Cocaine

The book I read to research this post was Cocaine by John C Flynn which is an excellent book which I bought from a secondhand bookshop. John is a professor who specializes in drug addiction. Coca leaves as a way to get high were first used by the aztecs around 5BC. They also thought it was an aphrodisiac. In around 1860 a method of synthesizing a white powder which was a lot weaker than modern cocaine was first developed. In the late 1960's modern cocaine was developed. It acts primarily on cocaine receptors in the brain to get you high. It's worth noting no drug works on every receptor in the brain and the receptors reacts differently to different drugs. Also the receptors vary in their characteristics from person. That is why drugs often affect different people in different ways. Another problem is often harmful substances are mixed in with the drug so the dealer can maximize his profits which there have been cases where people have died from these chemicals. Also often people snort or inject cocaine as well as other drugs. If you have it orally it goes straight to your liver before it reaches the brain and that neutralizes some of it which is good if there is harmful chemicals with it but it also tries to neutralize the cocaine. When you snort or inject it, it goes straight to the brain which is potentially more harmful but means you get more high. One thing it says in this book is that telling people not to get high on drugs is a bit like telling people not to have sex in that there is always going to be people doing it because it's enjoyable. I think it is important to educate about drugs so they can at least make an informed choice. A final thing worth noting is often users don't know how pure a drug is and there is the potential to overdose if it is pure or almost pure.

Amazon Simple Storage Service

The book I read to research this post was Amazon Simple Storage Service Developer Guide which is a very good book which I downloaded for free from kindle. A lot of this book is hands on using Amazon S3. Amazon S3 doesn't require an operating system like EC2 and is simply storage. Amazon only bills you for the storage used and there are no upper limits and they don't penalize you if you go over a certain amount. A single upload can't be more than 5Gb & the total load uploaded in multiple amounts can't exceed 5Tb. You can choose which service centre you use and many companies use 2 so if one goes down they can use an alternative. Currently there are several servers in the USA, one in Ireland, Singapore, Tokyo & Sao Paulo in Brazil. It is compatible with a lot of the other Amazon products. Many companies use Import / Export which is a high speed internal network that will copy your data onto S3 as well as EC2 and this is especially useful if you have several terrabytes of data.

Amazon Route 53

The book I read to research this post was Amazon Route 53 Developer Guide which is a very good book and which I downloaded for free from kindle. Route 53 works with quite a few other Amazon services like S3 or simple storage service & EC2 or elastic compute cloud. if you have a hosted website by someone else it will also work with that. Basically it lets you link a website which is already up and running to a DNS name or several DNS names. When you sign up part of the process is you get a phone call from Amazon and have to enter a pin number presumably to avoid people running loads of sites maybe for dodgy purposes like selling viagra. I think Amazon want to make sure there is a real person at the other end. If you have a website at more that one Amazon server farm they will direct traffic to the less busy one at any one time. They have a server farm serving most continents ie one in Ireland serving Europe & one in Singapore serving Asia. If you have the Elastic Load Balancing from Amazon the TTL or Time To Live which is the time before it gives up trying to connect you and assumes it's a bad line, anyway the TTL in ELB takes precendence over the one in Route 53 so if you need to adjust it you need to do it in ELB.

The TGV Train

The book I read to research this post was The TGV Handbook 2nd edition by Brian Perrin which is an excellent book which I bought from Amazon. This book was written in 1996 so is a little dated but there is some interesting stuff on the future of TGV trains which I'm going to focus on some of which may have already happened. The engine on a TGV produces 8,800 KW and the top speed varies slightly from model to model but is around 300kph. SNCF the french railway service provider had to slow down the rate at which the high speed infrastructure was built. In Britain where I live in the development stage there is plans to expand the Eurostar to the midlands and north of England. Interestingly there used to be a railway line that went upto the midlands and sheffield which was the european gauge and which was scrapped and sold off when they nationalised the railways and now they are spending billions following a similiar route. There is plans to have a high speed link between Seoul & Pusan in North & South Korea which may have been built by now. The company that built the TGV was set to build the trains for that route. Also there's a high speed train link which has probably been built between Washington DC & Boston via New York which not be quite as fast as the TGV but was supplied by the same company and called the American Flyer. There's a similiar project in Florida linking Orlando or Disneyland with places like Tampa. In Russia there were plans to link St Petersburg with Moscow again with TGV & this would help ease congestion on that route. In Australia there were plans to link Sydney to Melbourne via Canberra. There was also talk of routes in Canada & Taiwan which again may have been built.

