Break off a branch from the nearest pine tree peel away the bark and slowly pour lake water through the stick.
They say the size of the pores in sapwood--which contains xylem tissue evolved to transport sap up the length of a tree--also allows water through
The wood is composed of xylem porous tissue that conducts sap from a tree's roots to its crown through a system of vessels and pores.
and spread in xylem eventually killing a tree. The xylem's tiny pores can trap bubbles preventing them from spreading in the wood.
Plants have had to figure out how to filter out bubbles but allow easy flow of sap Karnik observes.
Seeing redto study sapwood's water-filtering potential the researchers collected branches of white pine and stripped off the outer bark.
When they examined the xylem under a fluorescent microscope they saw that bacteria had accumulated around pit membranes in the first few millimeters of the wood.
while retaining the xylem function. In other experiments with dried sapwood Karnik found that water either did not flow through well
#Characterization of stink bug saliva proteins opens door to controlling pestsbrown marmorated stink bugs cause millions of dollars in crop losses across the United states because of the damage their saliva does to plant tissues.
Unlike a chewing insect which causes damage by removing plant tissue stink bugs pierce plant tissue and suck nutrients from the plant said Michelle Peiffer research support assistant.
and as caterpillars can strip trees of their bark. Durrett helped the Swedish researchers use enzymes from plants
#Rapeseed-based animal feed cuts greenhouse gases by up to 13 per centthe use of rapeseed cake in the production of livestock feed cuts methane
and carbon dioxide emissions by up to 13%according to the initial results of the research carried out by Neiker-Tecnalia within the framework of the Life-Seed Capital project.
Specifically the incorporation of this oilseed plant into animal food cuts methane emissions by between 6%and 13%and carbon dioxide emissions by between 6. 8%and 13.6%.
%The introduction of this oilseed preparation into the diet of ruminants also improves efficiency in the use of digestible organic matter by between 4. 4%and 10.1
The Life-Seed Capital project is being funded by the European union through its Life+program and is being led by the Basque Institute for Agricultural Research and development Neiker-Tecnalia and by the Multidisciplinary Centre for Industry Technologies CEMITEC.
The project seeks to take advantage of rapeseed crops to improve agricultural productivity and at the same time to cut greenhouse gas emissions.
Once it has been harvested rapeseed can be used as a biofuel and added to diesel in varying proportions after simple cold pressing.
#New technique promises cheaper second-generation biofuel for carsproducing second-generation biofuel from dead plant tissue is environmetally friendly
when it comes to producing bioethanol from plant parts like corn or sugar canes. Corn cubs and sugar canes are in fact plant parts that can also be used directly as food so there is a great public resistance to accept producing this kind of bioethanol.
A big challenge is therefore to become able to produce bioethanol from plant parts which cannot be used for food.
The goal is to produce bioethanol from cellulose. Cellulose is very difficult to break down and therefore cannot directly be used as a food source.
Cellulose is found everywhere in nature in rich quantities for example in the stems of the corn plant.
and it is made on the basis of rice husks. My Iraqi colleagues have made the acid from treated rice husk.
The worldwide production of rice generates enormous amounts of rice husk and ashes from burning the husk so this material is cheap and easy to get hold of he says.
It's all about the acidthe ashes from burnt rice husks have a high content of silicate
and this is the important compound in the production of the new acid. The scientists paired silicate particles with chlorosulfonic acid and this made the acid molecules attach themselves to the silicate compounds.
The result was an entirely new molecule--the acid RHSO3H --which can replace the enzymes in the work of breaking down cellulose to sugar explains Per Morgen.
Making the new acid3 grams of ash from burned rice husk were mixed with 100 ml of caustic soda (Naoh) in a plastic container.
#Sugarcane converted to cold-tolerant, oil-producing cropa multi-institutional team reports that it can increase sugarcane's geographic range boost its photosynthetic rate by 30 percent
and turn it into an oil-producing crop for biodiesel production. These are only the first steps in a bigger initiative that will turn sugarcane
and sorghum--two of the most productive crop plants known--into even more productive oil-generating plants.
Sugarcane and sorghum are exceptionally productive plants and if you could make them accumulate oil in their stems instead of sugar this would give you much more oil per acre he said.
Working first with the laboratory-friendly plant Arabidopsis and later with sugarcane the team introduced genes that boost natural oil production in the plant.
