Benner proposes that this ancestor became more terrestrial rather than primarily tree-dwelling. He introduced his theory at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science on February 15.
Species like orangutans which primarily live in trees didn't evolve to metabolize ethanol perhaps because they wouldn't have run into fermented fruit living aboveground.
whether or not the last common ancestor of humans chimps and gorillas actually spent time on the ground or lived entirely in trees.
I Many times look at something tree animal writing...and see some unique form of structure.
while drinking coffee (both to counter the logical what-are-you-doing-don't-color-outside-the-lines part of your mind)
lyi termed as flow (http://en. wikipedia. org/wiki/Flow (psychology)) You can also use this rather ghetto technique of calming podcast+coffee to learn a new skill like Illustrator
me that the objective of deducing the connections of all of the neuronal connections is like trying to identify all of the types and placements of trees shrubs and plants in a vast forest.
and trees in the world had less to feed on and adapted accordingly. What the western world puts out in co2
Comparable in size to the asteroid that destroyed 1000 square miles of trees and reindeer in Tunguska Siberia in 1908 2012 DA14 would be very bad news in a direct collision with a populated area.
Siberia heard an explosion that laid flat more than 800 square miles of the forest with all the trees pointing away from the center of the blast with most all the trees laying on their side.
Some trees that were right below the blast were still there looking like telephone poles with no bark
It is like cutting a tree in a forest-soon replaced. Oakspar you're assertion appears to be that individual lives don't matter.
All lives matter because unlike a tree in the forest they affect the world beyond the space they take up.
Here this zone is characterized by the expansion of Quercus (Oak) Corylus (Hazel) Taxus Ulmus (Elm) Fraxinus (Ash) Carpinus (Hornbeam) and Picea (Spruce.
A tree blown down wires ravaged by wind a flooded power facility each event had rippled out to affect homes far from the point of failure.
A single tree felled by a storm like Sandy can cut off power to thousands. The existing U s. electric grid has a linear structure.
That's why a single felled tree can cut power to thousands of customers. And that's how overgrown trees brushing high-voltage lines in Ohio could black out 50 million people along the East Coast in 2003.
One way to reduce the impact of any individual failure is to replace the linear structure with a looped one.
A tree hits the line. In the old linear system all the customers beyond the fault point would lose power;
A tree blown down wires ravaged by wind a flooded power facility each event had rippled out to affect homes far from the point of failure.
Just cut damn trees 15 feets on each side of each power line. It was Nikola Tesla who made the grid of today not Thomas Edison.
I have pet red fox Aspen and pet raccoon Savannah that I purchased from Tiny Tracks in Ind
Aspen loves to run in fenced in yard she also loves to be petted and lots of attention. She is good on leash
when attached with my little dachund she thinks she is her mother Aspen would play 24/7
It's all about the tree rings on that one magical pine tree and a statistical analysis method that will generate a temperature hockey stick even from random data.
instead in the amount of radioactive carbon trapped in the annual growth rings of some of the world's oldest trees.
Since trees take in both carbon-14 and its stable relative carbon-12 the relative levels of carbon-14 in their growth rings give scientists a way of measuring the amount of high-energy particles entering Earth's atmosphere in a given year.
When analyzing two ancient Japanese cedars last year the scientists found that the amount of carbon-14 present in their 775 AD growth rings was shockingly large.
which could then go on to form the carbon-14 present in such abundance in the Japanese cedars.
tree ring studies and sedimentary cores can often be used to identify variations in the atmospheric concentrations of whichever isotope is being used
Buzz70. comrobot i guess the record they were speaking of is the one from old Japanese cedars.
Cedars are known to reach 2000+years even in other parts of the world. 3000 years must be pretty much the max though.
Shouldn't it be pretty easy for them to expose some 775 A d. soil in the neighborhood of their 3000 year old trees
The tree-ring record actually goes back 12000 years and includes measurements from thousands of currently living forests as well as lots of long-dead trees that have been preserved in bogs and other decay-proof environments.