Amazon Import / Export

The book I read to research this post was Amazon Import / Export Developer Guide which is a very good book which I downloaded for free from kindle. You could be forgiven for thinking that Import / Export has something to do with importing hard drives from Thailand but the truth is a little bit less exciting. It's actually a high speed data transfer service. You have to have either a S3 or simple storage service or EC2 or elastic compute cloud account. You then can send AWS your storage media and they will either import or export data and even wipe your media if requested. I think generally you use pen drives. They even send it back to you by courier which is included in the price. This service is only available at their asian, european & american server farms. The locations are Singapore in Asia, Ireland in Europe & Northern California for America. A further service they do is store your data on an offline server. If in an emergency you need a complete back up they will send that to you. Normally they send you a barcode sticker which you attach to the media but on more sensitive stuff you copy a file you must name signature and which is called a signature file onto the media. If you need a snapshot it's done in EBS format but this can't be imported onto media and can only be exported onto a EC2 server.

Creative Blogging

The book I read to research this post was Creative Blogging by John Edgar which is an excellent book which I downloaded from kindle. One mistake I made in my early days of blogging was thinking that I could have a general interest blog. I think google probably thought a lot of my tags were spam. What I should have done is if I wanted to do a new subject start a new blog. The best blogs take a niche subject and write about it in a lot of detail. I don't do that because it concerns me that I might run out of books I can write about. Primarily my sites are book review sites but I think people enjoy reading some of the ideas that are in the books in my own words. Anyway ideally you want to host your own blog although if you are going to make money from adverts - try adsense, adbrite & chitika for starters - you are going to need a lot of traffic. On my sites I don't believe that amount of traffic and also I do it for enjoyment. Ideally the wordpress software which can be got from http://wordpress.org is the best software if you are self hosting. Go Daddy is a popular hosting company. Anyway the wordpress software is free, open source and very configurable. There are thousands of plug ins available for wordpress many of which are free. You can even have a shopping cart on your website. Another idea is becoming an affiliate and they will often give you a personalized website address where people can buy stuff and then you get commission. A final point is you should buy a domain name for your blog as it's easier for people to remember. I have done posts on mom blogging, food blogging & corporate blogging & there's also 500+ blogs on computing in general at http://scratbag.me

Amazon Cloudsearch

The book I read to research this post was Cloudsearch Developer Guide which is an excellent book which I downloaded for free from kindle. I've noticed these posts on the various cloud services Amazon offers are quite popular so I have downloaded a load of developer guides from kindle and they should feature strongly on this site over the next few weeks. Anyway Cloudsearch is a search engine that lets you search your intranet or website. It's compatible with other Amazon products in particular S3 or simple storage service and EC2 or elastic compute cloud. It does advanced searches like boolean and returns the results in either JSON which is the default or XML. These of course are standards not computer languages. Amazon have done a sample database of 5,000 movies for you to practise with.

Amazon Cloudfront

The book I read to research this post was Cloudfront Developers Guide which is an excellent book which I downloaded for free from kindle. There is quite a lot of information in this book along with some tutorials for AWS management console and even some scripts in various computer languages. If you had a web site on a web server in Seattle in Washington State & someone was looking at it on a desktop in Austin, Texas the signal might go threw 10 web servers to get there and each time it would slow the signal down and possibly degrade it. Cloudfront which either stores information which needs downloading or routes you threw to a server where the file can be downloaded keeps the number of servers it passes threw to a minimum. If you store the information on another it can either be a S3 or simple storage solution, or your own web server. If it's a RMTP file which is used by flash media server it must be a S3 server. The information can be HTTP, HTTPS, dynamic or live feed. Incidently you can have a web site hosted on a S3 server. The name they give to the file they call a cname and you can have upto 10 different ones which might come in handy if you sell information products. If you need a specific DNS name or web address for the file you may have to use the Route 53 service. If you use Cloudfront you can choose which continental server farm stores the information so that it is reasonably near your customers.

