and swung from the trees new research suggests. Oreopithecus bambolii an ape that lived on an isolated island 7 million to 9 million years ago in
Apes have longer arms for swinging through trees and monkeys often have tails that let them grab branches).
Denise Dearing a biologist at the University of Utah studies how herbivores deal with toxins from plants such as creosote juniper and alpine avens a wildflower.
On the other hand the spike in wildfires is transforming Alaska's coniferous forests into woodlands made up of relatively fire-resistant deciduous trees.
By collecting samples of pollen in the sediment they could also tell which tree species populated the Yukon Flats over time.
and severity increased during the period between 6000 and 3000 years ago coinciding with the spread of the highly flammable black spruce (Picea mariana).
However the severe wildfires promoted the growth of fire-resistant plant species resulting in a gradual shift from conifer-rich boreal forests to deciduous woodlands.
Aspens (Populus tremuloides) and other deciduous trees limited the frequency of fires and prevented it from increasing more than in previous periods.
Present and future fire In the last 50 years the Yukon Flats have seen the same kind of changes in tree composition that occurred during the MCA with young deciduous treesslowly taking over the territory once occupied by black-spruce trees.
And it's plausible that as the climate continues to warm even the fire-resistant deciduous trees could start to burn.
#Super-Eruption Launched Algae Army Into the Sky Slimy brown algae not only survived a wild ride into the stratosphere via a volcanic ash cloud they landed on distant islands looking flawless a new study finds.
Lumped together the microscopic cells speckled throughout Taupo's ash layers would make a pile as big as Hawaii's famed Diamond Head volcanic cone.
The pristine shells in the Chatham Island ash suggest diatoms could infect new niches by coasting on atmospheric currents.
We know that ash from smaller events easily travels around the world. 5 Colossal Cones:
The combination of water and ash created a hellish dirty thunderstorm with towering clouds and roaring winds.
The detonation flung ash and algae upward at more than 250 mph (400 km h) Van Eaton said.
The first time I ever saw them I was looking at these volcanic ash aggregates and bam these gorgeous little symmetrical shells were said there she.
Van Eaton soon determined that one of the three diatom species entombed in the ash only lives on the North Island of New zealand.
This meant she could track the 25000-year-old ash layers around the South Pacific with a unique biologic marker.
The unique North Island diatoms turned up in a few inches of ash on the Chatham Islands.
Some of the diatoms even kept their color both in ash close to the volcano and at the Chatham Islands.
This is potentially another tool to pinpoint where ash deposits come from Van Eaton said. If the work is done to characterize the kinds of microbes that are unique to an area then it could give you a biogenic fingerprint for your eruption deposits.
Ash travels hundreds of miles but once it's far from its source linking a few inches of glass back to a single volcano becomes difficult particularly in regions like the South Pacific where volcanoes pop off all the time.
But Theriot is skeptical that diatoms will prove to be a useful tool for tracking volcanic ash.
If you found diatoms in ash deposits in a bog in Ohio you would have no idea
It would take a really extraordinary set of circumstances like this New zealand diatom that is clearly out of place to be convincing that the diatoms had blown in with the ash.
Supervolcanoes are capable of eruptions dwarfing anything ever seen in recorded history expelling thousands of times more magma and ash than even a Mount st helens or Pinatubo.
A supervolcanic eruption could wreak as much havoc as the impact of a mile-wide asteroidby blotting out the sun with ash reflecting its rays
and other organic matter from the layer that contained the ash from Toba they saw no evidence of a significant temperature drop in East Africa.
The impact of an eruption depends not just on the amount of ash erupted but also the composition and volume of aerosols how high in the atmosphere the ash is injected and the meteorological conditions at the time.
As for what might explain the near-extinction humanity apparently once experienced perhaps another kind of catastrophe such as disease hit the species. It may also be possible that such a disaster never happened in the first place genetic research suggests modern humans descend from a single population of a few thousand survivors of a calamity
Too Many Trees (Op-Ed) Jamie Workman writer for the Environmental Defense Fund contributed this article to Livescience's Expert Voices:
when he warned that trees cause more pollution than automobiles do. Go ahead snicker. I sure did.
