#Conservation Efforts Not Just for Tree Huggers This Sciencelives article was provided to Live Science in partnership with the National Science Foundation.
As climate change stresses ecosystems already rare plant species could sadly go extinct. One solution is to collect plant
How fascinating it is to learn how these mostly stationary organisms obtain nutrients grow toward light find a mate produce
The high levels of sugar found in canned fruit may outweigh the benefits of the fruit Oyebode said.
and vegetable consumption particularly vegetables and salad the researchers wrote today (March 31) in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health.
#How Do Peanuts Grow? Peanuts do not grow on trees. Despite their name and appearance peanuts are not tree nuts like walnuts
and pecans they're part of the legume family of plants which includes beans lentils peas and other familiar foods.
When planted peanut seeds (kernels) grow into small 18-inch plants with oval-shaped leaves. The peanut plant appears unremarkable at first glance
but unlike most other plants its flowers bloom above ground while its fruits (peanuts) develop below ground.
To start the small yellow flowers grow around the lower portion of the plant and only last for about a day.
After self-pollination the flowers lose their petals as the fertilized ovaries in the center of the flowers begin to enlarge.
The pegs with the new peanut embryos at their tips extend into the ground. Now embedded in the ground the pegs turn horizontal (parallel to the soil surface) and mature.
and nutrients and swells to form a single wrinkled shell that contains two to four peanuts.
Over its lifetime the peanut plant will produce about 40 peanut pods before dying. Follow Joseph Castro on Twitter.
Additionally the plant's suckers (side shoots that grow in between the leaves of the main stem)
After receiving adequate nutrition their hormone-producing glands rebounded far quicker than their livers (which normally metabolize hormones) resulting in hormonal spikes that caused lactation.
Similarly a condition called liver cirrhosis can cause lactation by disrupting the organ's normal hormone-metabolizing function.
Health Benefits, Risks & Nutrition Facts Soft and creamy enough to be put in pies and called dessert sweet potatoes are also a surprisingly nutritious vegetable.
The orange-fleshed tubers are especially high in Vitamin a (also called beta-carotene which is the carotenoid that turns into Vitamin a) vitamins C E and B6 fiber and manganese.
although they do have more sugar. Sweet potatoes are one of the best Vitamin a sources out there containing more than 100 percent of the daily recommended intake.
while sweet potato pie might be soul food sweet potatoes themselves are a whole-body vegetable. Heart health Sweet potatoes are a great source of B6 vitamins
) Unlike processed sugars sweet potatoes natural sugar is released slowly into your bloodstream. This means you won t get blood sugar spikes
Given that sweet potatoes are in general very nutritious you don t need to cut them out of your diet
Sweet potatoes however have higher concentrations of most nutrients and more fiber. Sweet potatoes are compared roots to regular potatoes
or spotting caused by the egg burrowing into the uterine lining. An absence of spotting is not a cause for concern as most women do not spot during the first few weeks of pregnancy.
The hcg alerts your ovaries to stop releasing eggs and increases the production of estrogen and progesterone.
The placenta made up of two layers provides nutrients and oxygen to the embryo that will begin functioning at the end of the week.
which produce the red blood cells and deliver nutrients until the placenta has developed fully. The embryo now about 2 millimeters (0. 079 inches) long according to the American Pregnancy Association has three layers:
This could be lean beef chicken legumes or tofu. Lean red meat will also help with your iron intake
which you need to support the increased blood volume. Add some foods rich in Vitamin c like oranges and berries to help with iron absorption.
talk to your health care provider about adding them to your diet. Leafy greens like spinach deliver both of these nutrients
which help to promote bone development and avoid birth defects. Citrus foods are also naturally high in folate so a calcium-enriched orange juice is a great addition to any breakfast.
The American Pregnancy Association recommends talking to your health care provider before beginning or continuing an exercise routine
when the ovary is releasing an egg. Some women will experience an increase in vaginal discharge
or spotting caused by the egg burrowing into the uterine lining. An absence of spotting is not a cause for concern as the majority of women do not spot during the first few weeks of pregnancy.
In weeks 1 and 2 of pregnancy the fertilized egg moves into the uterus and becomes a blastocyte or blastocyst a very tiny group of cells the size of the head of a pin.
The hcg alerts your ovaries to stop releasing eggs and increases production of estrogen and progesterone.
