Use a Travel and Leisure Magazine to Plan Your Getaway

Whether you are looking to find a romantic weekend for two or a week long getaway for the whole family, a travel and leisure mag can make your planning easier. You can find recommendations for destinations and hotels in the area, a list of things to do, and reviews on lodging, restaurants, and attractions. In addition, you can usually find special offers available only to the readers of the travel and leisure mag that can save you some serious money.

You can read your travel and leisure mag online, or purchase a copy at your local newsstand. Either way, you will find fascinating articles and a wealth of information. Many sponsor contests for the readers of their travel and leisure mag, so you just might win the trip you've been longing to take.

Detailed hotel reviews are to be found at almost every travel and leisure site. You can find out whether they are quiet, clean, and efficient, as well as whether they have restaurants or clubs on the premises. Any other services, such as valet parking, turn down service, concierge, and currency exchange will also be provided by the travel and leisure mag.

One of the best sources for information on cruises is a travel and leisure mag. You will discover which lines or ships provide the most activities for children and which ones are planned for adults. You can also find out whether cruises are planned for singles, couples wishing to take a second honeymoon, or the entire family from Grandma to toddler. Often, you can find discount coupons at a travel and leisure magazine online site that will make your cruise even more affordable.

A travel and leisure magazine can also provide recommendations for destinations that may not have been on your list, but are exactly what you are seeking. Perhaps you want to find a beach resort that is off the beaten track, affordable, and far from the crush of civilization. Browsing a travel and leisure mag may be able to provide you with a list of several destinations that fit the bill.

Even if your travel plans are many years in the future, you can still use a travel and leisure mag to plan the vacation you will someday take. Anticipation is half the fun, anyway, and a vacation that you take only in your imagination still offers some benefit to your psyche.

A travel and leisure mag is practically an essential for couples planning a honeymoon. Together they can search for potential destinations and select one with features of interest to both. They can compare hotel rates and amenities, learn how to reach their destination, and perhaps find discounts to make their honeymoon even more special.

Travel and Leisure Magazines to Inspire the Adventurer in You

Browse through the magazine racks of any bookstore and you'll find the number of travel and leisure magazines offered endless. Whether you're looking for inspiration for your next trip, wanting some top tips to plan a vacation or simply a new activity to keep you busy during time off at home, travel and leisure magazines are the perfect place to start your search. Here's a round up of some of the best available:

Time Out Magazine
Fast becoming the leading authority on the world's best cities, from LA to Buenos Aires, Cape Town to Copenhagen, Time Out now has 18 travel and 23 city magazines offering up to date information on the best places to stay, eat and be entertained in the world's most fabulous cities. Even if you live in one of its featured cities, you can bet Time Out will come up with a new location or activity you never knew existed in your local area. Prepare to be amazed!

Outside
A travel and leisure magazine which has been keeping adventurers informed since 1977, Outside is for men and women who lead active lifestyles all year round. With glossy and colorful photography, prepare to be inspired to take to the outdoors and try something new, from rock-climbing to snowboarding, sailing to mountaineering.

National Geographic Adventure
The latest magazine in the National Geographic collection, this one is aimed at active men and women who seek new and exciting ways to explore and experience the globe. The photographs will inspire you to travel to destinations you would never have thought of visiting, alongside an excellent mix of features and articles, covering adventure stories, travel destinations, sports and outdoor activities.

Trailer Life
The writers of this travel and lifestyle magazine guarantee to provide you with information to "follow the road to adventure." Aimed at owners of RVs, campers and motor homes who spend a few weeks a year or their whole life on the road, this glossy magazine is packed with information on national parks, camp sites, product tests, cooking tips and vehicle maintenance. Definitely one for RV owners who love life on the open road and are ingrained with a spirit of adventure.