Today our Western forests from the Rockies to the mountains of the Sierra nevada are loaded with several billion excess trees.
or Native americans had limited always forest stocks to roughly a few dozen trees per acre. All that changed in 1910
roughly 112 to 172 more trees per acre in mountain forests of the West. This process of unnatural afforestation (the establishment of trees or tree stands where none previously were) may sound green
and benevolent but the reality is quite different. The new trees'canopies collectively intercept 20 to 30 percent of snow
and rain that can no longer seep into the ground and each additional tree's roots suck 18 gallons of moisture up out of the ground before runoff can feed thirsty creeks.
That adds up. Helen Poulos a fire ecologist at Wesleyan University and I have estimated conservatively that excess trees in the 7. 5 million acres of Sierra nevada conifer forest are responsible for the loss of more than 15 billion gallons per day
or 17 million acre-feet of water per year. That's more than enough water to meet the needs of every Californian for a year.
Metastasizing native tree growth also physically alters the temperature chemistry and biology of the landscape.
Deprived of low-intensity naturally occurring fires aspen lupine sequoia and fireweed can't reproduce. Deer lose edge habitat.
We need to surgically remove the bulk of the excess small-diameter'trash'trees through careful thinning.
Western markets value an acre-foot of water at $450 to $650 which means that the annual worth of water taken up by excess trees throughout the Western forests may be more than $8. 5 billion.
To recover that water private and local public entities could invest $1000 per acre in people to cut down small fire-prone trees yielding $1500 worth of vital water per acre.
if 12 trees are good 100 trees must be better. It's that kind of thinking that now threatens to strangle the very forests
The biggest thing is just keeping it simple said Cassie from Dietitiancassie. com (whose last name is registered Bjork) a licensed dietitian and health coach.
and veggies can also make the Thanksgiving menu a crowd-pleaser Cassie said. Thanksgiving: 10 Tips for Sticking to Healthy Portions Simple meals Those who follow the Paleo diet typically shun grains sugars dairy
and fat Cassie told Livescience. Other dishes can be modified to make them Paleo-friendly. For instance sweet-potato casserole can be made without the marshmallows and cream.
The main thing is just keeping your side dishes free of any type of meat Cassie said.
which can ensure that everyone eats happily Cassie said. And before pulling out all the stops in a gluten-free low-carb vegan Paleo Thanksgiving check in with your guests as well Spritzler said Some low-carbers may choose to only eat the turkey
Sweet cider Coffee  II A Simple Company Dinner of Six Courses  Celery Clam Bouillon Saltines Ripe olives  Roast Chestnut-Stuffed Turkey
Assorted Fruit Coffee  III A Formal Company Dinner. Eight Courses Curled Celery Oyster Soup Bread Sticks Radish Rosettes  Turbans of Flounder Hollandaise Sauce Potato Straws Olives Crusty Rolls
-and-Grape Salad  Macaroon Pudding Frozen Mince pie Hot chocolate Sauce  Glaceed Walnuts Fruit Black Coffee  IV Elaborate Formal Dinner.
Pumpkin pie Raisin and Cranberry Tarts Chocolate Parfait Almond Cakes  Nuts Raisins Bonbons Candied Orange peel Black Coffee  Thanksgiving menu from Fannie
While it may not grow on trees money has flooded public streets on multiple occasions. In 2004 an armored truck crashed on the New jersey Turnpike spilling $2 million in coins.
me The two most immediate patterns that tumble out of the triangle are its bilateral symmetry the left and right halves of the tree mirror each other perfectly and the sight of the familiar counting numbers marching down the inner diagonals on each
Imagine Hercules fighting a Hydra that grows heads like a tree. If he cuts off one head the<a href=http://www. livescience. com/11320-top-10-beasts-dragons-reality-myth. html>mythic monster</a>simply grows back a certain number
</p><p>The number Friedman derived TREE (3) is calculated by creating increasingly massive towers of twos raised to the power of two using something called Ackerman functions.
But TREE (3) is massively massively larger than that — so massive that it makes Graham'
Why do these trees grow here and others grow elsewhere? We would catch tadpoles put them in our backyard pond
My trusty Macbook and a full cup of coffee. What music do you play most often in your office or car?
If the NMPF gets its way thousands of Americans will unknowingly ingest sweeteners in their morning coffee.
#The Origins of the Olive tree Revealed The olive was domesticated first in the Eastern Mediterranean between 8000 and 6000 years ago according to new research.
which are larger and juicier than wild varieties were cultivated probably first from wild olive trees at the frontier between Turkey and Syria.
