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Silicon is the second-most abundant element in Earth's crust and it plays a vital role in plant life, both on land and in the sea. Silicon is used by plants in tissue building, which helps to ward off herbivorous animals. In the ocean, phytoplankton consume enormous amounts of silicon; they get a constant supply courtesy of rivers and streams. And silicon winds up in rivers and streams due to erosion of silicon-containing rocks. Land plants also use silicon. They get it from the soil. In this new effort, the researchers began by noting that the terrestrial biogeochemical cycling of silicon (how it moves from plants back to the soil and then into plants again) is poorly understood. To gain a better understanding of how it works, they ventured to a part of Western Australia that, unlike other parts of the world, has not been impacted by Pleistocene glaciations. The soil there gave the researchers a look at the silicon cycle going back 2 million years.

"With each interaction, Alexa is training to hear better, to interpret more precisely, to trigger actions that map to the user's commands more accurately, and to build a more complete model of their preferences, habits and desires. What is required to make this possible? Put simply: each small moment of convenience - be it answering a question, turning on a light, or playing a song - requires a vast planetary network, fueled by the extraction of non-renewable materials, labor, and data. The scale of resources required is many magnitudes greater than the energy and labor it would take a human to operate a household appliance or flick a switch. A full accounting for these costs is almost impossible, but it is increasingly important that we grasp the scale and scope if we are to understand and govern the technical infrastructures that thread through our lives. III The Salar, the world's largest flat surface, is located in southwest Bolivia at an altitude of 3,656 meters above sea level. It is a high plateau, covered by a few meters of salt crust which are exceptionally rich in lithium, containing 50% to 70% of the world's lithium reserves. 4 The Salar, alongside the neighboring Atacama regions in Chile and Argentina, are major sites for lithium extraction. This soft, silvery metal is currently used to power mobile connected devices, as a crucial material used for the production of lithium-Ion batteries. It is known as 'grey gold.' Smartphone batteries, for example, usually have less than eight grams of this material. 5 Each Tesla car needs approximately seven kilograms of lithium for its battery pack. 6 All these batteries have a limited lifespan, and once consumed they are thrown away as waste. Amazon reminds users that they cannot open up and repair their Echo, because this will void the warranty. The Amazon Echo is wall-powered, and also has a mobile battery base. This also has a limited lifespan and then must be thrown away as waste. According to the Ay

A microbial community is a complex, dynamic system composed of hundreds of species and their interactions, they are found in oceans, soil, animal guts and plant roots. Each system feeds the Earth's ecosystem and their own growth, as they each have their own metabolism that underpin biogeochemical cycles. The same community-level metabolic rates are exploited in biotechnology for water treatment and bioenergy production from organic waste, thus the ability to capture microbial growth rates and metabolic activities within the communities is key for modeling of planetary ecosystem dynamics, animal and plant health and biotechnological waste valorzation.