Spa
For those of us who get our stress relief from relaxation rather than adrenaline packed adventures, Spa Magazine offers the secrets to the latest advances in beauty, healthy living and relaxation as well as a peek behind the doors of the most luxury and private retreats and information on the world's best spas. If you're planning a spa vacation, this is the place to find top tips on the most relaxing locations to unwind, detox and recharge your batteries without having to break the bank in the process!

The Best Deals of Travel and Leisure Magazine

Constant travelers who want to score the best deals in every continent that they step into should never do without a copy of travel and leisure magazine. This magazine which is well known as travel + leisure magazine provides the A lists of the best hotels, restaurants, wellness clubs, cruise ships, events and festivals, resorts and beaches, food and drinks, and other significant facts that are essential to the well-being of one's travel itinerary. The travel and leisure magazine is a top rated, professional travel companion that would make sure you do not lose your way in every travel decision that you make.

The travel and leisure magazine used to be a compiled journal of travel photographs which placed emphasis on leisure travel and often features contributions from novelists, poets, travel columnists, artists, and avid travelers who are eager to share their acquired wisdom and serve as a helpful guide especially for those who are still neophyte in the realm of travel. The magazine publishes in a monthly basis and has several international editions such as China, Mexico, Russia, Turkey, and South East Asia though most of them were already defunct.

The magazine is famous for their World's Best Awards which is announced every August and has been practiced since 1995. This is an award body created on a basis of an annual survey from magazine readers who gave out their quantitative rating of world's best travel destination and accommodation. For the 2010's survey of the World's Best Awards, the travel and leisure magazine offers a chance to those who will take the survey of winning a $10,000 dream trip. This award has various categories namely hotels, islands, cities, airlines and cruises, wellness and spas and business hotels. These categories are featured on all continents that the travel and leisure magazine encompass such as US and Canada, Asia, Latin America, Africa and the Middle East, Europe, Caribbean, Australia, New Zealand, and South Pacific. Last 2009, the Bushman's Kloof atop the Cedarberg Mountains in Western Cape, South Africa emerged as the record holder of the number one spot in the survey with an overall score of 98.67.

Aside from the World's Best Awards, the travel and leisure magazine also has what they call T+L 500 Best Hotels and America's Favorite Cities where subscribers and magazine readers rank cities in the U.S. based on several categories. The categories are very informative because it covers almost all the things that one needs to know in famous cities such as their culture, hotels, nightlife, shopping malls, food and dining places, and airports.

Thinking About a Travel and Leisure Magazine Subscription?

For the discriminating consumer, nothing gives them a better option for all travel and leisure related information than a magazine travel and leisure magazine subscription. With a travel and leisure magazine subscription you can always be constantly aware of all the exciting places to travel and relax worldwide. You will also be given opportunities to save on all travel related costs. A travel and leisure magazine subscription will also save you a significant amount on the costs of your favorite travel and leisure magazines. Plus, you'll have the added convenience of having your favorite travel and leisure magazines delivered right to your front door.

Travel magazines make an excellent gift choice for all those hard to buy people with cultivated tastes. It is a gift idea than will keep on giving every time that person opens their mailbox and finds the informative and entertaining travel and leisure magazine they've been waiting to read. So let someone you care about know how you feel about them by ordering a travel and leisure magazine subscription for them and you might as well order yourself one, because you do not want to be left out of all the information, discounts, reviews and travel tips available in a travel and magazine.

A leisure and travel magazine subscription will be a valuable resource if you are planning a business trip or vacation excursion anywhere in the world. It will have informative articles, features and reviews about the travel and leisure industry. But better still, is will have money saving tips and discounts on a variety of travel related products. Anything from discounts on transportation, whether by airplane, train, cruise ship or car, you'll save money by having a travel and leisure magazine subscription. You will read fascinating articles about hot travel spots in every corner of the globe. You will read from travel industry professionals about a variety of subjects that could be used to ensure that your business trip or next vacation is safe and fun.