From biblical times the olive tree has served as a symbol of sacredness peace and unity. Archaeologists have unearthed olive pits at sites dating to about 8000 years old.
History's Most Overlooked Mysteries To unravel the history of the olive tree the team took 1263 wild
and 534 cultivated olive tree samples from throughout the Mediterranean and analyzed genetic material from the trees'chloroplasts the green plant structures where photosynthesis takes place.
Because CHLOROPLAST DNA is passed from one tree to the descendant trees that spring up around it the DNA can reveal local changes in plant lineages he said.
The researchers then reconstructed a genetic tree to show how the plant dispersed. The team found that the thin small and bitter wild fruit first gave way to oil-rich larger olives on the border between Turkey and Syria.
After that first cultivation modern-day domesticated olives came mostly from three hotspots: the Near east (including Cyprus) the Aegean sea and the Strait of gibraltar.
But to get a true sense of how the olive tree emerged the researchers shouldn't just look at CHLOROPLAST DNA said Andrã Bervillã a geneticist at The french National Institute for Agricultural Research who was involved not in the study.
Pollen from the olive tree is wind-transported so it can migrate long distances he said. Combining both types of DNA would allow researchers to understand both how local olive tree cultivation occurred
and how more long-distance changes occurred he said. Follow Livescience on Twitter@livescience. We're also on Facebookâ & Google+.
snowmen Santa filling stockings wreaths of holly and children caroling according to the Winterthur Library. But some early Christmas card imagery featured in Grossman's book Christmas Curiosities (Stewart Tabori and Chang 2008) may look more bizarre to modern eyes:
Krampus dragging bad children to the underworld pine trees kissing Santa lighting a cigar off a Christmas tree anthropomorphic mice decorating trees and cats tossing snowballs.
#The Truth About Garcinia cambogia If you ask me there's really only one way to lose weight
Garcinia cambogia. Garcinia cambogia is a small pumpkin-shaped fruit. You may know it as tamarind. The extract of the fruit is called hydroxycitric acid and that is
what the magic pills are made from. But do they work? 9 Meal Schedules: When to Eat to Lose weight Let's explore the research:
and women researchers concluded that garcinia cambogia did not produce significant weight or fat loss above the placebo. 2013 review in the journal Complementary Theories in Medicine:
Researchers tested a high dose of garcinia cambogia extract on obese male rats. The good news? The rats lost weight!
whether it is garcinia cambogia or some other plant-based extract proceed with caution. If you're talking any prescription medications talk to your doctor before adding any herbal supplement.
Tim Kovar is a master tree-climbing instructor and the founder of the Tree Climbing Planet.
while climbing trees all over the world including in remote areas of India Central america and the Amazon basin.
Recently he described how it feels to reach the top of a tall tree and why it won't help to call 911
if you get stuck while answering questions about tree-climbing for Sierra magazine. Sierra: What was the first tree you ever climbed?
One of my earliest memories as a little boy was climbing the neighbor's apple tree.
I remember getting stuck up in the treetop. My friend's father had to come and help
me get out of the tree. I was maybe five years old at the time. And of course I loved it.
Why do people climb trees? People have different reasons for wanting to be up in the canopy.
Some people come around to do tree work some people are tree doctors some are doing canopy research.
Personally when I climb up trees I find peace up there. For me it's like a meditation.
What are some essentials for a tree-climbing expedition? With this kind of technical tree-climbing we stay tied in the whole time.
So we're always on a rope and in a saddle. These are designed specially ropes and saddles.
If you get 200 feet up in a tree and you get stuck or you drop your rope there is really no one to call who can come
and they're going to have no idea how to get up into the top of a tree to rescue someone.
What do you do to prevent the tree from being damaged while tree-climbing? We have called devices cambium savers
which protect the tree bark and branches. So as we're climbing we're not digging the rope into the tree branch
which would be damaging the cambium layer of the tree. Also we want to make sure to stay on the rope the whole time.
When you're climbing on a rope up into the treetop you have minimal impact on the tree.
when you're climbing redwood trees for example. But more important it's to make sure you're not damaging the plant life that's up in the treetops too.
In the jungle the majority of the life forms actually live up in the trees. It can take 200 years
I had one example of taking a guy tree-climbing in the Amazon a local community member probably in his early 60s.
