it and ask "Mango, why mango?". If you want to see the video of this famous commercial from Arbre Magique, you can click on the below link. If you are interested to know why I'm talking about mango, well...read below. In 2009 I took a trip to Antigua and I was astonished by the flavour of mangos and papayas grown over there. I thought it would have been fantastic to live there and grab a ripe mango directly from a tree, while a warm breeze is caressing my face. Mangos imported in Italy are not that good after all. I then started to collect information and found out that mango trees can also be grown in Italy, especially in Sicily and Calabria they are slowly replacing citrus cultivations. ...
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Electric, hydrogen or Internal Combustion Engine cars? LCA provides the answer

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There is a number of very good reasons to know what Life Cycle Assessment is: one of these, is that it can answer questions like " what is the most environmentally sustainable* choice between electric and conventional cars? ".  And one more good reason is that it can also provide an answer for hydrogen cars. So, what is the short answer? I'm very tempted to reply "It depends": uncertainty is a part of life. But in reality, we have an answer and this very good study provides all details. https://sphera.com/spark/hydrogen-fuel-cell-cars-the-second-bet-for-clean-vehicles/ Now, it's a bit sad to read that conventional cars (aka Internal Combustion Engine) are not the winners of the competition. From today, I will look at my beauty (below) with different eyes (but I already have a good excuse not to get rid of it....and yes, I will tell you why it is a sustainabile excuse). But...what about hydrogen and electric cars? Well, it depends of course on the energy gri...
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A coconut in Italy

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When you buy a coconut to grow in-house, there are three types of reaction: Reaction 1: it's a waste of money! it will die in less than two months  Reaction 2: it's a waste of money! I already tried and it died in two months. You'll come back to us with the pictures of the dead coconut in a couple of months.  Reaction 3: go dude, and let us know!  I'm a fan of reacti on 3, so I bought one in a garden center in North Italy, risking to waste up to 16 euros. It was November 2018 and here is a picture of my little coconut.     Well...the nice thing is that it did not die after two months, on the contrary it grew quite fast over the next year.   And now, after more than 2 years, it is still alive and doing well: actually, it is close to reaching the ceiling with the top leaves What is "my secret" to grow the coconut? Here is a short list of actions: 1) Choose the right position: light (a lot of light, I have velux on the roof), temperature (always >20 °C) ...
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