Amazon EC2

The book I read to research this post was Amazon EC2 Elastic Compute Cloud User Guide which is a very good book which I downloaded for free from kindle. This is quite a big book and covers the subject in a lot of depth. If you are a developer you can subcontract space on EC2 and Amazon will pay you commission. There is an EC2 data center on each continent obviously apart from antarctica. The asian one is in singapore and the european one is in ireland. To use EC2 you must have your own operating system if it is windows it should be server 2003 or 2008. You can use unix or linux. If you use windows you access your drive space via remote access if you use linux or unix it is via SSH or secure shell. You obviously need a computer with a dvd drive to install the software on your server space which is done via the internet. Many developers use the software development kits in PHP, Java & .Net but Amazon also have a repository of scripts donated by benevolent programmers some of which are in other computer languages. You can upgrade your server space without having to shut down any online programs. I may rent some server space off Amazon when MS Server 2012 comes out because normally I would build a server and in my job as a network engineer I would have to learn how to use it but I think it's better to use EC2. Some businesses use EC2 services from more than one server farm which you can do and then if one goes down they not stranded. The different server farms on different continents charge different rates.  Probably the biggest benefit of cloud computing is the cost of upgrading your computer equipment is deferred. If you are interested in cloud computing have a look at my post on that subject at
http://scratbag.me

Amazon Dynamo DB Database

The book I read to research this post was The Amazon Dynamo DB Database Development Guide which is a very good book which I downloaded for free from kindle. This database is part of the cloud computing services offered by Amazon Web Services integrates with things like S3 or Simple Storage Service & EC2 or Elastic Computing Cloud. For developers Amazon do freely downloadable software development kits in PHP, Java & Microsoft .Net. Some people use one of the C languages which are compatible. Much of this book is examples of code in various languages and this is a very big book. Dynamo is a NoSQL database and uses Hive for doing things like queries or performing general database commands. You can upgrade or downgrade the amount of storage your database uses without leaving the program. This has to be done in increments of at least 10%. There is a free option if you hardly use any storage which I think is primarily for people to try this out. Your first 40 million transactions on your database are free but I am sure you realise on a reasonably big database that will soon be used up. Some people get confused about the different methods of updating a database so I'm going to explain it. Imagine you are in a warehouse and someone asks have you got x in stock. You would use a query to check this and if you thought he might make the same request again you would name it and save it. Now suppose he asks for a printout to say it's in stock and the price etc you would do a report which is a bit more presentable than a query. Now suppose some stock arrives and you need to update the database you would use an update query if it was one type of item or a form if it there was several items. Setting up forms sometimes needs programming knowledge and can get very advanced. They call these things objects and the table were everything is stored is another example of one. There is other things like crosstab queries which incidently draw information from several tables into one query.

Agile Project Management

You might be interested to know I did a couple of posts on project management & PRINCE2 which cover project management in a more general way & that's at
http://claireabella29.com
The book I read to research this post was Agile Project Management for Dummies which is a very good book which I bought from kindle. In my job as a network engineer I have to read a lot of books about computing but they are mostly books connected to my job in some way. This book is about a method of project management which is specifically for software development teams. I was so ignorant of this subject I thought agile & scrum were programming languages. I've seen books advertised on kindle about agile & scrum though. I think if you were involved in computer programming you would love this book. I must admit the book was a bit complicated for me. One of the main principles of agile is that things like meetings should keep to strict time limits ie if you are working on a 1 week project you have a 1 hour meeting. These meetings are called scrums. The idea behind that is that your programmers are working on their code as much as possible. Believe it or not in some software houses they only spend 20% of their time doing that which is unacceptable. Another problem is that some companies get the programmers to do the testing which in agile you have people who have a specific job doing that. I have read before that given the huge amounts of code that need to be written it's virtually impossible to write a program that doesn't have bugs. The best you can hope for is that the program only has occasional problems. That's why companies often release patches & why they say you should always give the company a few months to iron out any problems when a new program comes out.