He saw me climbing the trees and he came over and said (through a translator) that he'd like to give it a shot.
But when he got up in the tree maybe forty feet or so and looked around the forest he saw his home from a different perspective
You've climbed trees with indigenous people all around the world. have encountered you ever cultures where adults climb trees?
There are quite a few cultures where adults still climb trees. Usually it is to gather honey
or some are helping canopy researchers. They're finding a way to make money by climbing their trees.
Some others kind of laugh at me when they watch me climb with all my ropes and saddles and gear that I have.
When they climb they just grab a tree put a little rope between their feet
and just shoot up the tree. Which tree is on your bucket list? Climbing the Baobab trees in Madagascar.
And also while I'm in Madagascar I want to climb with the lemurs. I'm fascinated with the primates in Madagascar
and would love to get up there and join their troop for a few days. This article originally appeared as The Adventures of a Professional Tree-Climber in the magazine Sierra.
The views expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher.
and once the tadpoles hatch she ferries each one on her back from the rain forest floor up to trees as tall as 100 feet (30 meters).
Up in the trees mama frog seeks out safe water pool nurseries in the leaves for each baby.
Scientists believe trees do not absorb mercury so fruits and nuts may be safe although that has not been tested.
and the loss of forest caused by the miners stripping the trees had tripled since 2008 the time of the Great Recession when gold prices skyrocketed.
#There's Gold in Them Thar Plants Money doesn't grow on trees but gold might.
If the plants are burned some of the gold will stay attached to the ash but some will disappear.
Processing the ash poses difficulties too and requires the use of huge amounts of strong acids
#There's Gold in Them Thar Trees Trees may turn golden for reasons that have nothing to do with the onset of autumn:
Eucalyptus trees can hold grains of gold potentially helping reveal buried treasure scientists now find. Many plants root deep into the Earth drawing up nutrients and minerals they need for life.
Scientists in Australia focused on eucalyptus trees since traces of gold are sometimes found in soils surrounding these plants.
whether trees could actually absorb the precious metal from underground deposits or if the wind simply blew gold dust there from other sites.
Now one group has discovered the first evidence in nature of gold particles located within living tissue from trees.
and bark of eucalyptus trees up to 35 feet (10 meters) tall from two locations in Australia one in the west another in the south.
but the areas were undisturbed by further mining activity that might have contaminated the trees with gold dust.
X-ray analysis revealed gold particles up to about 8 microns wide in cells from the trees or about 10 times thinner than the average human hair.
Field samples and greenhouse experiments suggest these gold particles which exist at concentrations not harmful to the trees are absorbed by the roots
and transported to its extremities such as leaves where the highest concentrations were observed These findings detailed online Oct 22 in the journal Nature Communicationssuggest the trees could tap into gold deposits up to 115 feet (35 meters) below them
We were astounded at the capability of the eucalyptus trees to bring up gold from the equivalent height of a 10-story buildingstudy lead author Melvyn Lintern a geochemist at the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization in Australia told Livescience's Ouramazingplanet.
The researchers are not proposing mining these eucalyptus trees for gold Lintern cautioned. The amount of gold in the trees is extremely small.
You would need 500 trees or more growing over a gold deposit to have enough gold to make a ring.
Instead eucalyptus trees could help miners identify where deeply buried gold deposits might be located and therefore avoid wasting time money
and resources hunting for the precious metal over vast tracts of land Lintern said. Follow Ouramazingplanetâ@OAPLANET Facebookâ and Google+.
when it's in short supply living trees make noises when they are running out of water
what a human can hear in slivers of dead pine wood bathed in a hydrogel to simulate the conditions of a living tree.
what occurs to trees during droughts. While the lab experiment was an approximation the samples were distressed in an hour far more quickly than a living tree it is helping to isolate
what noises the trees make said lead researcher Philippe Marmottant. It's the first time the hydrogel was used for this purpose.
We can track the articulation of bubbles and what we found is the majority of the sounds that we hear are linked to bubbles said Marmottant who is working on the problem with two postgraduate students.
Tiny bubbles Air bubbles form when a tree is trying to suck moisture out of dry ground during droughts.
As leaves on a tree collect carbon dioxide they open their pores a process that leaves them vulnerable to water loss.