The blastocyst receives all vital nutrients through blood vessels though the placenta will eventually take over this task.
This could be lean beef chicken legumes or tofu. Lean red meat will also help with your iron intake
which you need to support the increased blood volume. Add some foods rich in Vitamin c like oranges and berries to help with iron absorption.
Leafy greens like spinach deliver both of these nutrients which help with bone development and avoiding birth defects.
Citrus foods are also naturally high in folate so a calcium-enriched orange juice is a great addition to any breakfast.
Talk to your health care provider about adding a prenatal vitamin to your diet. The American Pregnancy Association recommends talking to your health care provider before beginning
The outbreak began with Ebola cases that surfaced in Guinea and subsequently spread to the neighboring countries of Liberia and Sierra leone.
being unprepared to contain an infectious disease may even turn the health care setting into a hub for further spread of the disease he said.
Some of the ram's relatives are goats bison buffalo antelopes and cattle according to the Integrated Taxonomic Information system (ITIS.
which include adult females and lambs of both genders. Rams fight to decide who will be the dominant male in their group.
They usually have only one lamb at a time. In the spring the young are born on high ledges that protect them from predators.
Lambs are dependent on their mothers for the first four to six months of their lives though they can walk almost as soon as they are born.
#Buffalo Facts Water buffalo & Cape buffalo Buffalo are large members of the Bovidae family. There are two types of buffalo:
the African or Cape buffalo and the Asian water buffalo. They are dark gray or black animals that look a lot like bulls.
Buffalo are confused often with bison. Early American settlers called bison buffalo because the animals are similar in appearance.
However while bison are also bovines (a subfamily of bovids) they are in a different genus from true buffalo.
Other bovines include domestic cattle oxen yaks four-horned antelopes bongos and kudus according to the Integrated Taxonomic Information system (ITIS.
It is 8 to 9 feet (2. 4 to 2. 7 meters) from head to rump with its tail adding an extra 2 to 3. 3 feet (60 to 100 centimeters.
The African buffalo is smaller but they are still quite impressive in size. They are 4. 26 to 4. 92 feet long (130 to 150 cm) from head to hoof
The African buffalo is never far from water. They can live in grasslands savannas swamps lowland floodplains mixed forest
Buffalo are social animals and live in groups called herds. Water buffalo herds are segregated by gender.
Young males stay with the maternal herd for about three years and then they join a male herd.
African buffalo herds are mixed mostly of gender. They do have a few all-male herds but these usually consist of old males.
Buffalo are herbivores and so eat only vegetation. Their favorite foods are grass and herbs but water buffalo will also eat aquatic plants.
Both African and Asian buffalo will eat shrubs and trees when they can't find grass
or herbs to eat. Buffalo like most mammals bear live young which are called calves. Usually they have one calf at a time
and the female will carry the calf for a gestation period of 9 to 11 months before giving birth.
Once the calf is born a water buffalo will stay with its mother for around three years.
while African buffalo live around 26 years. The taxonomy of buffalo according to ITIS is: Water buffalo were domesticated more than 5000 years ago.
Humans use the meat milk horns and leather. Buffalo are used also for transportation and to pull plows.
Wild water buffalo are endangered according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature. They have a population of less than 4000 though it is uncertain
what the exact numbers are. The African buffalo is endangered not and has a population of 900000 according to the African Wildlife Foundation.
Male water buffalo have horns that curve backward. These horns can grow to 5 feet (1. 5 meters) long.
African buffalo have a democracy. When they are ready to travel they will stand and turn in the direction they want to go.
African buffalo are very aggressive and have a tendency to attack humans. They are very protective of each other
From October to December one of the rainy seasons the moths lay their eggs on grasses and crops in Kenya and Tanzania.