They increased oil production in sugarcane stems to about 1. 5 percent. That doesn't sound like a lot
but at 1. 5 percent a sugarcane field in Florida would produce about 50 percent more oil per acre than a soybean field Long said.
There's enough oil to make it worth harvesting. The team hopes to increase the oil content of sugarcane stems to about 20 percent he said.
Using genetic engineering the researchers increased photosynthetic efficiency in sugarcane and sorghum by 30 percent Long said.
And to boost cold tolerance researchers are crossing sugarcane with Miscanthus a related perennial grass that can grow as far north as Canada.
The new hybrid is more cold-tolerant than sugarcane but further crosses are needed to restore the other attributes of sugarcane
while preserving its cold-tolerance Long said. Ultimately the team hopes to integrate all of these new attributes into sugarcane he said.
Our goal is to make sugarcane produce more oil be more productive with more photosynthesis
and be more cold-tolerant he said. Story Source: The above story is provided based on materials by University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
The original article was written by Diana Yates. Note: Materials may be edited for content and length h
There was also a difference in yield with tubers from each block of 16 plants weighing 6-13 kg
while the non-GM tubers weighed 1. 6-5 kg per block. The trial was conducted with Desiree potatoes to address the challenge of building resistance to blight in potato varieties with popular consumer and processing characteristics.
#Seed-filled buoys may help restore diverse sea meadows in San francisco Baya pearl net filled with seedpods tethered by a rope anchored in the coastal mud
which the seeds were harvested said Sarah Cohen an associate professor of biology at the Romberg Tiburon Center.
and seeds scattered over a large area could be washed away from the restoration site. Instead RTC researchers tested the Buoy Deployed Seeding (Buds) restoration technique.
They first harvested eelgrass seedpods from several eelgrass beds in San francisco bay then suspended the pods within floating nets over experimental tanks (called mesocosms) supplied with Bay water and with or without sediment from the original eelgrass areas.
As the seeds inside each pod ripened a few at a time they dropped out of the nets
and black-and-white ruffed lemurs leaf-eating Coquerel's sifakas and ring-tailed and mongoose lemurs that eat a mix of fruit leaves seeds flowers nectar and insects.
A total of 64 animals took part in the studies which measured their ability to remember the locations of food treats in mazes and boxes.
whether the height change in a pixel is likely to be the normal growth of the incumbent tree a takeover by a neighboring tree or another branch of the incumbent tree.
Infected honeybees can leave traces of disease like a fungal spore or virus particle on the flowers that they visit and these may then infect wild bees.
Simple and primitive a duckweed plant consists of a single small kidney-shaped leaf about the size of a pencil-top eraser that floats on the surface of the water with a few thin roots underwater.
Most of the time it reproduces by budding off small leaves that are clones of the parent leaf.
or transport water from distant roots to their leaves so they're a relatively soft and pliable plant containing tiny amounts of woody material such as lignin and cellulose.
S. polyrhiza leaves resemble cotyledons embryonic leaves inside plant seeds that become the first leaves after germination.
and continuously produces cotyledon leaves. This prolonging of juvenile traits is called neoteny. S. polyrhiza had fewer genes to promote
Nitrogen is primarily taken up from the soil by the roots and assimilated by the plant to become part of DNA proteins and many other compounds.
tree stump casts calcified roots and fossil leaves. The discovery underscores the importance of forested environments in the evolution of early apes.
since the 1980s for preserving a fossil ape and other creatures in a hollowed out fossilized tree trunk.
But it wasn't until the research team's discovery of additional tree trunks and fossil primates preserved in the same ancient soil that there was a strong link between the ape and its habitat at the site.
Combined with analyses of the roots trunks and even beautifully preserved fossil leaves it's possible to say that the forest was closed a canopy one meaning the arboreal animals like Proconsul could easily move from tree-to-tree without coming to the ground.
#Controlling stone fruit disease: New approaches foundresearchers at the University and East Malling Research have identified a new way of controlling a fungal disease that can have a devastating impact on the UK's valuable cherry and plum crops.
Brown rot disease--caused by the agent Monilinia laxa--attacks stone fruit as well as causing blossom wilt
and be used by the stone fruit industry to control brown rot disease.''Currently East Malling Research is exploiting ways with commercial companies to formulate the two strains of biocontrol agents and conduct pilot commercial trialling of formulated products.
