They cover seven percent of land surface yet hold more than 30 percent of Earth's terrestrial carbon.
As abandoned agricultural land in the tropics is taken over by forests scientists expect these new forests to mop up industrial quantities of atmospheric carbon.
and may even cause tropical forests to lose carbon. In the first study to experimentally demonstrate that competition between plants can result in ecosystem-wide losses of forest carbon scientists working in Panama showed that lianas
or woody vines can reduce net forest biomass accumulation by nearly 20 percent Researchers called this estimate conservative in findings published this month in Ecology.
As lianas increase in tropical forests they will lower the capacity for tropical forests to accumulate carbon.
They account for up to 25 percent of the woody plants in a typical tropical forest but only a few percent of its carbon.
They do not compensate for displaced carbon due to relatively low wood volume low wood density and a high rate of turnover.
After collecting eight years of data comparing liana-free plots with naturally liana-filled plots in the same forest they quantified the extent to which lianas limited tree growth hence carbon uptake.
--and nearly all of the aboveground carbon is stored in trees said Schnitzer. Lianas have been shown to consistently hinder the recruitment of small trees and limit the growth fecundity and survival of established trees.
Scientists have assumed that the battle for carbon is a zero-sum game in which the loss of carbon from one plant is balanced by the gain of carbon by another.
This assumption however is now being challenged because lianas prevent trees from accumulating vast amounts of carbon
but lianas cannot compensate in terms of carbon accumulation said Schnitzer. If lianas continue to increase in tropical forests they will reduce the capacity for tropical forests to uptake carbon
which will accelerate the rate of increase of atmospheric carbon worldwide. Story Source: The above story is provided based on materials by Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute.
Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. Journal Reference e
#Climate change and the future of sweet cherry in Australiapredicted variations in global climates have fruit producers trying to determine which crops are suited best to weathering future temperature changes.
Extreme high-temperature events are expected to become more frequent and predictive models suggest that the global mean surface air temperature will rise by as much as two degrees by the middle of the 21st century.
#Skin grafts from genetically modified pigs may offer alternative for burn treatmenta specially-bred strain of miniature swine lacking the molecule responsible for the rapid rejection of pig-to-primate organ transplants may provide a new source of skin grafts
A team of investigators from Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) report that skin grafts from pigs lacking the Gal sugar molecule were as effective in covering burn-like injuries on the backs of baboons as skin taken from other
Since pig organs implanted into primates are rejected rapidly due to the presence of the Gal (alpha-13-galactose) molecule Sachs
which both copies of the gene encoding Galt (galactosyltransferase) the enzyme responsible for placing the Gal molecule on the cell surface were knocked out.
#Rules to cut carbon emissions also reduce air pollution harmful to people, environmentsetting strong standards for climate-changing carbon emissions from power plants would provide an added bonus--reductions in other air pollutants that can make people sick;
damage forests crops and lakes; and harm fish and wildlife. This according to a first-of-its-kind study released today by scientists at Syracuse University
and Harvard who mapped the potential environmental and human health benefits of power plant carbon standards.
The authors of the new study Co-benefits of Carbon Standards: Air pollution Changes under Different 111d Options for Existing Power plants use three policy options for the forthcoming EPA rule as a guide to model changes in power plant emissions of four other harmful
One of the policy options we analyzed cut emissions of these non-carbon pollutants by approximately 75000 tons per year by 2020 Driscoll said.
It features detailed maps illustrating the benefits of decreased emissions from roughly 2400 power plants for every 12x12km area of the continental United states. With a strong carbon standard improvements are widespread and every state receives some benefit.
Our analysis demonstrates that strong carbon standards could also have widespread benefits to air quality
The U s. EPA is expected to release its proposed rules for carbon pollution from existing power plants June 2.
#Wood-waste biofuel to cut greenhouse gas, transform shipping industrya sustainable biofuel made from Norwegian forest wood waste could help transform the shipping industry
and reduce global greenhouse gas emissions. Alternative sustainable fuels are needed urgently in the marine transport sector due to stringent upcoming regulations demanding reduced sulphur
and carbon content in diesels and oils from January 2015. Aston University (UK) scientists are involved in the Reship project
When the dairy industry in advance of impending regulations started to reformulate flavored milk traditionally high in both fat
and sugar content they did so incrementally by reducing either fat or sugar to lower calories.
which involves'pressure-cooking'the biomass to drive a number of chemical reactions. A rapid pressure-release then causes the material to be ripped open to further improve accessibility.