Evaporation from the leaves pulls water up the trees in a state of tension. The tree vacuums up water from the ground through its root system pulling it up through tubes.
There are thousands of them in a typical tree connected by pit membranes (sort of like a two-way valve.
Tension in the xylem tubes increases in times of drought then cavitates. Douglas firs and pine trees can repair this damage as frequently as every hour said Katherine Mcculloh a plant ecophysiologist at Oregon State university in a past Our Amazing Planet interview.
The bubbles are deadly for other species however if the bubbles block the water's flow.
Plant listening device The race is now on between researchers to create equipment capable of listening to tree sounds.
One research team at Duke university plans to adapt acoustic sensor technology used for bridge cracks into a low-cost tree listener that could be ready as early as summer 2013.
These biologists have good experience to do this so we hope that our study will bring some new information about the sounds that could be heard in trees Marmottant said.
The team published an earlier paper on using hydrogel with artificial trees in Physical Review Letters in May 2012.
#Too much Deer Pee Changing Northern Forests The booming deer population in the northern United states is bad for the animal's beloved hemlocks a new study finds.
During Michigan winters white-tailed deer converge on stands of young hemlocks for protection from winter chill and predators.
While deer pee can be a valuable source of nitrogen a rare and necessary nutrient for plants some deeryards are now too rich for the hemlocks to grow.
and hemlock can be competed out by other species in really high nitrogen environments. Slow-growing hemlocks prefer low-nitrogen soil
and the prolific pee results in nitrogen-loving species like sugar maple outgrowing the hemlocks the researchers found.
Hemlocks are already struggling to recover from logging and other ecosystem changes that reduced their numbers to 1 percent of pre-settlement populations in some parts of Michigan Murray said.
At the moment it's difficult to find hemlock stands where there are saplings in the understory that are going to replace the hemlocks in the overstory
when they die he told Ouramazingplanet. The lack of regeneration could be due to a number of issues
With the reduced hemlock cover available for deer the booming white-tailed deer population means more deer crowd into the remaining forest.
And young hemlocks have a tough time recovering from the deer nibbling and browsing. In the eastern United states an invasive sap-sucking bug called the adelgid is also killing off hemlocks.
The Upper Midwest represents one of the last strongholds of hemlocks Murray said. Email Becky Oskin or follow her@beckyoskin. Follow usâ@OAPLANET Facebookâ & Google+.
+Original article on Livescience's Ouramazingplanet l
#Top Foods Children Choke On For kids the food most likely to go down the wrong pipe
me growing up in Anchorage Alaska the first trace of green on long-bare trees signifies the true end of winter.
Each year on my birthday in early May I d eagerly scan the birch trees for that first hint of lime-green that signaled oespring is here!
I ve maintained sanity by avidly tracking the leafing of cottonwood trees (each February mind you!)
When warmer temperatures occur earlier in the year trees may leaf out and blossom earlier
but they only provide a coarse view of the landscape not individual trees. Â That s where we come in.
but also color change and leaf drop in the autumn across the entire country For the next five years we re particularly interested in tracking maples oaks
and poplars some of the most culturally and economically important tree species in the United states. Â In addition to building a more robust and detailed map of the Green Wave knowledge gathered on the ground helps us improve forecast models and early warning systems for use in forest management
We ve established campaigns focused on maples oaks and poplars for each region of the United states. Even if oespring has sprung in your area it s not too late to select a plant
and track it through the summer because we also want to know specifics of the autumn oebrown-down too.
#Tree-Killing Insects Adapting to Warmer Cities Bizarre-looking bugs known as scale insects may be tiny but they can take down an oak tree.
Considered pests the creatures tend to flock to cities where they weaken and in some cases kill trees by sucking out their sap.
A new study shows that scale insects are found in big numbers in populous regions because they have adapted to the heat of urban areas.
We now have a better understanding of why trees in urban areas are infested by so many of these pests study researcher Steve Frank an assistant professor of entomology at North carolina State university said in a statement.
which feeds exclusively on oaks. By looking at temperature maps of the city the researchers found that the scale populations were as much as 800 percent higher in the warm zones.
Rising numbers of scale insects in cities could spell trouble for city trees which can provide some environmental benefits like cooling through shade and carbon sequestration.
and infest more rural trees the researchers warn. Their findings were detailed in a study published online last week in the journal PLOS ONE.
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