000 kilometres and lay 1, 000 eggs in its 10-day lifetime. Armyworms have attacked, with varying intensity,
The virus is likely to be spread by bat droppings falling into the pigs'feed,
The others become hamburger. Previously, DNA tests allowed a typical breeder to select the best bull some 35%of the time,
Some have suggested that we import more sugar-based ethanol from Brazil and we should indeed consider all sources of available ethanol â Â
the fires have been particularly quick to spread through suburban areas that back onto bushland. As the populations of cities such as Melbourne grow,
and can provide nutrients for fresh plant growth, for example. Most trees and tall vegetation can survive normal bushfires,
Nature Newsthe creation of human-animal hybrid embryos proposed as a way to generate embryonic stem cells without relying on scarce human eggs has met with legislative hurdles and public outcry.
human-mouse and human-rabbit hybrid embryos fail to grow beyond 16 cells (Y. Chung et al.
cow, mouse and rabbit eggs with nuclei from human non-sex, or somatic cells. Human-human embryos developed normally
using eggs from the common cow to create hybrid gaur-cow embryos. However, these two species are related closely.
It may be possible to create hybrid embryos using human somatic cells and eggs from nonhuman primates,
but primate eggs are also in short supply, says Lanza. Although Hui Zhen Sheng from the Shanghai Second Medical University in China and her colleagues have reported creating human-rabbit embryos (Y. Chen et al.
Cell Res. 13,251-263; 2003), several labs have been unable to replicate the findings, according to Lanza and others in the field.
and RNA found in the egg, with control eventually passing to DNA in the nucleus. This transfer of power occurs in humans
through the egg from distantly related species. If researchers can find the reason why some hybrid embryos stop developing,
Strategic Advisory Group of Experts (SAGE) on Immunization issues vaccination advice to THE WHO, including use of a single dose of vaccine in adults and adolescents and use of any licensed vaccine for pregnant women.
South africa confirms its first case of swine flu-offically marking the disease's spread into Sub-saharan africa.
Those bacteria are needed to break down grass and other delicacies in her fibrous diet but could also pose an infection risk.
Despite this diversity, years of breeding cattle for meat and milk have weakened the herds, says Cunningham,
We would be foolish to put all of our eggs in either basket.
Sodium traces hint at subsurface ocean on Enceladus: Nature Newsthe water plumes erupting from the south pole of Saturn's moon Enceladus could be caused by a liquid ocean lurking many kilometres underground rather than by geysers erupting from a salty ocean just beneath the moon
along with salt-poor ice grains that are formed like snowflakes from pure water vapour. Salt-rich grains are frozen directly ocean water dragged up by strong vapour flow
As tectonic plates in the crust move and collide, the crust fractures and these clathrates release gases,
These ice particles could carry up salt as well says Susan Kieffer a geologist at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
Instead, they may have to switch to sorghum and millet, which are more tolerant to heat.
or trade bans on pigs and pork. Within minutes of the World health organization (WHO) announcement on 11 june that swine flu had become a pandemic, Bernard Vallat, director-general of an intergovernmental trade body,
So far the role of animals has not been demonstrated in the virus's epidemiology or spread,
used to produce the flatbread injera. Depending on how much rain falls on this particular swath of the northern highlands in August and September,
asks M. J. Mace, a negotiator for the Federated States of Micronesia. If there's a deal,
Agashe tested Tribolium castaneum, the ubiquitous flour beetle, by offering the beetles wheat flour their ancestral diet and maize (corn) flour,
After only two weeks, Agashe found, the beetles'diet shifted to almost 30%maize flour. This was a never-before-seen food source,
But in groups that were fed only on maize flour, genetic diversity becomes really important, says Agashe.
Some populations died out after about 12-15 weeks on a maize-only diet, whereas those that survived the more genetically diverse groups began to recover by the 25th week.
so the team raised a number of different laboratory strains of pink bollworms on a diet that contained the toxin.
The resistant pink bollworms were able to withstand high concentrations of both toxins in their diets,
Having these genes in more vulnerable rice varieties could save billions of dollars and feed millions more people.
Flooding is not the only threat to the world's largest diet staple. Rice blast disease destroys around 10-30%of global rice crops enough food to feed about 60 million people each year.
Some rice plants are resistant to the pernicious fungus responsible the disease, but the rice from these plants often has undesirable qualities,
however, they still need to be tested both in the paddy and on the plate. We need to see how these behave in field situations
when prices spiked for commodities such as soya and beef. Deforestation rates seem to have dropped again in the most recent season;
and expect a more diverse diet, so demand for meat and fruit has risen, yet the irrigation systems were designed principally for cereal production.
A lot of 1970s irrigation had to do with canals surface irrigation, says Colin Chartres, director-general of the IWMI.