In addition a full understanding of the polysaccharides and other compounds made available during pretreatment may mean other valuable co-products like platform chemicals may be produced viably from the surplus straw.
The results published in The Journal of Nutrition show that women who consistently ate a diet high in protein
while those who consistently ate high fat and sugar foods and takeaway were about 50%more likely to have a preterm birth.
In our study women who ate protein-rich foods including lean meats fish and chicken as well as fruit whole grains and vegetables had significantly lower risk of preterm birth.
and other foods high in saturated fat and sugar were more likely to have born babies preterm Dr Grieger says.
The Rice researchers behind a new study that explains the creation of nanodiamonds in treated coal also show that some microscopic diamonds only last seconds before fading back into less-structured forms of carbon under the impact of an electron beam.
The research by Rice chemist Ed Billups and his colleagues appears in the American Chemical Society's Journal of Physical chemistry Letters.
while working on ways to chemically reduce carbon from anthracite coal and make it soluble. First they noticed nanodiamonds forming amid the amorphous hydrogen-infused layers of graphite.
Unexpectedly the energy input congealed clusters of hydrogenated carbon atoms some of which took on the latticelike structure of nanodiamonds.
and his colleagues at the Technological Institute for Superhard and Novel Carbon Materials in Moscow to explain what the chemists saw.
In this case the electron microscope's beam knocks hydrogen atoms loose from carbon layers. Then the dangling bonds compensate by connecting to an adjacent carbon layer
which is prompted to connect to the next layer. The reaction zips the atoms into a matrix characteristic of diamond until pressure forces the process to halt.
Natural macroscale diamonds require extreme pressures and temperatures to form but the phase diagram should be reconsidered for nanodiamonds the researchers said.
Billups noted subsequent electron-beam experiments with pristine anthracite formed no diamonds while tests with less-robust infusions of hydrogen led to regions with onion-like fringes of graphitic carbon but no fully formed diamonds.
Yakobson is Rice's Karl F. Hasselmann Professor of Mechanical engineering and Materials Science a professor of chemistry and a member of the Richard E. Smalley Institute for Nanoscale Science and Technology.
Billups is a professor of chemistry at Rice. The Robert A. Welch Foundation the Ministry of Education and Science of the Russian Federation and the Russian Foundation for Basic Research supported the research.
but most emphasize eating animal proteins and fats which may raise cholesterol. Diets that are high in vegetable proteins
Eco-Atkins participants aimed for a balance of 26 per cent of calories from carbohydrates 31 per cent from proteins and 43 per cent from fat--coming primarily vegetable oils.
Proteins came from gluten soy vegetables nuts and cereals. Predominant fat sources for the Eco-Atkins diet were nuts vegetable oils soy products and avocado.
Story Source: The above story is provided based on materials by St michael's Hospital. Note: Materials may be edited for content and length h
since each organism competes with others in trading nutrients such as carbon and nitrogen the system as a whole may function more like a capitalistic market economy than a cooperative symbiotic relationship.
The competition among trees makes them export excessive amounts of carbon to the fungi which seize a lot of soil nutrients.
and the plants where each individual trades carbon for nutrients or vice versa to maximize profits not unlike a capitalistic market economy says Franklin
because it influences how much carbon dioxide these regions can absorb as well as how they are influenced by the increasing concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.
As more carbon becomes available to the trees the limitation of nitrogen generated by mycorrhizae becomes even more important possibly eliminating
and surface wildfires can result in an annual loss of 54 billion tonnes of carbon from the Brazilian Amazon increasing greenhouse gas emissions.
This is equivalent to 40%of the yearly carbon loss from deforestation --when entire forests are chopped down.
and belowground carbon loss from selective logging and ground level forest fires in the tropics based on data from 70000 sampled trees and thousands of soil litter and dead wood samples from 225 sites
The combination of selective logging and wildfires damages turns primary forests into a thick scrub full of smaller trees and vines which stores 40%less carbon than undisturbed forests.
So far climate change policies on the tropics have effectively been focusing on reducing carbon emissions from deforestation only not accounting for emissions coming from forest degradation.
Yet our results show how these disturbances can severely degrade the forest with huge amounts of carbon being transferred from plant matter straight into the atmosphere.
Bringing fire and illegal logging under control is key to reaching our national commitment to reducing carbon emissions.
