and other insects visiting flowers in bloom to determine the most attractive. Anyone can do this in their own garden or park or even when shopping for plants in a garden centre.#
and will soon test their design in plants embedding their lab on a chip in the stems of grape vines for example.
and then the chip may be inserted in a plant stem or in the soil where it through a nanoporous membrane exchanges moisture with its environment and maintains an equilibrium pressure that the chip measures.
Intake of fruit vegetables nuts seeds pasta poultry and vegetable oil was related to a lower mortality risk
It appears that the intake of some food groups is more beneficial (fruits legumes nuts seeds pasta poultry vegetable oil) or more detrimental (soft drinks butter margarine cake cookies) with respect to mortality risk
which attack the inner layers of bark feeding and breeding in the phloem a soft inner bark tissue
which impedes tree growth and eventually kills vast swaths of forest. Spruce beetles like their close relatives mountain pine beetles are attacking large areas of coniferous forests across the West.
huge blooms of algae; and zones of oxygen-starved water Bohlen says. The situation reached a crisis this summer
Thus our work supports the commercial development of buffaloberry chokecherry and sea buckthorn berries. According to the study:
and suggests that it is treated best as a lineage close to the root of the ant-apoid tree perhaps not assignable with certainty to either branch.
Since the invention of the earliest light microscopes the classification and identification of pollen and spores has been a highly subjective venture for those who use these tiny particles to study vegetation in their field palynology.
and spores beyond a general level. Grass pollen classification is a longstanding problem in palynology Mander said.
#The root of the matter: The role of nitric oxide in root branchingthe structure and plasticity of root systems play an important role in determining the growth
Lateral roots as the name implies are secondary roots that grow laterally out of a plant's main root much like branches grow out of the trunk of a tree.
The arrangement of roots is determined by a complicated combination of environmental signals based on the availability of nutrients and water in the surrounding environment hormonal signals and external stimuli.
when and where to form a lateral root. Nitric oxide is known to be an important regulatory
Numerous studies have found this molecule to be required for lateral root development in plants such as tomatoes rice corn lupine and Arabidopsis.
and the Universidad Autã noma del Estado de Morelos in Cuernavaca Mexico has reevaluated the effect of nitric oxide on lateral root formation focusing on the process of lateral root initiation
and examining the resulting root system formation Dr. Dubrovsky and colleagues have determined that this molecule can in fact have the opposite effect as previously found
A key finding of this study is that nitric oxide has a dual action on root branching states Dubrovsky.
Within the same root system when evaluated on a cellular basis it may both promote
and how the lateral root density is measured are important. By taking these nuanced factors into account Dubrovsky
and collaborators have found that in primary root portions formed before treatment nitric oxide promotes lateral root formation
whereas strong inhibition of de novo formed laterals was observed in primary root portions that began forming during the treatment.
The lateral root is a basic unit of the root system explains Dubrovsky. To understand how lateral root initiation is controlled in different groups of plants including crops under different environmental conditions we need a simple and reliable method for analysis and comparison.
A previous study led by Dubrovsky proposed a method termed the lateral root initiation index for quantifying the initiation of lateral roots in plants.
By normalizing root growth for differences in cell size a more precise estimate can be obtained.
This new parameter the lateral root initiation index provides researchers with the ability to uncover hidden
In wild strawberries it also serves to lure the animals which the plant exploits to spread its seeds.
When birds and small mammals feed on the fruit they subsequently excrete the indigestible seeds elsewhere
The yellow achenes embedded in its surface are the true fruits each consisting of a single seed and a hard outer coat.
When the seeds are ripe the Anr gene is turned off. This makes precursors of proanthocyanidins available for use in the production of anthocyanins the red pigments that give the mature fruit its alluring Color in their new study Thilo Fischer
After the selection of potentially root-colonizing bacteria she has tested them in experimental settings on plants'roots obtaining 10-15%yields increase.
These bacteria are found around the roots of plants. We found that bacteria from the Pseudomonas family in particular Pseudomonas extremorientalis are salt-resistant
and grow close to the roots where they compete with other bacteria for colonization. On the contrary pathogenic bacteria cannot actively colonize the plants'roots.