So the researchers inserted an (E)- Ã Â-caryophyllene synthase gene from the oregano plant a technique for which they have filed a patent.
because the oregano synthase gene is switched always on. Although this is better than spraying caryophyllene over a field
The United nations Security council unanimously backed a non-binding resolution to bolster efforts aimed at slowing the spread of nuclear weapons.
whose enzymes can break cellulose down into simple sugars and immediately convert those into ethanol.
because too much went to pork. Beachy says he hopes that NIFA and its competitive grants programme,
and lay eggs, they release spores of the blue-stain fungus (Grosmannia clavigera), which stops the production of a protective toxic resin released by the tree
says Pushpito Ghosh, director of the Central Salt and Marine Chemicals Research Institute in Bhavnagar.
He was found guilty of embezzling government funds and buying human eggs in violation of the country's bioethics law,
According to Seralini, eating Bt brinjal reduced appetite in goats, increased prothrombin time (the time it takes blood to clot) in goats and rabbits,
The genetic secrets of maize, one of the world's most widely grown grains, should accelerate efforts to develop improved crop varieties to meet the world's growing hunger for food, animal feed and fuel.
which was set up by the late chocolate and coffee magnate Klaus Jacobs. The award, which will be presented on 3 december, must fund research.
195 eggs when they made Snuppy to around 3 per 100 eggs now. To be able to produce that many animals,
deciduous trees such as poplar and walnut use less, especially in winter. Also, planting only some portions of the watershed might achieve the balance of providing wood products for the people without the impact on the basin's water balance
while the other stuck to a more traditional diet. We would expect that if they're within a cooperative coalition,
but in 1898, drought, pestilence and hunting left the Tsavo region of Kenya barren of the lions'favourite meals.
the maneaters'diets consisted primarily of grazing animals. But in the final months, the authors say,
one animal continued to focus on grazers, with an occasional human meal, whereas the other was mainly feasting on browsers and people.
but such extreme dietary specialization in a cooperative group has not been seen before. Apart from the environmental pressures on the lions, the dominant maneater also had severe wounds in his mouth and jaw,
Their divergent diets are mostly relevant for illuminating this one particular case says Craig Packer, an animal behavioural scientist at the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis,
Yeakel acknowledges that there are many possible combinations the model shows that humans could have made up 4-56%of the dominant maneater's diet
Humans probably made up 30%of his diet. Regardless of the specific numbers, Yeakel says,
In fact it turned out to be Achaea catocaloides, a less threatening caterpillar that feeds mostly on the Dahoma tree.
And finally â Â Rampant rabbits In November we reported that artificial and fully functional penises had been built
and grafted onto male rabbits whose penises had been removed surgically. The fake penises were built by stripping donor rabbit erectile tissue of cells
leaving behind a scaffold of collagen onto which the rabbits'own muscle and skin cells were grown.
The work was done by Anthony Atala at Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine in Winston-salem, North carolina.
what male rabbits do best impregnate female rabbits (see'Engineered penis raises reproduction hopes').'Since then Atala has presented preliminary, as yet unpublished, results at the Materials Research Society meeting in Boston,
Stone age sorghum found in African cave: Nature Newshumans may have been baking bread 105,000 years ago,
says a researcher who has discovered evidence of ground seeds from sorghum grass on stone tools in a Mozambique cave.
Whether they were eating it or not, we cannot be sure, but I cannot see how sorghum gets into the cave
unless humans bring it in, says study author Julio Mercader, an archaeologist at the University of Calgary in Alberta, Canada.
Today, seeds from domesticated sorghum grass are used as flour for porridge, as a fermentation substrate for beer and as a dye for clothing.
000 years ago and ended around 50,000 years ago depended on foodstuffs such as underground tubers and meat.
Mercader says that sorghum flours could have been used to make culinary preparations such as bread. The first confirmed use of grains in the human diet comes from charred barley
and wheat from Israel dating to about 23,000 years ago1, so the latest findings could push that date back another 80,000 years.
including scrapers and grinders, he found that 80%contained traces of starch granules, mainly from wild Sorghum species. Some of the grains appeared damaged,
but none had been cooked. These data imply that early Homo sapiens from southern Africa consumed not just underground plant staples,
Even if sorghum is truly present at the site, she says, there could be a reason for this presence other than eating of grains.
her group has found that grasses similar to sorghum were used for bedding and as tinder for fireplaces.