#Oil, gas development homogenizing core-forest bird communitiesconventional oil and gas development in northern Pennsylvania altered bird communities and the current massive build-out of shale-gas infrastructure may accelerate these changes according to researchers in Penn State's College of Agricultural
Sciences. The commonwealth's Northern Tier--one of the largest blocks of Eastern deciduous forest in the entire Appalachian region--is an important breeding area for neotropical migrant songbirds.
and gas wells says Margaret Brittingham professor of wildlife resources who conducted a study of bird communities in the Allegheny National Forest.
The national forest on the extensively forested Allegheny Plateau in northwestern Pennsylvania has more than 14000 active oil and gas wells.
and gas development and suggest that a loss of community uniqueness is a consequence. The study done in collaboration with the U s. Department of agriculture's Northern Forest Research Station took place over three years.
Lead researcher Emily Thomas at the time a graduate student advised by Brittingham surveyed birds in 50-acre blocks selected for their varied amount of oil and gas development.
or absence of different songbird species in a range of landscapes including undisturbed forest low-density oil and gas development and high-density development.
and gas development are doing to bird populations said Brittingham. We compared and contrasted the abundance
and at a rate that was roughly proportional to the intensity of gas development. Songbird species that prefer early successional habitat increased in abundance on the edge of gas development.
In addition Brittingham noted the generalist bird species that do better around people and tend to be common wherever there are people
and gas development than within undisturbed forest--potentially displacing the forest specialists. The expansive development of Marcellus Shale gas which began within the core forests of northcentral Pennsylvania around 2007 is increasing exponentially.
Deep horizontal shale gas wells differ substantially from shallow conventional oil and gas wells in many ways.
Shale-gas well pads are immense but occur at a much lower density. Drillers install pad substrate of stone to support heavy equipment
and the drillers use a much greater quantity of water for hydrofracturing. That technology demands greatly increased levels of truck traffic on wider more highly engineered roads.
Brittingham and her students are currently studying the effects of shale-gas development on birds to determine how it affects avian communities.
and survey to gauge the impacts of gas development because they are abundant respond quickly to habitat change
while extracting the gas. We hope our research will help to determine where thresholds of change occur
The method could prove useful in controlling how particles move through microfluidic devices or in understanding the motion of material floating in magma.
and a decrease in certain inflammatory markers associated with poor lung function including white blood cells and C reactive-protein protein.
#Vitamin e in canola, other oils hurts lungsa large new Northwestern Medicineâ study upends our understanding of Vitamin e and ties the increasing consumption of supposedly healthy Vitamin e-rich
The new study shows drastically different health effects of Vitamin e depending on its form. The form of Vitamin e called gamma-tocopherol in the ubiquitous soybean corn and canola oils is associated with decreased lung function in humans the study reports.
The other form of Vitamin e alpha-tocopherol which is found in olive and sunflower oils does the opposite.
It associated with better lung function. Considering the rate of affected people we found in this study there could be 4. 5 million individuals in the U s. with reduced lung function
as a result of their high gamma-tocopherol consumption said senior author Joan Cook-Mills an associate professor of medicine in allergy/immunology at Northwestern University Feinberg School of medicine.
This is the first study to show gamma-tocopherol is associated with worse lung function. Cook-Mills presented her research in May at the Oxidants and Antioxidants in Biology World Congress.
In the U s. the average blood plasma level of gamma-tocopherol is four or more times higher than those of European and Scandinavian countries that consume sunflower and olive oil Cook-Mills noted.
When people consume alpha-tocopherol which is rich in olive oil and sunflower oil their lung function is better.
Cook-Mills had done previous allergy research in mice showing alpha-tocopherol decreased lung inflammation protecting healthy lung function and gamma-tocopherol increased lung
Cook-Mills examined the CARDIA results for individuals'lung function tests at four intervals from baseline to 20 years and the type of tocopherol levels in their blood plasma at three intervals from baseline
Micromolar is a measure of the amount of gamma-tocopherol per liter volume of blood plasma.
You get Vitamin e from your diet or supplements. In 2012 research she identified a mechanism for gamma-tocopherol increasing lung inflammation:
Protein kinase c-alpha which binds both forms of Vitamin e. Alpha-tocopherol inhibits the action of the protein
and gamma-tocopherol increases the action of the protein. A 10 percent reduction in lung function is like an asthmatic condition Cook-Mills said.
People have more trouble breathing. They take in less air and it's harder to expel.
Their lungs have reduced capacity. People with asthma already have lower lung function so if they have high gamma-tocopherol levels they would have even more difficulty breathing Cook-Mills said.
The individuals in CARDIA with asthma and high gamma-tocopherol had the lowest lung function.