I mentioned the 3000-year record because for this study the researchers had to be able to see how carbon-14 levels changed from one year to the next
but the 12000-year record has only a five year resolution (measurements were taken from every fifth tree-ring;
and obtained annual tree-ring data for those other two events and it turned out that the carbon-14 spikes occurred over a few years
Also@monkeybuttons while it's true that carbon-14 dating isn't perfectly precise this study was based on tree rings
Yes they were measuring the carbon-14 in tree-rings but they weren't using the carbon-14 to tell them how long ago the event happened.
the reason scientists amassed this giant carbon record from trees in the first place is so that they could find out how carbon-14 inputs changed over time
and 1's or paper we shift a few data bytes around of chop down a tree and print some more.
Tomorrow it could be altered genetically tree fungus. I wonder what exactly were they looking for in the meet to need DNA tests for...
or aroma wheel including chocolate coffee maple products whisky and beer. One of the problems with the beer flavor wheel is that it's not particularly consumer-friendly.
which puts some of the traditional tree of life in a hard spot t
#Free To Good Home: 145 Wild Bisonthe America bison (whose scientific name we re delighted to report is used Bison bison bison to roam across the prairies by the millions
Here are some developments that blipped our tree-friendly radars: It's impressive: 32 national and 20 local or regional governments 40 companies 16 indigenous peoples groups and 49 nonprofits have pledged all cooperation to halve current rates of deforestation by 2020.
Major palm oil consumers Asian Agri Cargill Golden Agri-Resources Wilmar along with the Indonesian Chamber of commerce and Industry say they'll work with the government of Indonesia the world's largest palm oil producer to plant new palms
#The Turbine Tweak That Could Save Battered Batscryan's research published today in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences found that certain species of tree-roosting bats are more likely to be killed by wind turbines
This led researchers to theorize that the wind currents around slow moving turbines may resemble those created by trees where the bats gather to roost
We speculate that these are evolved behaviors that in trees and the bats basically can t tell the difference between wind turbines
and trees says Cryan the lead author of the study. Bats have been around for billions of years
and there s nothing in their history to prepare them for something that looks like a tree yet isn t a tree
Making the cut-in threshold higher should result in fewer of the slow-moving turbines that the bats confuse for trees.
Although Cryan and his colleagues did not undertake a formal prescription in the published paper he recommends further study of the cut-in threshold strategy for protecting tree-roosting bats.
and peatland destruction ecosystems that would otherwise be storing much more carbon than the palm plantations that replace them.
and the gaps between their annual tree rings are shorter. By matching up modern tree rings with ancient wood--such as beams from Pre-columbian Native american desert dwellings--researchers can track annual moisture patterns going back centuries.
That s an important part of how they know the Southwest has been through megadroughts before as well as how often they've happened.
Some of our best evidence of droughts comes from tree rings he points out. That means some trees grew during dry periods.
A megadrought doesn t spell death and destruction for all creatures. Less water does not mean no water.
According to NPR drought in Brazil (the world s largest producer of coffee) could wipe out 10 percent of the country s coffee by 2020 potentially raising prices on the commodity.
There are still other areas of the world that produce coffee but climate change experts are predicting that over the course of the next decade warmer temperatures could impact coffee growers around the world leading to even more coffee shortfalls.
For now coffee production levels are rising but it s still too early to tell
whether or not that trend is sustainable over the long term. Where's the shortage? Californiadetails:
In addition to drought affecting coffee Brazil has other problems. Back in February the FDA banned imports of frozen concentrated orange juice from Brazil because they found traces of fungicide in the product.
the perpetual moisture warmth and rich soil lead to extravagant growth of hundreds of varieties of tropical grasses plants flowers vines and trees furnishing favorable harbor for the insects;
Another group eats juniper which is also toxic to many animals. This gives the woodrats (Neotoma lepida) a nice niche allowing them to dine on a plant that others avoid.
and with that in mind the scientists fed a group of juniper-eating packrats a mixture of rabbit food and feces from creosote-eaters.
It may be possible for example to help livestock feed on toxic plants like juniper which is spreading throughout the Southwest
Even more troubling scientists have learned by studying tree rings that the 20th century was one of the two wettest 100-year periods in the past 1200 years.