With a leisure and travel magazine subscription, you will know the world's best travel, will be aware of the best restaurants, hotels, resorts, and cruises. You will be aware of some of the best food and best shopping from Paris to Singapore. Readers with travel and leisure magazine subscriptions will be informed about hot vacation travel deals and get insider tips for traveling that will save them money and allow them to get the best out of their trip.

A lot of people love to travel, but not many know how to travel smartly. Or they may not be aware of the superb deals that can be had simply by knowing about it, Being informed about travel deals on hotels, airfare and sight-seeing tours can vastly increase the success of any business trip or pleasure vacation. With all the great deals you will discover by having a travel magazine subscription, you will be able to travel a lot more frequently and at a fraction of the costs you used to spend on traveling.

Response of Abaca (Musa textilis Née) to shade, irrigation and fertilization

Abaca plants

Abaca (Musa textilis Née), a relative of the edible banana (Musa acuminata and Musa balbisiana), is a native to the Philippines. It is grown primarily for its fibers which are utilized by the pulp, cordage and fiber craft industries. Studies have shown that the specific tensile strength of abaca fiber is comparable to or even higher than that of fiberglass (Bledzki et al., 2007;Sinon, 2008).

Dr. Marlito Bande and co-workers, in a paper to be published in the international journal Industrial Crops and Products 42:70– 77, reported on the optimum light, nutrient and water requirements of abaca to attain optimum yield. They also discussed how these parameters affect fiber recovery and fiber quality under field conditions. 

They showed that abaca planted under 50% shade had significantly (p < 0.01) higher fiber yield than those planted under the other shade/light treatments (30% and 40% of full sunlight using polypropylene shade nets) since the plants pseudostem under such treatment were longer, bigger and heavier.They revealed that the combination of irrigation and fertilization further enhanced fiber yield to as much as 41% but this was not enough to offset the effects of shade on the performance of the plant which significantly (p < 0.01) increased fiber yield to as much as 165%. Shade and irrigation–fertilizer application had no significant effect on fiber fineness and tensile strength. 

They concluded that 50% shade is the optimum requirement of abaca to achieve an optimum machine stripped fiber yield of 135.04± 4.31 g/plant without affecting fiber quality for industrial purposes.

The study which was conducted in Ormoc, Leyte, Philippines was funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG).

References

Bande MM, J Grenz, VB Asio, and J Sauerborn. 2013. Fiber yield and quality of abaca (Musa textilis var. Laylay) grown under different shade conditions, water and nutrient management. Industrial Crops and Products 42:70–77.

Bledzki AK, AA Mamun, O Faruk. 2007. Abaca fibre reinforced PP composites and expansion with jute and flax fibre PP composites. eXPRESS Polymer Letters 1 (11), 755–762.

Sinon FG. 2008. Optimization of stripping technologies for the production of high quality abaca fiber. Dissertation, Universität Hohenheim, Stuttgart, Germany

Environmental pollution: the case of Xenobiotics

Xenobiotics are chemical substances that are foreign to the biological system. They include naturally occurring compounds, drugs, and environmental agents (Mondofacto online medical dictionary at www.mondofacto.com).The classes of xenobiotics include: pesticides, polyaromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), polychlorinated aromatics, solvents, hydrocarbons, and others (surfactants, silicones, and plastics).

Xenobiotics levels in soils are generally low (less than 100 ppm) unless they are concentrated by application as in the case of pesticides, by spills or by waste disposal. They can occur in soils in solid, dissolved and gaseous phases and all undergo microbial and abiotic (chemical) transformations (Logan, 2000).

Photo source: www.cleanwaterfund.com

Pesticides are the most important xenobiotic pollutants because of their widespread use in agriculture. In many developing countries, unregulated use of pesticides by poor farmers contributes not only to environmental pollution but to health problems as well.

In the soil, pesticides can be temporarily fixed through adsorption by soil particles. The persistence or decomposition of pesticides in the soil is influenced by soil moisture, organic matter content, redox potential, soil acidity, soil temperature, texture, adsorption potential and clay minerals (Schactschabel et al., 1998; Sonon and Schwab, 2004).