The study can be found online at: http://respiratory-research. com/content/pdf/1465-9921-15-31. pdfstory Source:
Antibodies are protein molecules that are an important part of the body's immune defense system but can cause rejection of a transplanted organ.
For example the project has discovered the release of greenhouse gases is controlled differently in large lakes versus small ones.
Forests can either supply carbon to the atmosphere or remove it says UW-Madison geography Professor Jack Williams director of the Nelson Center for Climatic Research.
Some ecosystem models predict that forests will store more carbon over this century but others say they will release more.
because forests store such a vast amount of carbon and because carbon dioxide is the major greenhouse gas and therefore a major regulator of earth's temperature.
We just don't know: Will forests multiply or mitigate climate change? The Wisconsin scientists are versed well in the multiple methods used to document past forests
and climates including isotopes inside decaying plant material pollen and charcoal trapped in lake sediments historic land surveys and tree rings.
Among the technologies evaluated in situ are floor type in cattle housing use of additives in slurry storage manure turning flexible lagoons for collective slurry storage biowashers for gases at the outlet of air ducts of the sheds
but it poses numerous environmental problems like the emissions of polluting gases (ammonia nitrous oxide and methane) into the atmosphere and the polluting of soil and water by nitrates.
and high fat (think: cheeseburger) our digestive systems including our gut bacterial colonies adapted over millennia to process a low-energy nutrient-poor and presumably high fiber diet.
This hints that protein might play a greater role in appetite suppression than the breakdown of starch
Like in a chimney these gases are presumed to be rising to the surface resulting in the localised loss and disappearance of vegetation.
And according to the research team underground emission of abiotic gases as well is unlikely to result in such evenly dispersed and homogeneous spatial distribution.
what happens on a molecular basis in insects that evolved resistance to genetically engineered cotton plants.
Many mechanisms of resistance to Bt proteins have been proposed and studied in the lab but this is the first analysis of the molecular genetic basis of severe pest resistance to a Bt crop in the field said Bruce Tabashnik one of the paper's authors and the head of the Department of Entomology in the UA College
of Agriculture and Life sciences. He also is a member of the UA's BIO5 Institute.
Based on laboratory experiments aimed at determining the molecular mechanisms involved scientists knew that pink bollworm can evolve resistance against the Bt toxin
and implement resistance management strategies such as providing refuges of standard cotton plants that do not produce Bt proteins and releasing sterile pink bollworm moths.
Crops genetically engineered to produce proteins from the bacterium Bacillus thuringiensis --or Bt--were introduced in 1996 and planted on more than 180 million acres worldwide during 2013.
Organic growers have used Bt proteins in sprays for decades because they kill certain pests but are not toxic to people and most other organisms.
Pest control with Bt proteins--either in sprays or genetically engineered crops--reduces reliance on chemical insecticides.
Although Bt proteins provide environmental and economic benefits these benefits are cut short when pests evolve resistance.
encoding a protein called cadherin. Binding of Bt toxin to cadherin is an essential step in the intoxication process.
The researchers learned that the astonishing diversity of cadherin in pink bollworm from India is caused by alternative splicing a novel mechanism of resistance that allows a single DNA sequence to code for many variants of a protein.
It's required in many basic molecules like DNA and amino acids. Nitrogen enters the environment either through a microbial process called biological nitrogen fixation or through human activity such as fertilization and fossil-fuel consumption.
#Why you need olive oil on your salada diet that combines unsaturated fats with nitrite-rich vegetables such as olive oil
The Mediterranean diet typically includes unsaturated fats found in olive oil nuts and avocados along with vegetables like spinach celery and carrots that are rich in nitrites and nitrates.
Thus the study concludes that the protective effect of the Mediterranean diet combining unsaturated fats
An ice core from the center of the ice sheet demonstrated that exceptionally warm temperatures combined with black carbon sediments from Northern hemisphere forest fires reduced albedo below a critical threshold in the dry snow region
but the presence of a high concentration of ammonium concurrent with the black carbon indicates the ash's source was large boreal forest fires during the summer in Siberia and North america in June and July 2012.
fatty acids within its tissues on a diet of carbohydrates or saturated fats. Called essential because they are necessary to maintain important bodily functions omega fatty acids cannot naturally be synthesized by mammals
Introducing into mammals the capacity to convert nonessential nutrients into essential fats could lead to new sustainable
and cost-effective resources of beneficial omega-3 fatty acids says Jing X. Kang MD Phd of the Laboratory for Lipid Medicine and Technology in the MGH Department of Medicine senior author of the report
along with saturated fats--has led to a omega-6 to omega-3 ratio as high as 20 to 1. It is known that molecules produced by omega-6 metabolism can promote inflammation
The current study describes how crossbreeding the fat-1 mouse with another strain transgenic for the c. elegans gene fat-2
which converts monosaturated fats into omega-6s can produce mice expressing both c. elegans genes.
