Study of orchard ground cover management systemsOrchard floor and groundcover management is important to fruit growers, affecting the efficiency of orchard operations, fruit tree performance, and soil quality.
Herbicide-treated tree rows with mowed grass "drive lanes" are the most widely used orchard groundcover management systems (GMS) in North America and Europe; the system is widely considered to be the most efficient and least expensive GMS.
Due to increased concerns about the........Go to the Plant-science-blog (Added on 2/26/2009 11:08:53 PM)
How did the prehistoric reptiles take first flight?In the Mesozoic Era, 70 million years before birds first conquered the skies, pterosaurs dominated the air with sparrow- to Cessna-sized wingspans. Scientists suspected that these extinct reptiles sustained flight through flapping, based on fossil evidence from the wings, but had little understanding of how pterosaurs met the energetic demands of active flight.
A newly released study published recently in the journal PLoS ONE by scientists........Go to the Animal-science-blog (Added on 2/25/2009 5:25:13 AM)
Building a Better ProteinProteins are widely viewed as a promising alternative to synthetic chemicals in everything from medications to hand lotion. The naturally occurring molecules have been shown to be more efficient and effective than a number of of the most sophisticated chemical compounds on the market. But outside the controlled confines of the lab bench, proteins quickly change structure, causing irreversible damage to their functionality and often safety.
........Go to the Biology-blog (Added on 2/24/2009 6:21:25 AM)
Alien Life May Exist Among UsNever mind Mars, alien life may be thriving right here on Earth, according to Professor Paul Davies, a physicist at Arizona State University. This "shadow life" may be hidden in toxic arsenic lakes or in boiling deep sea hydrothermal vents, he says.Weird life could even be living among us, in forms which we don"t yet recognise, he told the American Association for the Advancement of Science meeting in Chicago. We don"t have to go to other........Go to the Plant-science-blog (Added on 2/18/2009 11:17:45 PM)
Viewing all the 15 million atoms in viral coatIf a picture is worth a thousand words, then Rice University's precise new image of a virus' protective coat is seriously undervalued. More than three years in the making, the image contains some 5 million atoms -- each in precisely the right place -- and it could help researchers find better ways to both fight viral infections and design new gene therapies.
The stunning image, which appears online this week in the Proceedings of the........Go to the Biology-blog (Added on 2/16/2009 9:57:42 PM)
Stopping the spread of rice virusBuilding on plant virus research started more than 20 years ago, a biologist at Washington University in St. Louis and his colleague at the Donald Danforth Plant Science Center in St. Louis have discovered a technology that reduces infection by the virus that causes Rice Tungro Disease, a serious limiting factor for rice production in Asia.
Roger N. Beachy, Ph.D., WUSTL professor of biology in Arts & Sciences and president of the Donald........Go to the Plant-science-blog (Added on 2/11/2009 6:03:58 AM)
Salamander decline in Central AmericaThe decline of amphibian populations worldwide has been documented primarily in frogs, but salamander populations also appear to have plummeted, as per a newly released study by University of California, Berkeley, biologists.
By comparing tropical salamander populations in Central America today with results of surveys conducted between 1969 and 1978, UC Berkeley scientists have observed that populations of a number of of the commonest........Go to the Animal-science-blog (Added on 2/10/2009 6:23:58 AM)
How an Antarctic worm makes antifreezeTwo BYU scientists who just returned from Antarctica are reporting a hardy worm that withstands its cold climate by cranking out antifreeze. And when its notoriously dry home runs out of water, it just dries itself out and goes into suspended animation until liquid water brings it back to life.