There s a date palm in the front yard but the rest is all flat green grass. This is the wrong day for watering
#Giant Beetle Threatens Palm trees Of Hawaiino one knows exactly how the coconut rhinoceros beetle made its way to Hawaii
In 2007 the beetles destroyed an estimated 50 percent of the palm trees on the island of Guam.
which can destroy palm tree date palm sugarcane and banana tree populations. A potential method for detecting the beetles involves the use of acoustic monitoring devices to determine which trees are infested.
Richard Mankin an entomologist with USDA previously employed sound and vibration detection devices to locate the beetle in Guam.
because sounds and vibrations can be used to identify infested trees that need to be cut down
Otherwise if you are trying to eradicate an infestation you might have to cut down all the host trees just in case.
For example Guam residents are educated to chip up and burn dead trees an ideal breeding ground for the beetle's larvae.
and eradication effort quickly to avoid devastation of a sensitive island ecosystem and a culture so tied to the palm tree e
Anyone who doesn't prefer a good bed in a warm room to lumpy pine boughs
We followed the food supply living in caves brush piles hollow trees or under the dried skins of animals.
Anyone who doesn't prefer a good bed in a warm room to lumpy pine boughs
Without the pressure of cold hunger disease danger from outside and even greater danger from the quarrelsome combativeness in his own heart it is probable that he would still be living in trees
or organic including packaged breakfast oatmeal and shredded wheat but even bark from oak and black locust trees.
#'Chameleon'Vine Looks like Whatever Tree It Climbschameleons aren t the only species that excel at mimicry as biology professor Ernesto Gianoli discovered in Chile s temperate rainforests.
and has the abilities to mimic the leaves of its supporting trees as detailed by Gianoli and his student Fernando Carrasco-Urra in their paper.
How does the vine mimic their host trees without any contact? Carrasco-Urra and Gianoli have several hypotheses.
The vine might be sensing airborne chemicals released by the trees to help it choose what disguise to adopt.
and using genes from its host trees hich would explain why it mimics the nearest leaf
even if the leaf is not from the tree the vine is climbing on. Gianoli s team is investigating the mysterious Boquila further.
In order to do it the team developed an evolutionary tree containing all 9993 known bird species says Mooers
because when it started there was no single overarching analysis or evolutionary tree of bird evolution.
It seems like we have a single perfect tree here says Mooers about the final result.
But there is no single perfect tree of birds. So we had to do this over we had to create many millions of possible trees
and then take the average across those trees to get these metrics. Because there's still a lot of uncertainty as to who's related to who.
We didn't even have genetic data for every species. The project was risky enough by scientific standards says Mooers that the principal researchers opted to limit the potential for career damage.
Nobody had attempted something this big nobody had built a tree this big before. So we actually actively did not put any students on it.
#Missiles And Rockets Might Soon Smell Like Pine Treesin an effort to launch things skyward in a more sustainable way researchers have coaxed bacteria to produce a highly combustible compound called pinene.
Conifers naturally excrete the stuff in their resin lending the plants part of their distinctive scent.
So pretty soon a rocket or missile flying overhead might spew exhaust that smells like pine trees.
The group genetically engineered E coli bacteria to produce conifer-derived proteins that assemble pinene. Stephen Sarria and Pamela Peralta-Yahya two Georgia Tech researchers who collaborated on the new work published in ACS Synthetic biology broke down the process for Popular Science in four steps:
and remember the location of hard-to-reach foods (for example Moroccan goats are known to climb trees to reach sprigs)
The goal is to dampen broad swathes of the arid Colorado river delta Nature News'Alexandra Witze writes allowing new cottonwood
and willow trees to germinate and restore small patches of riparian habitat. The release is timed to
when native cottonwoods and willows drop their seeds Scienceinsider reports. Ecologists hope those seeds will take root in the newly-wetted sand
and drive out invasive salt cedars that have taken over. Scientists themselves will proliferate in the area after the planned mini-flood.
and how trees and birds react. Scienceinsider Nature News
#Has The Reintroduction Of Wolves Really Saved Yellowstone? The story goes something like this: Once upon a time we exterminated the wolves from the Rocky mountain West including the part that would become Yellowstone national park.
and kill prey the elk population grew so large it ate up all the young willow trees until there were none.
