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Photosynthesis is energized by the absorption of light by pigments in the thylakoid membranes inside bacterial and plant chloroplasts (the cellular organelles that give plants their green color). The energy efficiency of the conversion of simple inorganic inputs into new phytomass is surprisingly low. Introductory textbooks often outline the entire process in a simple equation in which the reaction of six molecules of CO2 and six molecules of water produces one molecule of glucose and six molecules of oxygen: 6CO2 + 6H2O = C6H12O6 + 6O2. The reality is vastly more complex. The key sequential steps were revealed for the first time in 1948 by Melvin Calvin (1911–1997) and his co-workers (Calvin received the 1961 Nobel Prize for Chemistry for this discovery). Most importantly, the process entails not only carbon fixation and oxygen evolution, but is also the complex exchange of oxygen and CO2 in two, closely related, cycles (the other being photorespiration).
Philip was fortunate to be assigned to the household of the Theban general Pammenes, who was a great friend of Epaminondas, the victor of Leuctra. While the other Macedonian hostages feasted and chased local girls, Philip spent every moment learning the latest techniques in warfare from the Theban generals. The Macedonian army before Philip’s time consisted of a peasant infantry led by undisciplined nobles on horseback. Like their counterparts in the Middle Ages, these Macedonian knights saw themselves as the epitome of heroic warfare and treated the lowly farmers and shepherds in the infantry as so much fodder for enemy spears. But Philip discovered a very different kind of army at Thebes.
Alexander the Great
Philip Freeman
Living never flowers in security; it flowers only in insecurity.
Courage: the Joy of Living Dangerously
Osho
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