Identifying the genes the worm uses to kick in its antifreeze system can be useful information - similar genes found in other Antarctic organisms are........Go to the Animal-science-blog (Added on 2/10/2009 6:11:10 AM)
Silencing of jumping genes in pollenResearchers at the Instituto Gulbenkian de Cincia (IGC), in Portugal, are to date the only research group in the world capable of isolating the sperm cells in the pollen grain of the model plant Arabidopsis thaliana This technique was crucial in a study to be reported in the latest issue of the journal Cell, which describes how mobile sequences of DNA (called transposable elements) are silenced in the sperm cells, thus ensuring suppression of........Go to the Plant-science-blog (Added on 2/6/2009 6:07:02 AM)
Why Don't More Animals Change Their SexMost animals, like humans, have separate sexes - they are born, live out their lives and reproduce as one sex or the other. However, some animals live as one sex in part of their lifetime and then switch to the other sex, a phenomenon called sequential hermaphroditism. What remains a puzzle, as per Yale scientists, is why the phenomenon is so rare, since their analysis shows the biological "costs" of changing sexes rarely outweigh the........Go to the Animal-science-blog (Added on 2/4/2009 11:09:20 PM)
Methyl bromide for North Carolina tomato productionMethyl bromide (MeBr) is a highly effective broad-spectrum fumigant used extensively in U.S. agriculture to control a wide variety of pests. Under the Montreal protocol of 1991, however, MeBr was defined as one of the chemicals that contributed to the depletion of the stratospheric ozone layer, resulting in an incremental reduction in the amount of MeBr produced and imported in the U.S. In January 2005, a total phase out of MeBr (except for........Go to the Plant-science-blog (Added on 2/4/2009 6:22:31 AM)
Does hotter mean healthier?Phytophthora blight, caused by Phytophthora capsici, is a major plant disease that affects a number of crop species worldwide, including chile peppers in New Mexico. Farmers' observations suggested that Phytophthora capsici caused less damage in pepper crops of the hot pepper varieties than low-heat pepper varieties.
A study reported in the October 2008 issue of HortScience by the research team of Mohammed B. Tahboub (postdoctoral........Go to the Plant-science-blog (Added on 2/4/2009 6:20:23 AM)
Surprising lion stronghold in central AfricaTimes are tough for wildlife living at the frontier between Uganda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Armies are reportedly encamped in a national park and wildlife preserve on the Congolese side, while displaced herders and their cattle have settled in an adjoining Ugandan park.
And yet, the profusion of prey in the region could potentially support more than 900 individuals of the emblematic African lion, as per new research but........Go to the Animal-science-blog (Added on 1/30/2009 6:22:19 AM)
Fluorescent timersWhile we’re waiting for the most exciting future biophysics tool to get built, there are all kinds of practical improvements to current-generation microscopy that would still be exciting and useful. We’ve talked a lot about increasing the spatial resolution of optical microscopy, but it would also be useful to have tools for temporal measurements of dynamics in a living cell. Many cellular processes occur on temporal scales of........Go to the Biology-blog (Added on 1/29/2009 12:18:16 AM)
Biofeedback from the ZooAlmost three percent of all Americans suffer from Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD). But when do you cross the line between a neurotic compulsion to check your email every five minutes and mental illness?
As per new Tel Aviv University research, the best way to understand and effectively treat OCD is to look at ourselves as though we're animals in a zoo. "We've developed a program that allows us to videotape people that suffer from overt........Go to the Animal-science-blog (Added on 1/28/2009 6:26:18 AM)
Spitting cobras hit their markSpitting cobras have an exceptional ability to spray venom into eyes of potential attackers. A newly released study published in Physiological and Biochemical Zoology reveals how these snakes maximize their chances of hitting the target.
The name "spitting cobra" is a bit of a misnomer. Cobras don't actually "spit" venom, says the study's main author Bruce Young, director of the Anatomical Laboratory in the Department of Physical Therapy at........Go to the Animal-science-blog (Added on 1/23/2009 6:24:23 AM)
Listening to the songs of birdsWe readily understand "Hello, how are you?" whether the question is posed in a small child's squeaky soprano or large man's booming bass. One way our brain enables this feat is by grouping continuous series of sounds into discrete categories, such as the syllables of a conversation. Despite the central importance of this perceptual process to vocal communication, the underlying brain mechanisms remain largely unknown. Researchers at Duke........Go to the Animal-science-blog (Added on 1/21/2009 9:36:56 PM)
Global warming, pollution and declining coral populationCoral reefs around the world are in serious trouble from pollution, over-fishing, climate change and more. The last thing they need is an infection. But that's exactly what yellow band disease (YBD) isa bacterial infection that sickens coral colonies. Scientists at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) and his colleagues have observed that YBD seems to be getting worse with global warming and announced that they've identified the........Go to the Biology-blog (Added on 1/20/2009 6:57:29 PM)
Cooling the planet with cropsBy carefully selecting which varieties of food crops to cultivate, much of Europe and North America could be cooled by up to 1C during the summer growing season, say scientists from the University of Bristol, UK. This is equivalent to an annual global cooling of over 0.1C, almost 20% of the total global temperature increase since the Industrial Revolution.