Japanese Railways

The book I read to research this post was Riding the Train in Japan by Erik Curre which is an excellent book which I bought from kindle. In Japan lots of people have driving licences but cars are relatively scarce and many people use the train commute. When someone has a job his employer will often give him a train pass. The Japanese Railway is also second to none and includes the famous shinjanken or bullet train which is the fastest commercially used train in the world. Officially the train has a top speed of 300kph or 186mph but they have done tests where it has gone a lot faster. Interestingly it's cheaper to fly than to catch the bullet train. It's also probably Japan's biggest tourist attraction. There are 3 major types of train in Japan. The commuter trains stop at every stop and are the slowest. They have a sort of bench running down both sides of the train. Often you have to stand on these especially during rush hours. Then there are the express trains which only stop at the major stations. You can have upto 5 different classes of express train and each type will stop at different stops which is very confusing for tourists. These trains have comfortable seats. The final type is of course the bullet train. Tokyo is in the centre of the railway and its main station has 3 million passengers go through it every day. Many department are proprietors of their own railway line and the store will be right next to the station. When you see a house advertised for sale you will see how many minutes away the local railway station is in the advert. Tokyo, Narita Airport is served by 2 terminals, terminal 2 does the asian flights and terminal 1 does most of the rest. You need to know which terminal to go to because they aren't directly connected. You can waste a lot of time travelling from one to the other.

Hobby Farming

The book I read to research this post was Hobby Farming for Dummies which is an excellent book which I bought from kindle. This book is about smallhold farming although there is information on things like cattle farming which you might associate with proper farming. If you live in the country and are considering going into hobby farming you should take a look at what nearby farmers and neighbours are doing. Chances are if they are keeping  ie beef cattle there are good reasons for doing so. You might be inclined to farm something which can higher returns but often means a higher initial outlay. Good female alpacas often sell for $30,000 or more. Alpacas, llamas, sheep, angora rabbits and musk ox can all produce wool. Llamas and goats like hillsides. Musk ox live in alaska so it must have a cold climate and the fibre they produce which comes from the undercoat is 8 times warmer than wool also their meat is low in fat. Some people farm buffalo and yak which will attract visitors. Some farmers have even crossed cattle with buffalo to produce beefalo which have meat which is lower in fat than beef. My local supermarket started doing ostrich steaks recently and the eggs which weigh 3-4 lbs especially are considered a delicacy. Some people farm emus which in addition to providing meat and eggs also provide a type of leather. An animal which is especially suited to the smallholding which wants to specialize in pigs is the vietnamese pot bellied pig. They are as affectionate as dogs and can even be allowed in the house. A lot of people are after exotic pets and you can make a nice income breeding them but don't forget you probably need a specialist vet which doesn't come cheap. Also you should never take animals out of the wild especially in tropical countries because you don't know what diseases they are carrying. Many tropical diseases we are only just discovering. An exotic pet will often be happier living in the wild and in a lot of cases we don't understand their temperament. Some of these animals can be dangerous. A blue tongued skink which is a large lizard that is often kept as a pet can hold its own against a dog. Finally if you do decide to go into animal husbandry you may need a gun in case something like a wolf or a fox attacks your livestock. There's even cases of wild dogs which have been dumped by their owners and formed packs attacking livestock.

Geography

The book I read to research this post was Geography for Dummies by Charles Heatwole which is a very good book which I bought from Kindle. You might be interested to know I have done a couple of posts called GIS & GPS at http://scratbagroberts.com
GIS stands for Geographic Information Software or System & GPS stands for Global Positioning System.
It might surprise you to know that there is a 10,000 mile mountain that wasn't discovered until the mid 20th century it's the Mid Atlantic Ridge and the Atlantic Ocean is very deep at that point. It's also extremely volatile with magma frequently bubbling up. I did a post on geology a while also at the address above which looks at the tectonic plate theory suffice it to say the crust of the earth is comprised of plates which rub against each other causing earthquakes and where the crust is thin volcanoes form.
The sea level is rising as the earth is warming up and causing the ice caps to melt and some countries like Bangladesh which is densely populated are predominantly a couple of feet above sea level. Many big cities which are ports face the same problem also in Bangladesh they have the problem of the rivers flooding due to silt making the river level higher than the surrounding land. They have to almost constantly dredge the rivers. Also due to corruption they don't get very good value for money and much of the country is flooded.
despite its northerly position Britain has mild weather and this is mainly due to the Gulf Stream Current which brings warm water from the Carribean to Britain. This current then travels to the arctic and then goes round on itself and arrives at Western Africa. Casablanca has quite mild weather for a city that borders the Sahara for this reason.