Here Pseudomonas produce antibiotics that plants use to defend themselves against fungi trigger the rooting process
which has already been patented Egamberdieva is able to isolate from the soil only beneficial root-stimulating bacteria.
It can be absorbed by roots used by the plants to grow and released back to the atmosphere.
Meanwhile leaf cover stayed the same. Bond-Lamberty said this isn't surprising to see in a forest that hasn't seen a wildfire in a long time.
or Okeechobee gourd an endangered wild relative of squash that grows only on the shores of Lake Okeechobee;
The recent algal blooms on Lake Winnipeg are a prime example of this nitrogen pollution.
when the city of Houston called for ideas about how to get rid of the estimated 5. 6 million cubic yards of fallen trees broken branches
and dead greenery left behind by the storm. The Rice Biochar Group won the $10000 grand prize in the city's Recycle Ike contest
but also in the soil surrounding the plants'roots. These microbes form close often mutualistic associations with their plant hosts.
and nitrogen in plant tissues and soils compared with systems dominated by native plants. Since changes in the soil nitrogen cycle are driven by microbes could bacteria associated with invasive species not only be observed responsible for the changes in soil nutrient concentrations
Subsequent literature searches led to the discovery that sugar cane an agriculturally important crop is a nitrogen fixer that contains bacterial endophytes
By isolating five bacterial strains of endophytes found inside S. halepense rhizomes (subterranean stems used for storage
but that it is also capable of passing them on to the next generation via seeds.
Using a sophisticated series of intricate experiments involving growing seedlings from surface sterilized seeds in nitrogen-deprived
or nitrogen-augmented soils and slurries with different suites of soil microbes Rout and colleagues showed that these microbes enabled the grass to produce 5-fold increases in rhizomes a primary mechanism driving invasions
and phosphorus in the soil and has increased rhizome production and aboveground biomass which in turn facilitates its spread and establishment.
As the citrus psyllid feeds on a leaf it can pick up the bacteria from a diseased tree
These disease-causing bacteria reside in the tree's phloem--the vascular tissue that carries vital nutrients throughout the tree.
The disease affects most citrus species causing yellowing of shoots blotchy and mottled leaves lopsided and poorly colored fruit and loss of viable seeds.
Their analysis confirmed that in infected trees HLB disease caused starch to accumulate in the leaves blocking nutrient transport through the phloem
The rapid greening response of the grassland to rainfall is seen easily as well as the response of an individual cholla cactus as its branches become erect due to the rainfall.
and small branches can be consumed by farmed animals can transform the prospects of obtaining sustainable animal production said Professor Broom.
and sugarcane--are already pulling carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere through photosynthesis said Decicco a research professor at the U-M Energy Institute and a professor of practice at the School of Natural resources and Environment.
In regulated field experiments the hybrids containing the overexpressed gene produced 48 percent to 125 percent more seeds per plant than did hybrid plants with no modified genes.
They also had higher concentrations of a key amino acid greater photosynthetic rates and better fledgling seed growth than controls#all presumed signs of better fitness in evolutionary terms.#
if a gene gives you a lot more seeds per plant compared to controls it s likely to increase the plants fitness
But now there is a lot of interest in using sorghum for other things such as growing sweet sorghum in areas where they grow sugarcane and growing biomass sorghum for bioenergy through combustion or cellulosic technology.
Sweet sorghum where you squeeze the sugary juice out like sugarcane may be closer on the horizon.
or sugarcane he said. Brown added that with genetic studies and improvements there are other value-added opportunities for sorghum grain.
When the interaction of metals was analyzed by X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy it revealed the creation of a more supportive substrate for the forests to root in.
a toxic protein produced in its leaves and stems which kills pests in a matter of days.
Both the leaves and stems of Bt maize produce this toxin which destroys the gut of any moth larvae eating the plant.
and the standing water left behind is the perfect breeding ground for mold spores. Dress to Protect--You don't need to impress
Even in roots there is still a relatively small amount of lead compared to for example what we're exposed to from drinking water says Wortman.
Silberman and Brown perform comparative DNA sequence analyses of a type of eukaryote called protists to help find their particular placement or branch on the tree of life.
which dwell in little pods inside the tree's roots known as root nodules. As a nutrient nitrogen is essential for plant growth
Legumes use secretions to invite rhizobia living in the soil to infect their roots and the bacteria signal back to initiate nodule growth.