The growing of crops already produces a cooling of the climate because they reflect........Go to the Plant-science-blog (Added on 1/15/2009 7:32:43 PM)
The mystery of camouflageAt Hogwarts, Harry Potter uses an invisibility cloak to hide from his enemies. In nature, animals like cuttlefish and chameleons use the awe-inspiring tricks of camouflage to hide from theirs.
Roger Hanlon, a senior scientist at the Marine Biological Laboratory (MBL), has spent 35 years studying animal camouflage, and in that time he has moved beyond awe at nature's disappearing tricks and discovered three broad classes of camouflage body........Go to the Animal-science-blog (Added on 1/15/2009 6:37:20 PM)
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Cells with double visionThe complexity of the human brain is remarkable: It contains billions of nerve cells, each of which is connected with its neighbours via a number of thousands of contacts. The result is a multifaceted network which stores and processes a number of types of information. In comparison, the brain of a fly seems fairly simple with its 250 000 nerve cells. For example, a small network of only 60 nerve cells in each cerebral hemisphere suffices the........Go to the Biology-blog (Added on 2/25/2009 11:01:04 PM)
Mystery of deep-sea fish with tubular eyes and transparent headScientists at the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute recently solved the half-century-old mystery of a fish with tubular eyes and a transparent head. Ever since the "barreleye" fish Macropinna microstoma was first described in 1939, marine biologists have known that it's tubular eyes are very good at collecting light. However, the eyes were thought to befixed in place and seemed to provide only a "tunnel-vision" view of whatever was........Go to the Animal-science-blog (Added on 2/24/2009 6:25:07 AM)
Gene to reduce wheat yield lossesA new gene that provides resistance to a fungal disease responsible for millions of hectares of lost wheat yield has been discovered by researchers from the US and Israel.
"This is the first step to achieving more durable resistance to a devastating disease in wheat," said Dr Cristobal Uauy, co-author of the report, recently appointed to the John Innes Centre in Norwich.
Resistance to stripe rust has previously been achieved using genes........Go to the Plant-science-blog (Added on 2/20/2009 6:19:22 AM)
When fish farms are built along the coastIf you are a fish eater, it's likely that the salmon you had for dinner was not caught in the wild, but was instead grown in a mesh cage submerged in the open water of oceans or bays. Fish farming, a relatively inexpensive way to provide cheap protein to a growing world population, now supplies, by some estimates, 30 percent of the fish consumed by humans.
Two hundred and twenty species of finfish and shellfish are now grown in farms.
........Go to the Animal-science-blog (Added on 2/16/2009 10:24:51 PM)
Seamounts may serve as refuges for deep-sea animalsOver the last two decades, marine biologists have discovered lush forests of deep-sea corals and sponges growing on seamounts (underwater mountains) offshore of the California coast. It has generally been assumed that a number of of these animals live only on seamounts, and are found nowhere else. However, two new research papers show that most seamount animals can also be found in other deep-sea areas. Seamounts, however, do support especially........Go to the Animal-science-blog (Added on 2/12/2009 6:24:15 AM)
Why those fruits ripen and flowers dieBest known for its effects on fruit ripening and flower fading, the gaseous plant hormone ethylene shortens the shelf life of a number of fruits and plants by putting their physiology on fast-forward. In recent years, researchers learned a lot about the different components that transmit ethylene signals inside cells. But a central regulator of ethylene responses, a protein known as EIN2, resisted all their efforts.