The research paper titled Identification and Characterisation of New Microbial Antagonists for Biocontrol of Monilinia laxa the Causal agent of Brown Rot on Stone fruit is published in the journal Agronomy.
me and started measuring the lengths of the branches with my daughter's plastic ruler that happened to be on the table.
Just like branches on a real tree you can see that the branches on the evolutionary tree grow at different rates in humans versus horses versus birds.
One possible source is rice husks: They're unfit for human food produced by the millions of tons and 20 percent silicon dioxide by weight.
Carbohydrates--mainly cereals sugars potatoes and other tubers--and vegetable oils produced efficiently by large-scale agriculture
A Penn State geographer is gathering all the information he can about the agrobiodiversity of these uniquely adapted tubers with an eye toward sustainability of this fourth largest food crop worldwide.
The fields tubers and landscapes are visually stunning. Zimmerer has studied high-agrobiodiversity land use for over 20 years
Performance under flood Seed treatments for row crops such as corn cotton or soybean target early-season pests that are in the soil
when the seed is planted. But rice seed treatments are different. We're targeting primarily rice water weevils
Gore said all of the seed treatments are water soluble and water can have both positive and negative effects on seed treatments.
Because rice is grown in aquatic or semiaquatic environments we needed to find out how different water management practices might impact the seed treatments'performance he said.
Andrew Adams an MSU graduate student from Greenville set up tests in grower fields across the Delta and at the Delta Research and Extension Center.
which is about two months that the seed treatment was sitting in the soil without having insect pressure Adams said.
Where we delayed the permanent flood until eight weeks after planting the seed treatment was compromised not
Flushing is used for herbicide incorporation seed germination or for irrigation during hot and dry conditions he said.
Adams tested zero one and two flushes with water across a rice field to check the efficacy of three different seed treatments.
The seed treatments Cruiser and Nipsit were impacted negatively with the application of the second flush
Seed treatment rates Gore and Adams also tested the efficacy of seed treatment rates in hybrid rice.
Hybrid rice varieties are grown at 20 to 25 pounds of seed per acre versus 75 to 85 pounds with conventional varieties Gore said.
Because seed treatment rates are based on a per-seed basis we wanted to know if the lower seeding rate and hence the lower seed treatment rate on a per acre basis impacted insect control.
It did not. No additional benefit was observed from increasing the seed treatment rate. Currently labeled rates for hybrid rice production are said correct Gore.
The management practice that showed significant improvement in rice water weevil control beyond the seed treatment was a foliar overspray with a pyrethroid on hybrid rice Gore said.
Story Source: The above story is provided based on materials by Mississippi State university Office of Agricultural Communications.
While often called cocoa beans cocoa plants actually are colored large brightly pods filled with many seeds.
Cocoa to Chocolatecocoa seeds are removed from the pod dried and roasted giving them a distinct dark color and unique flavor.
After roasting cocoa seeds are ground into a paste called chocolate liquor. The liquor separates into dry cocoa and cocoa butter or fat.
Chocolate Safetythe roasting process kills bacteria on the cocoa seeds. Because of the high fat low moisture content chocolate generally does not spoil.
A white coating called chocolate bloom may appear on the surface of a chocolate bar. This is either the cocoa butter
or sun. The presence of chocolate bloom does not mean that the chocolate is unsafe to eat.
The team identified ax-cut wood chips tree stumps and charcoal fragments from early logging efforts in unexpectedly deep layers of sediment 1. 5 meters (five feet) below the ground
#New species of Oak hidden away in the greenery of Ton Pariwat Wildlife Sanctuaryan international team of scientists from Xishuangbanna Tropical Botanical garden (China)
It can be distinguished easily by its spherical acorns covered with a dense pattern of irregularly placed scales that completely conceal the nut except for a tiny opening at the top and
First generation fuels such as bioethanol from sugarcane and corn or biodiesel from rapeseed and palm oil are in direct competition with food for arable land and water.
They have an adverse effect on food prices and supply. Saltwater algae are therefore a very attractive proposition as an alternative biofuel if we can overcome the challenges.
and then grinding the whole berry--fiber seeds and fuzz--into a fine powder. The black raspberry formulations are currently being used in a clinical study of men with prostate cancer undergoing surgery.