#Grassroots action in livestock feeding to help curb global climate changein a series of papers to be presented next week scientists offer new evidence that a potent chemical mechanism operating in the roots of a tropical
and developed a reliable method for detecting the nitrification inhibitor coming from plant roots. Scientists at CIAT then validated the BNI concept in the field demonstrating that Brachiaria grass suppresses nitrification
which transforms itself into a fruiting body: a sterile stalk that holds aloft a sorus a tiny sphere that releases spores that become single amoebae again.
Isolated from decaying leaves collected in a hardwood forest in North carolina in the summer of 1933 Dicty have been used for years to study development and more recently conflict and cooperation.
when farmers carried certain nonedible strains nonfarmer spore production was reduced in some cases by more than half.
If food is abundant nonfarmers alone produce more spores than farmers alone. The reason is that farming is costly.
--if the amoebas are dispersed to a site without a good source--farmers produce more spores than nonfarmers
As the percentage of farmers in the mix increased nonfarmers produced far fewer spores and the spore production of farmers was unchanged.
These results suggest that social amoebas make farming pay much as human farmers all over the world have done by privatizing their crops.
although the Federal trade commission issued a 2009 consumer alert noting that some pollutants are released in production from bamboo stalks.
It is renewable shooting to maturity in a mere four years boasting a vast root system
Use of pyrethrins derived from chrysanthemum flowers and the related synthetic pyrethroids has been on the increase during the last decade.
The researchers used advanced technologies of light scanning electron and polarizing microscopy to develop a more detailed picture of the Archaeanthus flowers fruits and seeds and compare them with the flowers fruits and seeds of contemporary plants.
and seeds not previously detailed that were more similar to those of the tulip tree line of evolution than to the magnolias Dilcher said.
#Climate change may speed up forests life cyclesmany climate studies have predicted that tree species will respond to global warming by migrating via seed dispersal to cooler climates.
#In odd-looking mutant, clues about how maize plants control stem cell numberin plants the growth of organs such as roots leaves
and flowers depends upon the activity of meristems. These reservoir-like compartments hold stem cells
and a cell-surface receptor that is a part of the CLAVATA signaling pathway known to control stem cell activation.
He also explains that the beneficial bacteria are located in the immediate area surrounding the root
When in contact with the roots a biochemical communication starts that allows the trees to adapt with no problems
Besides the microorganism is responsible for exploring the ground beyond the reach of the roots and brings them useful elements for their development like phosphorus
and other food crops and toward corn cobs stalks and other non-food plant material.
Brown pointed out that corn stalks corn cobs and other plant material not used for food production would be better sources of ethanol.
Spirits from various combinations of rye corn wheat malted barley and--more recent additions to the whiskey repertoire--oat and millet are added to the barrels.
Rather the battle involves nightmares like Palmer amaranth pigweed which has been termed the master blueprint for the perfect weed.
Under good conditions Palmer amaranth grows an inch or more a day to heights approaching 10 feet with a stem tough enough to damage farm equipment.
It crowds out crops and drains moisture and nutrients from the soil. Resistant plants thrive
They also are turning to herbicides that have residual activity in the soil preventing weed seeds from growing into a new generation of weeds.
or bury viable seeds deep below the soil surface. Herbicides however remain the most effective tools for managing weeds in terms of overall control and for cost efficiency Young emphasized.
And they include crop seeds with genetic traits that enable farmers to apply herbicides to their fields without harming the crops.
#Bismuth-carrying nanotubes show promise for CT scansscientists at Rice university have trapped bismuth in a nanotube cage to tag stem cells for X-ray tracking.
At some point we realized no one has tracked ever stem cells or any other cells that we can find by CT Wilson said.
In tests using pig bone marrow-derived mesenchymal stem cells Wilson and lead author Eladio Rivera a former postdoctoral researcher at Rice found that the bismuth-filled nanotubes which they call Bi@US-tubes produce CT images far brighter than those from common
but putting it in nanotube capsules allows us to get them inside cells in high concentrations Wilson said.
The capsules are made from a chemical process that cuts and purifies the nanotubes. When the tubes and bismuth chloride are mixed in a solution they combine over time to form Bi@US-tubes.