The crossbreeding protocol produces four different strains within the same litter--Omega mice that express both fat-1 and fat-2 strains that express only one of the c. elegans genes
Littermates fed a identical diet high in saturated fats and carbohydrates and low in omega-6s had these differences in their muscle tissues:
Even when fed a high-carbohydrate fat-free diet both the Omega and fat-2 strains produced significant levels of both essential fatty acids.
Since our 2004 report on the fat-1 mouse our lab and many others have been working towards the generation of larger omega-3-producing animals--including pigs sheep
The researchers measured dust particles or wind erosion using a portable wind tunnel. This tunnel was 24 ft long 4 ft tall and 3 ft wide.
Microorganisms native to raw milk whose metabolic potentials differ from those of commercial strains may enable the more intense and complex development of aromatic compounds.
and volatile organic compounds (VOC) in their urine and this may increase their risk for cancer
which helped researchers estimate the clearance of the tobacco-related chemicals of interest. The study participants spent on average 74 minutes smoking water pipes
New research from scientists at the CLOUD (Cosmics Leaving OUTDOOR Droplets) experiment at CERN including Carnegie mellon University's Neil Donahue sheds light on new-particle formation--the very
Cloud droplets form when water vapor in the atmosphere condenses onto tiny particles. These particles are emitted directly from natural sources
or human activity or they form from precursors emitted originally as gaseous pollutants. The transformation of gas molecules into clusters and then into particles a process called nucleation produces more than half of the particles that seed cloud formation around the world today.
But the mechanisms underlying nucleation remain unclear. Although scientists have observed that the nucleation process nearly always involves sulfuric acid sulfuric acid concentrations aren't high enough to explain the rate of new particle formation that occurs in the atmosphere.
This new study uncovers an indispensable ingredient to the long sought-after cloud formation recipe--highly oxidized organic compounds.
Our measurements connect oxidized organics directly and in detail with the very first steps of new particle formation and growth said Donahue professor of chemistry chemical engineering engineering and public policy and director of CMU's Steinbrenner Institute for Environmental Education and Research.
We had no idea a year ago that this chemistry was happening. There's a whole branch of oxidation chemistry that we didn't really understand.
It's an exciting time. The air we breathe is chock-full of organic compounds tiny liquid
or solid particles that come from hundreds of sources including trees volcanoes cars trucks and wood fires.
Once they enter the atmosphere these so-called organics start to change. In research published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in 2012 Donahue and colleagues showed conclusively that organic molecules given off by pine trees called alpha-pinene are transformed chemically multiple times in the highly oxidizing environment of the atmosphere.
Additionally other research including from Donahue's lab has suggested that such oxidized organics might take part in nucleation--both in new particle formation and in their subsequent growth.
Donahue and an international team of researchers with the CLOUD experiment at CERN set out to test that hypothesis. The CLOUD project at CERN is a unique facility that allows scientists to reproduce a typical atmospheric setting inside of an essentially contaminant-free
stainless steel chamber. By performing experiments in the precisely controlled environment of the CLOUD CHAMBER the project's scientists can change the concentrations of chemicals involved in nucleation
and then measure the rate at which new particles are created with extreme precision. In the current work the team filled the chamber with sulfur dioxide
and pinnanediol (an oxidation product of alpha-pinene) and then generated hydroxyl radicals (the dominant oxidant in Earth's atmosphere).
Then they watched the oxidation chemistry unfold. Using very high-resolution mass spectrometry the scientists were able to observe particles growing from single gaseous molecules to clusters of up to 10 molecules stuck together as they grew molecule by molecule.
It turns out that sulfuric acid and these oxidized organic compounds are attracted unusually to each other. This remarkably strong association may be a big part of why organics are drawn really to sulfuric acid under modern polluted conditions Donahue said.
After confirming that oxidized organics are involved in the formation and growth of particles under atmospheric conditions the scientists incorporated their findings into a global particle formation model.
The fine-tuned model not only predicted nucleation rates more accurately but also predicted the increases and decreases of nucleation observed in field experiments over the course of a year especially for measurements near forests.
This latter test is a strong confirmation of the fundamental role of emissions from forests in the very first stage of cloud formation
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