Some species were observed climbing as far as four meters high in a tree and five meters down a branch.
Climbing a steep hill or steep branch is mechanically similar assuming the branch is wide enough to walk on the authors wrote.
and potato leaf hoppers and an increase in a pest called clover root curculio Egan said.
because they eat weed seeds in the field edge site. The researchers who report their findings in the current issue of Agriculture Ecosystems
Besides this test will produce materials of high quality (seeds and sections of plants) and using them will allow farmers to obtain better yields in future plantings.
Reduced leaf damage is supposed to reduce the number of coffee cherries falling from the tree while ripening.
This is due to the fact that they registered merely one type of visitor honey bees to the blossoms.
while the seeds were stored. Dr Robin Allaby of the School of Life sciences at the University of Warwick who led the study said:
Researchers from Oxford and Sheffield Universities have found that temperatures affect the thickness of the leaf litter
which the tree roots grow. In a warmer world this means that tree roots are more likely to grow into the mineral layer of the soil breaking down rock into component parts
which will eventually combine with carbon dioxide. This process called weathering draws carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere
They measured the growth of the tree roots to 30 cm beneath the surface every three months over several years.
and the roots of trees in tropical mountains such as the Andes play a disproportionate role.
and insect species says University of Cincinnati researcher Alina Avanesyan who developed the new protocol while studying grasshopper leaf tissue consumption.
The method recovers high-quality DNA of ingested plant tissue from grasshopper guts. This PLANT DNA offers valuable information about grasshopper diets because it holds more data than
Results indicated that plant tissue could be detected up to 12 hours after ingestion in nymph M. differentialis and M. bivittatus grasshoppers and adult M. femurrubrum grasshoppers.
For adult M. differentialis grasshoppers which were the largest in size plant tissue was detected up to 22 hours post-ingestion.
and Canada collected seeds from several areas tested different fertilisation levels and took into account chemical and physical variations in the soil.
Almost universally the term whole grain indicates inclusion of all three components of the cereal grain kernel--endosperm (this is the largest part of the grain
and pseudo grains (such as quinoa and amaranth) and processing guidelines that take into account current milling practices.
a single main stem topped by a single tassel a few very short branches tipped by female ears and synchronous seed maturation.
After the Industrial revolution carbon dioxide rose to today's 405 parts per million the level in the control chamber where teosinte plants look like plants in the wild today--tall with many long branches tipped by tassels and seed maturation taking place
and inflorescence sexuality that we see today and use as the baseline for research on maize domestication said Piperno.
and results showed that cold temperatures promoted stomatal closure higher root resistance lower stem water potential lower transpiration and lower stem water potential.
Leaf relative water content was not different for cold-acclimated trees compared with the control trees.
The species is recognized for its innate ability to recover from damage after a tropical cyclone Resprouting on snapped tree trunks
The data showed that stem decay caused by earlier damage from a native stem borer reduced the species'tolerance to external forces resulting in stem failure in Typhoon Chaba.
Invasions of two invasive insects (Aulacaspis yasumatsui in 2003 and Chilades pandava in 2005) were found to be responsible for the 100%mortality of the intact portions of the trees'snapped stems during the 5 years after Typhoon Chaba.
bark flowers fruit leaves roots stems etc. Prominent among the nonnative species are many edible fruit
and nut species including common apple (Malus domestica) Chinese chestnut (Castanea mollissima) European or sweet chestnut (Castanea sativa) ginkgo (Ginkgo biloba) European plum (Prunus domestica) and European pear (Pyrus communis).
and control the expression of numerous plant genes in function of the task to be undertaken that is to say cell growth flowering root initiation leaf growth etc.
Morphological diversity among New world Leaf nosed bats with different diets. Nectar: A) Platalina genovensium B) Glossophaga soricina;
what processors and seed companies need to know in order to make improved production decisions. In other words Williams said researchers need to start speaking the same language as the sweet corn industry.
and seed companies make decisions in the future according to the researcher. Applied research aimed at improving crop productivity is predicated on the ability to accurately measure important crop responses such as yield.