The nanotube capsules are between 20 and 80 nanometers long and about 1. 4 nanometers in diameter.
Wilson said his team's studies showed stem cells readily absorb Bi@US-tubes without affecting their function The cells adjust over time to the incorporation of these chunks of carbon
when foliage predisposed to injury by exposure to acid rain experiences freezing injury and dies. Paul Schaberg a research plant physiologist with the U s. Forest Service's Northern Research Station in Burlington Vt. and partners studied red spruce trees in Vermont New hampshire and Massachusetts.
For red spruce warmer winters mean less damage to foliage which limits growth. Questions for future research also include
Dendrometer bands are metal straps that wrap around a tree trunk to measure its growth. Bands are fashioned by bending banding material into a collar
and shrink to measure trunk circumference and changes in trunk diameter over time. Construction of traditional bands is tricky.
and algal blooms altering water quality and harming aquatic life. Increasing alkalinity hardens drinking water makes wastewater disposal more difficult
As flowering in bamboos is such a rare event spreading by seed takes a very long time
and reach the pear pulp. The penetration of silver nanoparticles is dangerous to consumers because they have the ability to relocate in the human body after digestion Lin said.
of which have large territories may play in forest regeneration through digesting and passing seeds from fruits.
and their capacity for ingesting large numbers of fruits we consider it likely that crocodilians function as significant seed dispersal agents in many freshwater ecosystems.
Cycads that are living today have large heavy seeds with a fleshy outer coating that suggests they rely on large bodied fruit-eating animals to disperse their seeds.
The ecological distribution pattern of many living cycads today suggests they have limited and ineffectual seed dispersal.
These patterns suggest that few to none of the seeds are being dispersed large distances away from parent plants one of the longstanding tenets of the advantages of seed dispersal.
whether the seed dispersal and seedling distribution pattern of M. miquelii might indicate that it is maladapted to its current dispersers.
But when it comes to plants there is a bit of a subconscious assumption that the purpose of seed dispersal is to simply spread seeds as far and as evenly as possible across the broadest possible area.
The large heavy and poisonous seeds surrounded by a fleshy and nontoxic fruit-like layer seem well adapted to being swallowed occasionally whole en masse by megafauna
which would then pass the many seeds simultaneously at a new location: the genesis of a new grove.
Female cycads produce one to two cones that contain multiple large seeds each covered with a thin outer fleshy sarcotesta.
By tagging ten large seeds from the single cone of 12 plants with a small steel bolt the authors were able to track how many of the seeds were removed from the parent cycad
and how far the seeds were dispersed. They found that within three months virtually all of the seeds had eaten their sarcostesta--primarily by brushtailed opposums
which scrape the flesh off and discard the large seeds. Camera traps at two fruiting females and hair traps baited with seeds confirmed the disperser identity.
However almost all (97%)of the tagged seeds that the authors recovered had been moved less than one meter away;
only a few were moved beyond the vicinity of the parent plant and in all cases they were found less than 5 meters away.
Moreover although most of the seeds ended up under the parent cycad almost no seedlings were found within a 1. 5 m radius of adult cycads suggesting that most seeds within the vicinity of the parent perish.
These patterns suggest that despite their large seed size the primary dispersers of these cycads today are bodied smaller animals;
these animals do not spread the seeds far and wide nor take them to potentially new colonizable habitats.
Yet these plants seem to be doing well by sprouting up near the adults and forming mono-dominant stands.
Since their potential Australian prehistoric megafaunal dispersers became extinct around 45000 years ago why haven't Australian cycads begun to evolve smaller seeds that would be dispersed more readily by flying birds or possums for example over the interim?
so it's plausible that cycad seed dispersal ecology and colony forming behavior may be extremely ancient
and served up corn stalks and leaves. Colleagues at Michigan State university had treated pre the roughage to make it easier to digest.
or various grass residues such as corn stover and sugarcane bagasse do not compete and can be a sustainable source for biofuel.
This enzyme caffeoyl shikimate esterase (CSE) fulfils a central role in lignin biosynthesis. Knocking-out the CSE gene resulted in 36%less lignin per gram of stem material.