Hedge Funds

The book I read to research this post was Hedge Funds for Dummies by Anne C Logue which is an excellent book which I bought from kindle. There is no legal definition of the words hedge fund so any old fund can use the name. Equally just because someone says he is portfolio manager for a hedge fund doesn't necessarily mean he is wealthy. Some hedge fund managers have been lucky for a couple of years and have no ability whatsoever. The type of hedge fund described in this book you won't find on the internet and you must have at least $1 million of wealth minimum or they won't be interested. They may very well ask for proof as to what you are worth. There is a trade off between risk and return that you must bear in mind when shopping around. Potentially this type of fund can make you a nice return on your investment but equally you can lose a lot of money. You will typically pay the fund manager 1-2% on what you invest and 20% on the revenue he makes on your money, rising to 35% if he makes more than 50% revenue on your money. The best fund managers may charge even more. A lot of hedge funds borrow money to maximise their returns and this money has to be paid back regardless whether you have made money or not. Sometimes hedge fund money as venture capital for new business start ups. A lot is also invested in things like stocks, shares, commodities, futures and currencies. You can make a quick profit in things like commodities by buying when low and when the price goes up selling but you won't make a lot of money this way. It's a long term investment and if you draw money out suddenly expect to be penalised but you should get an annual report telling you how your money is doing. Finally hedge funds are for wealthy people who can afford if their fund does badly. I don't think I'll be investing in hedge funds but this book does make an interesting read.

Kindle Touch

The book I read to research this post was Kindle Touch for Dummies by Harry Chute et al which is an excellent book which I bought from kindle. You might be interested to know I have done a post on the kindle 2 at http://scratbagroberts.com
The edition of the kindle featured in this book is the 2011 version and the firmware is v5. There is 2 main types of the touch there's the wifi and the 3g which can download ebooks directly to it and what's more it's free. I live in the UK but in the USA there's a version that has $40 knocked off the purchase price and has a screensaver that contains adverts and special offers. Incidently you don't see the adverts when you are reading an ebook. If you pay $40 you can upgrade it so you stop getting adverts and apparently the response from the general public has been a bit mixed. The format used by kindle is a proprietary AZW other sites use PRC which is still compatible with the kindle. The kindle will read PDF but one problem is if you enlarge the text it is unable to refresh the image and merely enlarges the original image which can make it a bit blurred. One way around this is to use a conversion program like calibre or mobipocket reader. In the USA you have a facility to borrow ebooks from a library on your kindle, they are only loaned for a specific period though. Another feature only available in the USA is that you can lend an ebook to a friend for up to 14 days. You can have upto 6 kindles or similiar devices like an ipod touch connected to your account which means they have access to all your ebooks. You might be tempted to let some of your friends use your account but a warning they can buy ebooks on your credit card. One feature I like about the kindle touch is that you merely have to tap it to go to the next page. The kindle has e-ink technology which means it has a kind of ink sandwiched under the screen which means the writing is clearer and the screen produces a decent black colour when appropriate. One drawback is it's difficult to read it in the dark and you probably need a light to do so.

Kindle 2

The book I read to research this post was Kindle 2 for Dummies by Greg Holden which is an excellent book which I bought from kindle. The version of the kindle I have is the kindle wifi which I think must be the equivalent of version but a lot of what is in this book I think applies to it. If you need to conserve the battery power you can turn off the wifi. Some versions of the kindle have 3g which means you can download ebooks direct to your kindle free of charge. It also means you have limited internet access. You can use the 3g version to send text messages via sites like gmail or yahoo. A couple of good sources of ebooks are http://manybooks.net and http://freetechbooks.com . These sites give away ebooks which normally would cost quite a bit. You can convert from most ebooks formats to the kindle format with a program called mobipocket reader. There is also another program called stanza which does the same but in addition to working with windows works with the applemac. If you find this post interesting you might be interested to know I have done a post on the kindle fire at
http://scratbagroberts.com
If you go abroad you may find there are charges if you download anything on a 3g version but it's still completely to access your content on the kindle. They do newspaper subscriptions which in addition to being cheaper than in the shops are good for the environment. Apparently when kindles were first released they were so popular that they sold out and some people were selling them secondhand for $50 over the published price.