Epsilon toxin may be responsible for triggering MS. Epsilon toxin is produced by certain strains of Clostridium perfringens a spore-forming bacterium that is one of the most common causes of foodborne illness in the United states. The U s. Centers for Disease Control
and fruit that was hidden by leaves and branches. He and his colleagues found 80 percent of the immature fruit.
and then gauging the number of fruit each branch is expected to yield. This gives growers a more accurate rate than just guessing Lee said
Chlorothalonil is a broad-spectrum agricultural fungicide that is often applied to crops in bloom when honeybees are present for pollination
#Developing new methods to assess resistance to disease in young oilseed rape plantsbeing able to measure resistance to disease in young oilseed rape plants is vital in the battle to breed new
Oilseed rape is prone to phoma stem canker also known as blackleg disease which is responsible for losses worth more than £1200 million in oilseed rape crops across the world.
With the fragile state of the world's economy and concern over food shortages there is a need to protect arable crops from disease.
However assessing disease resistance in young oilseed rape plants is difficult as there is a long period where the pathogen is not visible--it can infect plants
So there is a need to develop oilseed crop varieties with greater inbuilt resistance to the disease.
Although oilseed rape crops in the UK are bred for disease resistance it is a difficult and expensive process--both in time
Traditionally selection of disease resistant oilseed crops has relied on field assessments of disease severity on stems
If resistance can be assessed in young oilseed rape plants it will not only accelerate the process of breeding oilseed rape crops for resistance
The paper based on experiments done by Dr Yong-Ju Huang at Rothamsted Research shows that resistance in young oilseed rape plants can be detected in controlled conditions
#Electrical generator uses bacterial spores to harness power of evaporating watera new type of electrical generator uses bacterial spores to harness the untapped power of evaporating water according to research conducted at the Wyss Institute of Biologically Inspired
The prototype generators work by harnessing the movement of a sheet of rubber coated on one side with spores.
or a freshly fallen leaf curls and then straightens when humidity rises. Such bending back and forth means that spore-coated sheets
or tiny planks can act as actuators that drive movement and that movement can be harvested to generate electricity.
Specifically he had characterized how moisture deforms materials including biological materials such as pinecones leaves and flowers as well as human-made materials such as a sheet of tissue paper lying in a dish of water.
A soil bacterium called Bacillus subtilis wrinkles as it dries out like a grape becoming a raisin forming a tough dormant spore.
Unlike raisins which cannot reform into grapes spores can take on water and almost immediately restore themselves to their original shape.
In fact spores would be particularly good at storing energy because they are rigid yet still expand
Since changing moisture levels deform these spores it followed that devices containing these materials should be able to move in response to changing humidity levels Mahadevan said.
When Sahin first set out to measure the energy of spores he was taken by surprise. He put a solution thick with spores on a tiny flexible silicon plank expecting to measure the humidity-driven force in a customized atomic force microscope.
But before he could insert the plank he saw it curving and straightening with his naked eye.
and the spores had responded. I realized then that this was extremely powerful Sahin said. In fact simply increasing the humidity from that of a dry sunny day to a humid misty one enabled the flexible spore-coated plank to generate 1000 times as much force as human muscle
and at least 10 times as much as other materials engineers currently use to build actuators Sahin discovered.
In fact moistening a pound of dry spores would generate enough force to lift a car one meter off the ground.
To build such an actuator Sahin tested how well spore-coated materials such as silicon rubber plastic
Then he built a simple humidity-driven generator out of Legosâa miniature fan a magnet and a spore-coated cantilever.
but it could be improved by genetically engineering the spores to be stiffer and more elastic.
Indeed in early experiments spores of a mutant strain provided by Driks stored twice as much energy as normal strains.
#Clinical trial studies vaccine targeting cancer stem cells in brain cancersan early-phase clinical trial of an experimental vaccine that targets cancer stem cells in patients with recurrent glioblastoma multiforme
Like normal stem cells cancer stem cells have the ability to self-renew and generate new cells
In theory if the cancer stem cells can be destroyed a tumor may not be able to sustain itself
The drug targets a protein CD133 found on cancer stem cells of some brain tumors and other cancers.
The cancer stem cell study is the latest evolution in Cedars-Sinai's history of dendritic cell vaccine research
Cedars-Sinai's brain cancer stem cell study is open to patients whose glioblastoma multiforme has returned following surgical removal.
Overtext Web Module V3.0 Alpha
Copyright Semantic-Knowledge, 1994-2011