Loren Cordain, an exercise physiologist at Colorado State university in Fort Collins and an expert on the Palaeolithic diet, agrees that the evidence is too thin to support the consumption of grains as food.
and were part of the diet of our ancestors, he says. It's fascinating and suggestive,
It first spread from Asia to Europe in the herds of invading tribes, causing outbreaks in the Roman empire in 376-386,
'Stars in the Milky way are made mostly of the hydrogen and helium, with a few percent of their mass made up of heavier elements.
and other wildlife around the world since it first spread from Asia to Europe in the herds of the invading tribes, causing outbreaks during the Roman empire in 376-386.
a modified Escherichia coli bacterium that can make biodiesel directly from sugars or hemicellulose, a component of plant fibre (see page 559).
LS9 says that the shift from sugars to biomass as a feedstock would reduce greenhouse gases even further.
The company has been working to convert sugars into tailored molecules for several years, says co-author Stephen del Cardayre, LS9's vice-president for research and development.
the carbon is released through the consumption of whale meat by humans, but you're still taking carbon out of the whale
and municipal waste to sugars are getting cheaper. At a national US ethanol conference in Orlando, Florida, last week, biotech companies Novozymes and Genencor launched new generations of enzymes that they claim will cut the enzyme-related production costs of cellulosic ethanol
or early 2012 at a total cost of under $0. 53 per litre roughly on a par with that of'corn'ethanol produced from sugar-rich maize cobs.
Consequently, the country's numerous lakes, rivers and coastal waters have suffered from repeated outbreaks of algal blooms owing to the excess of nutrients polluting the water.
In the worst cases, lime could be spread across fields, he says. In 2005, the Chinese government launched a scheme to educate farmers on issues including fertiliser use and techniques to rebalance the soil,
India's transgenic aubergine in a stew: Nature Newsindia's government has refused to allow commercial cultivation of what would have been the country's first genetically modified (GM) food crop.
The moratorium will actually affect the indigenous effort to create GM CROPS that could feed India's rapidly growing population
We have no less than ten GM products to get into the regulatory system for trials including brinjal, chickpea, sorghum, sugar cane, castor oil plant,
will publish its first research findings by November and feed them into the fifth report of the United nations'Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
Is climate change hiding the decline of maple syrup?:Nature Newsthe burning of fossil fuels such as coal and oil releases carbon dioxide that alters the balance of carbon isotopes naturally found in the environment an effect that is now being found in food,
such as corn syrup, have been added to foods. Because sweeteners from sugar cane and maize have a higher proportion of carbon-13,
New york, got his students to analyse maple syrup from different parts of the northeastern United states. Our intent was really just to see
but when the group compared their values to isotope values of maple syrup in papers from the late 1970s and early 1980s,
Their analysis revealed that the relative amount of carbon-13 in maple syrup seemed to have gone down since the 1970s.
Stephanie Tubman, obtained maple syrup samples from producers in the states of New york and Vermont, covering the period 1970-2006.
When we opened one old can of syrup, it smelled like freshly mown grass. It was disgusting.
if the mould might change the isotope ratio of the syrup, recalls Peck. Fortunately, it did not.
and Food Chemistry1 that maple syrup isotope ratios have shifted over the years. Samples of 1970s syrup had 108.7 carbon-13 isotopes per 10,000 carbon atoms
whereas the 2006 average was 108.5 carbon-13 isotopes per 10,000 carbon atoms. So syrup carbon-13 values are approaching the average 108 value that maple trees
and most plants should have, explains Peck. The reason, he suggests, is released that carbon from the burning of oil or coal,
Atmospheric data show that isotope ratio changes correlate directly with the changes in the maple syrup isotopes over the course of the 36 years studied
I think this maple syrup study demonstrates the danger of tissue testing. If we are making serious decisions about peoples'lives with isotope analysis,
As for whether isotope ratios change the taste of maple syrup, for the moment, that remains a mystery.
We had a pancake party in class at the end to celebrate the findings, says Peck. Nobody was brave enough to try syrups from the 1970s.
Future funding for agricultural research uncertain: Nature Newsfinancial donors to a global network of 15 agricultural research centres want changes to the way the influential group plans to reshape its research programme.
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