Exchange Traded Funds

The book I read to research this post was Exchange Traded Funds for Dummies by Russell Wild which is a very good book which I bought from Kindle. Exchange Traded Funds are also called ETF's. The golden rule in investing is diversify so for example you wouldn't just invest in technology companies. ETF's are a good way to diversify as they are normally in a variety of companies. You shouldn't invest in ETF's in one company as a rule. You need a brockerage company, some of the more established ones are TD Ameritrade & Fidelity. Some of the better brokers will advise you of what to invest in also ask if there are any freebies, for people investing a large amount it isn't unheard of for them to give away a free laptop so it pays to ask. It's best to invest in funds in developed countries like the UK, USA, Japan & France. Stocks are more volatile in developing countries. It's worth mentioning sometimes you will come across newsletters that claim a certain company is advising about ETF's and is always successful. Every adviser has downturns in there investments. The law on financial newsletters is the same as with the tabloid ie that it's a form of free speech, basically that they can say anything. There's normally a service charge to an ETF that has to be paid annually which is normally a fraction of one percent of the stock. If you are doing more than a few trades a month that is too many, a good ETF is generally a long term investment certainly longer than 12 months. Finally as I was saying at the beginning you should diversify your investments you should invest in a variety of things and certainly not just ETF's.

Hybrid Clouds

The book I read to research this post was Hybrid Cloud for Dummies by Judith Hurwitz et al which is an excellent book which I bought from Kindle. The 1st phase in cloud computing was companies simply using software as a service which meant rather than buying software they used an online provider who had a website where they could do the same job as using the software online. Now we are getting into a more complex where one cloud solution has to work with another and also a company will often have servers for things like back up in addition to users which all has to be compatible with one another. A simple solution might be working with the most established cloud providers. All this interaction is called the hybrid cloud. When Amazon EC2 went down a while back many companies ie foursquare, faced a lot of problems because in addition to hosting their site their back ups went onto the same part of the service which was free. Other companies like Netflix had their back ups go to another part of the service which meant they could get up and running sooner although they had to pay extra for this service. It's worth mentioning I have done a post on cloud computing at http://scratbag.me
There is many different types of this cloud computing one is online databases like amazon's dynamo db or microsoft's azure. There's customer relation management like salesforce.com . There's also office suites like google apps and microsoft office 365. Some providers provide storage like rackspace and live drive. Probably the biggest benefit of cloud computing is that with a lot of providers it's free for home users. Another benefit is that practically any computer can run the providers service eliminating the need for upgrades.

Commercial Real Estate Investing

The book I read to research this post was Commercial Real Estate Investing for Dummies by Peter Conti et al which is an excellent book which I bought from Kindle. One of the tricks of this type of investing is to get the land use type of the land changed. If you buy land that is agricultural you can get it cheap and then if you can change it to residential you stand to get a big profit. Often when you buy land they will give you time to consult any officials and also you need to do research which can be done at your local library to determine the probability of changing its land use type. Some people option a property which means you can buy that property at a set price within a set period of time although you will usually have to pay for this. Some investors use a blanket mortgage which means that the mortgage is secured on several additional properties in addition to the property you have borrowed for. This is particularly useful if you need a 100% mortgage but bear in mind you could lose all the properties. When you buy a property you should determine what the going rate for that type of property in that area, you should also know what rent you are going to charge or if you are selling or leasing lots how that compares to the local competition. You can tell if you negotiated a good deal because it should be easy to get customers and do you really want to have a hard time getting customers. Sometimes a seller will want more than a property is worth and one way around is to agree that he will get paid in a certain time period ie 2 years at a certain percentage rate which should be low. Another point is don't take the business books for a property or business at face value, get an accountant to check and he should check things like bills and receipts in addition to checking the account books.

Environmental Science

The book I read to research this post was Environmental Science for Dummies by Spooner which is an excellent book which I bought from Kindle. I think this book would be of particular interest to anyone concerned about the environment or anyone doing a science course related to environmental science. There is a trend in a lot of countries towards genetically modified animals and plants. With plants they can make them more hardy, increase the crop output, make them disease resistant and a more recent development is they can make the crop more nutritious. In the UK where I live these GM crops are banned because we don't know whether they have any adverse affects on the human body. Another issue is if you grow GM crops and their pollen is spread they can change other plants genetically which is a bit worrying. With genetically modified animals they can increase the amount of food produced, make them more hardy and make them disease resistant. In africa for example they can have cattle that are more drought resistant.
Another issue is introducing plants and animals from one region or country to another. In spain for example they have introduced carp and european catfish to the rivers. This has resulted in carp and catfish eating everything in them rivers so that they can't sustain any native fish and in many cases there is very little vegetation.
A different issue is sustainable farming where farmers do things like crop rotation, planting fruit trees to help clump the soil together & partial tillage where soil is ploughed but only partly so there is less chance of it blowing away.