Bovine strains seemed to occupy deeper parts of the phylogenetic tree--they were closer to the root than the human strains.
Other factors may be changes in the amount of carbon in leaves wood or roots; changes in the extent or species composition of ecosystems;
--the downy woodpecker hairy woodpecker red-bellied woodpecker--as well as the white-breasted nuthatch a common bark-gleaning species that is also a potential predator of EAB.
and length of its branches--predicts how much carbon and water a tree exchanges with the environment in relation to its overall size independently of the species. This theory can be used to scale the size of plants to their function such as amount of photosynthesis water loss
and shape of branches Bentley said. They grow within proportion. Take a pine tree for example: It has the general shape of a cone
A team of undergraduate and graduate student researchers dissected the trees down to the last twig counting the number of branches the number of branching points or nodes and measuring the length and diameter of each branch.
If you imagine collapsing all of a tree's outermost branches into one cylinder that cylinder would be the size of the trunk Bentley said.
According to Leonardo's rule the total area of branches is conserved as you go from the trunk all the way to the branches at the top.
one branch might branch two times but its sister branch might branch three or four times. After testing the theory empirically we conclude that generally speaking the theory works well
and seed yields over the tree's lifetime according to a new study. The study which appears today in the Journal of Ecology is the first of its kind to use
The tree is harvested heavily for its leaves to feed cattle and for its bark which is used medicinally to treat many ailments from stomachaches to reducing malaria fevers.
In this study instead of comparing leaf and fruit shapes the team looked at gene regulation in mice that had diverged only recently from one another.
#Chanel, UCSBS corpse flower, blooms and causes a big stinkchanel UC Santa barbara's corpse flower has finally spread her odiferous wings broadcasting a stench that smells like a cross between rotting flesh and Limburger cheese.
The entire community has been holding its collective breath waiting for UCSB's Amorophallus titanum its proper botanic name to bloom.
but couldn't leave until we saw it in bloom. Discovered in 1878 by the Florentine botanist Odoardo Beccarini the Titan arum another common name given the plant by Sir David Attenborough in his BBC nature documentary series heats up as it blooms
in order to disperse its perfume--hence the moniker Chanel. Heat enables the smell to go farther attracting more pollinating insects
An infrared camera from Goleta-based FLIR captured time-sequence thermal photography of Chanel as her spadix the tall core spike that houses both female and male flowers heated up to nearly human body temperature.
The Titan arum heats up by burning carbohydrates stored in its corm an underground stem that has been modified into storage tissue.
The enormous amount of energy expended during this process limits the time the Titan can bloom which explains why it only blooms for a couple of days
and doesn't bloom annually. Chanel is only the second Titan arum to bloom at UCSB.
Tiny Chanel's mother bloomed once in 2002 before dying. The wait for UCSB's next bloom from this giant Sumatran cousin to the common philodendron may not be as long as the wait for Chanel to bloom.
Chanel is about to become a mother. Staff at the UCSB biology greenhouse had the foresight to contact the U s. Botanic Garden in Washington D c. to secure pollen from its plant (nicknamed Mortimer in social media that bloomed July 21.
or two seeds that--with tender care and an abundance of patience--can develop into the corms from
Five to seven years down the road Chanel's offspring could possibly bloom. Any seeds that Chanel and Mortimer produce from their cross-continent union will help further conservation efforts for this bizarre majestic and threatened plant Taber said.
There are 300000 different species of flowering plants and the corpse flower is one of the most extreme examples of how evolution can result in extreme flowers
and crawl around in leaf litter using primitive compound eyes to detect light but not form images.
Ant Lords of Leaf Litteramong the newly discovered and named species from forest-floor leaf litter:
and leaf litter and pour it through sifters which have wire mesh with third-inch-wide openings.
and health that they could be considered in legal disputes--as is white pine nut availability now--about
Increases in berry production in Yellowstone may also provide a buffer against other ecosystem shifts the researchers noted--whitebark pine nut production a favored bear food may be facing pressure from climate change.
Grizzly bear survival declined during years of low nut production. Livestock grazing in grizzly bear habitat adjacent to the national park and bison herbivory in the park likely also contribute to high foraging pressure on shrubs
Overtext Web Module V3.0 Alpha
Copyright Semantic-Knowledge, 1994-2011