References

Logan, T.J. 2000. Soils and environmental quality. In: Handbook of Soil Science (M.E. Sumner, ed.). CRC Press, Boca Raton, pp: G155-G169.

Schactschabel P., H.P. Blume, G. Brümmer, K.H. Hartge and U. Schwertmann. 1998. Lehrbuch der Bodenkunde (14th ed.). Ferdinand Enke Verlag, Stuttgart.

Sonon, L.S. and P.A. Scwab. 2004. Transport and persistence of nitrate, atrazine and alachlor in large intact soil columns under two levels of moisture contents. Soil Science 169: 541-553.

N.L. Galvez: The Dean of Filipino Soil Scientists

Dr. Nicolas L. Galvez (1903-1991) laid down the groundwork for the different fields of soil science in the Philippines and he trained many Filipino soil scientists as a professor at the University of the Philippines College of Agriculture (UPCA) for 42 years. He was the head of the Soils Department at UPCA from 1948 to 1961, a difficult but crucial post-war period that had long-term impact on the development of soil science as an academic field in the country. Upon his retirement in 1970, Dr. N.L. Galvez was honored by being appointed as a University of the Philippines Los Banos (UPLB) Emeritus Professor. 

Dr. N.L. Galvez (Source: SAED, UPLB-CA)

Dr. N.L. Galvez was an internationally recognized scientist having published numerous relevant scientific papers on soil chemistry, soil mineralogy, and other aspects of soil science. For his pioneering and great contributions to the development of soil science in the Philippines, Dr. Galvez is widely considered, and deserves to be called, as the “Dean of Filipino Soil Scientists”.

Dr. N.L. Galvez finished his Bachelor of Chemistry at the University of Minnesota, USA, in 1925 and his PhD degree in Soil Science in 1934 from the Institute of Agricultural Chemistry and Soil Science,University of Göttingen, Germany, under the supervision of Prof. E. Blanck (1877-1953), one of the leading soil scientists during the first half of the 20th century who edited the monumental 10-volume Handbuch der Bodenlehre (Handbook of Soil Science) published from 1929 to1932. Dr. Galvez wrote a dissertation entitled “Über Bodenpresssäfte und wurzellösliche Pflanzennärstoffe” (On the pressed soil extract and root-soluble plant nutrients) which was published in the Journal für Landwirtschaft (Journal of Agriculture) Vol. 89, No. 4, pages 257-320 (1934), a prominent peer-reviewed scientific journal at the time.

The University of Göttingen is a world renowned university associated with such scientific giants as Gauss, Wiechert, Correns, Eigen, Fermi, Debye, Nernst, Langmuir, Heisenberg, Born, Teller, Oppenheimer and many more including nearly 50 Nobel Prize winners. Interestingly, when the great theoretical physicist Werner Heisenberg in Göttingen won the Nobel Physics Prize in 1932, N.L. Galvez was a student there. It is easy to speculate that he must have brushed shoulders with some of the world’s leading scientists (who were teaching or doing research in that small university town of Göttingen) which could have inspired him to excel in his own field of science.  

In recognition of his outstanding scientific achievements, N.L. Galvez was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship for postdoctoral research at the University of Wisconsin from January 1955 to August 1956 where he worked with M.L. Jackson (1914-2002), one of the most influential American soil scientists and author of the world famous textbook “Methods of Soil Analysis”.  This postdoctoral experience in Wisconsin which focused on the colloidal minerals of important agricultural soils of the Philippines, must have enhanced further his international standing as a scientist.

In 2008, a museum (N.L. Galvez Hall) was established in his honor at the Soil and Agro-ecosystem Division of the College of Agriculture at UPLB under the able leadership of its former head, Dr. Pearl B. Sanchez, a professor of soil chemistry. It was funded by the US-based family of Dr. Galvez.

(Note: Many of the facts cited were taken from materials available at the above-mentioned N.L. Galvez Hall.)