So with conservation ethics and ecological science in pretty good alignment we reintroduced the wolves to Yellowstone where today they scare away the hungry elk herds from the tasty young willows.
Journalist Emma Marris who recently wrote about wolf/ecosystem science for the journal Nature finds that Middleton's stance aligns with a growing body of evidence.
and is just getting more complex says Marris author of the book Rambunctious Garden: Saving Nature in a Post-Wild World.
Every population of wolves has a different interesting story going on with them says Marris.''In some places there are not enough of them in some places people are concerned there are too many.
At Yellowstone despite the re-introduction of wolves the willows are not actually recovering as well as was hoped.
One reason Marris found may be that wolves don't actually scare elk away from their preferred feeding areas as earlier research suggested they might.
When elk are really hungry they're going to take their chances with the wolves Marris says.
Another reason for poor willow recovery may be that the wolves came back to Yellowstone too late to affect the fate of another animal population:
while the wolves were gone says Marris. That was caused by the absence of wolves but also presumably by human management decisions climate and other factors.
willow. The elks won beaver numbers dropped and so did the extent of marshy habitat. Without beaver dams creating willow-friendly environments Marris says the willows can't recover.
In reporting her article Marris learned that beyond the pages of scientific journals the gaps between researchers who do
and don't support the apex predator theory are really fairly narrow. Generally it's accepted that there is a lot more involved in balancing an ecosystem.
Everywhere wolves exist says Marris they tell stories about how people and wild things make peace
but as more manufacturers have embraced his near-virgin product his plastics are appearing in more high-end applications like Nespresso coffee machines and Electrolux vacuum cleaners.
Beams of wood usually spruce are set down side by side in layers with each layer perpendicular to the one beneath it creating a wood board up to a foot thick.
#Wolf Decline Could End World's Longest Predator-Prey Studymoose eat balsam fir trees. When the moose population expands unchecked by predation fewer fir seedlings can grow large enough to escape into the canopy above the reach of moose
and reproduce. There is already a missing generation of trees from between about 1910 when the moose arrived on the island
and 1940 when the wolves came. Most of Isle Royale s balsam firs are thus either older than 100 years and near the end of their lives or young and short enough to be browsed to death.
In other words wolves are vital for the proper function of the ecosystem as we know it (something that has been shown over and over again
I see plainly that Welwitschia will be a case of Barnacles. I have another plant to beg
and insects are suited perfectly for environments where you have dynamic obstructions he trees are moving the branches are moving.
Zhang and colleagues successfully identified the location of the type of cacao trees grown in the Cajamarca Province of Peru as compared to the kind of cacao grown in other parts of Peru Brazil Trinidad and Ecuador.
and wild mango wood all have this smell. plã Âaeâ this means a bloody smell that attracts tigers.
Big Red gum. English speakers also spent more words on describing smells suggesting they were having a hard time putting things into words.
and those of a flowering tree called the catalpa. But it turned out that convincing people to stop smoking was the way to go after all
#With few hard frosts, tropical mangroves push northcold-sensitive mangrove forests have expanded dramatically along Florida's Atlantic Coast as the frequency of killing frosts has declined according to a new study based on 28 years
Between 1984 and 2011 the Florida Atlantic coast from the Miami area northward gained more than 3000 acres (1240 hectares) of mangroves.
Between Cape canaveral National Seashore and Saint augustine mangroves doubled in area. Meanwhile between the study's first five years and its last five years nearby Daytona Beach recorded 1. 4 fewer days per year
The mangroves'march up the coast as far north as St augustine Fla. is a striking example of one way climate change's impacts show up in nature.
This is what we would expect to see happening with climate change one ecosystem replacing another said Gruner who co-leads an interdisciplinary research project on mangrove ecosystems along with Ilka C. Feller of the Smithsonian.
Some people may say this is a good thing because of the tremendous threats that mangroves face said the study's lead author Kyle Cavanaugh a Smithsonian postdoctoral research fellow.
The mangroves are replacing salt marshes which have important ecosystem functions and food webs of their own. Mangrove forests grow in calm shallow coastal waters throughout the tropics.
or the honey bees that produce mangrove honey rely on one or the other. Both provide valuable ecosystem services buffering floods storing atmospheric carbon and building soils.
Florida naturalists noticed that mangroves now grow in places that once were too chilly for the tropical trees.
The satellite images revealed the mangroves'expansion into terrain formerly inhabited by salt marsh plants. While the study only looked at the Atlantic Coast the same trend is taking place on Florida's Gulf Coast Cavanaugh
But if overall warming benefited mangroves the mangrove cover should have increased all over Florida not only in the north.
Average winter temperature rainfall and urban or agricultural land use did not explain the mangroves'expansion.
if mangroves are expanding elsewhere as they are in Florida. Story Source: The above story is provided based on materials by University of Maryland.
#Field trial with lignin modified poplars shows potential for bio-based economythe results of a field trial with genetically modified poplar trees in Zwijnaarde Belgium shows that the wood of lignin modified poplar trees can be converted into sugars in a more efficient way.
The field trial however also showed that the suppression of the lignin biosynthesis in the trees is variable.
In some trees the suppression is stronger than in other trees which is visible through a more pronounced red coloration of the wood beneath the bark.
This in itself is positive except for the fact that the modified trees appear to grow somewhat less rapid than non-modified poplar trees.
what causes the growth retardation we immediately will start to work on poplars that grow normal
It must be possible to improve the ethanol yield per tree with 50 to 100%.
%In the poplar trees in the field trial in Zwijnaarde in Belgium the so-called'CCR-enzyme'is suppressed.
In a new field trial that VIB will start in Wetteren Belgium in 2014 trees will be tested in
'In these trees also a more modern way of suppression of the enzyme has been used. This new trial therefore fits into the search for modifications that provide a more uniform suppression of the lignin biosynthesis. Story Source:
Palms belonging to the Genus phoenix including the economically-important date palm Phoenix dactylifera i e. the main fruit crop in North africa and the Middle east are amongst the groups of flowering plants characterized by difficulties in species discrimination based on their look.
whereas they come into contact generating even more confusion for palm scientists. To overcome such an issue an international team of scientists examined a small region of CHLOROPLAST DNA looking for a potential barcode for this group of plants.
By screening over 130 palm individuals from 13 out of the 14 species of the Genus phoenix they found enough variation in the composition of the DNA to be able to identify correctly eight species out of 13 and more than 82%of the individuals.
'Finding the appropriate DNA barcode for Phoenix palms has several practical applications ranging from the conservation of endemic
and/or endangered species like the Canary Island date palm or the Cretan date palm to the identification of hybrids having an ornamental value'.
'The identification of palm individuals at the species level as well as the detection of hybrids can also be very helpful for preserving the genetic characteristics.
Consequently as in the case of date palm the fruit quality of cultivated stocks is one of the most interesting returns of this kind of study.'
'To achieve a 100%success in identifying Phoenix palms we have to analyze a few more regions of DNA especially in the case of closely related species
A new invasive plant parasitic nematode in Europefollowing its recent synonymisation with Meloidogyne ulmi a species known to parasitize elm trees in Europe it has become clear that M. mali has been in The netherlands for more than fifty years.
Evidences given by the authors suggest that M. mali was introduced probably during the breeding program on Elms against the Dutch elm disease (DED) during
which large numbers of Elm rootstocks and seeds were imported from several different countries. The study was published in the open access journal Zookeys.
M. ulmi the synonym of M. mali was described first in Italy on the Elm tree species Ulmus Chenmoui.
which resistant Elm rootstocks were sent at the end of the breeding program. The first description of M. mali was in Japan
Many studies later on associated this nematode species with several plant species including Elms. In Europe however it was for years only known to parasitize Elms.
The trial field'Mierenbos'in Wageningen used for growing the resistant Elm cultivars is infested completely with M. mali with all the trees showing severe galling symptoms.
During this study M. mali was tested on some more plant species which were found to be hosts to this nematode species. The authors compounded a list of about 44 different plant species currently recognized as host to M. mali.
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