Finally, after more than........Go to the Plant-science-blog (Added on 2/11/2009 6:21:00 AM)
No joy in discoveries of new mammal speciesIn the era of global warming, when a number of researchers say we are experiencing a human-caused mass extinction to rival the one that killed off the dinosaurs, one might believe that the discovery of a host of new species would be cause for joy. Not entirely so, says Paul Ehrlich, co-author of an analysis of the 408 new mammalian species discovered since 1993.
"What this paper really talks about is how little we actually know about our........Go to the Animal-science-blog (Added on 2/10/2009 6:25:31 AM)
Scientists deconstruct cell divisionThe last step of the cell cycle is the brief but spectacularly dynamic and complicated mitosis phase, which leads to the duplication of one mother cell into two daughter cells. In mitosis, the chromosomes condense and the nucleus breaks down. Fibrous structures called spindles form, which then move the chromosomal material toward opposite ends of a cell and help partition other cell contents. If something goes wrong, diseases such as cancer can........Go to the Biology-blog (Added on 2/9/2009 6:22:46 AM)
Bacteria Jump From Host to HostAll life - plants, animals, people - depends on peaceful coexistence with a swarm of microbial life that performs vital services from helping to convert food to energy to protection from disease.
Now, with the help of a squid that uses a luminescent bacterium to create a predator-fooling light organ and a fish that uses a different strain of the same species of bacteria like a flashlight to illuminate the dark nooks of the reefs where it........Go to the Animal-science-blog (Added on 2/4/2009 11:12:14 PM)
Did Early Whales Gave Birth on Land?Two newly described fossil whales--a pregnant female and a male of the same species--reveal how primitive whales gave birth and provide new insights into how whales made the transition from land to sea.
The 47.5 million-year-old fossils, discovered in Pakistan in 2000 and 2004, are described in a paper published Feb. 4, 2009, in the online journal PLoS.
"This stunning discovery reinforces the belief that modern cetaceans originated from........Go to the Animal-science-blog (Added on 2/4/2009 11:03:38 PM)
Largest Prehistoric Fossil SnakeResearchers have recovered fossils from a 60-million-year-old South American snake whose length and weight might make today's anacondas seem like garter snakes.
Named Titanoboa cerrejonensis by its discoverers, the size of the snake's vertebrae suggest it weighed 1,140 kilograms (2,500 pounds) and measured 13 meters (42.7 feet) nose to tail tip.
A paper describing the find appears in this week's issue of the journal Nature.
"At its........Go to the Animal-science-blog (Added on 2/4/2009 10:55:43 PM)
Preparing for climate changeThe global climate is changing, and this change is already impacting food supply and security. People living in regions already affected by aridity need plants that can thrive / grow under dry conditions.
One example is sorghum: Also known as milo, durra, or broomcorn, sorghum is a grass species that can grow up to five meters in height and is extremely resistant to aridity and hot conditions. The grass, which originates from Africa, can........Go to the Plant-science-blog (Added on 2/2/2009 6:29:56 AM)
New class of genes found in mammalsA research team at the Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT and Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center has uncovered a vast new class of previously unrecognized mammalian genes that do not encode proteins, but instead function as long RNA molecules. Their findings, presented in the February 1st advance online issue of the journal Nature, demonstrate that this novel class of "large intervening non-coding RNAs" or "lincRNAs" plays critical roles in........Go to the Animal-science-blog (Added on 2/2/2009 6:13:34 AM)
Genetic blueprint of key biofuels cropResearchers at the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Joint Genome Institute (JGI) and several partner institutions have published the sequence and analysis of the complete genome of sorghum, a major food and fodder plant with high potential as a bioenergy crop. The genome data will aid researchers in optimizing sorghum and other crops not only for food and fodder use, but also for biofuels production. The comparative analysis of the sorghum........Go to the Plant-science-blog (Added on 1/29/2009 6:16:06 AM)
First things first
Something important happened this week, and it’s equally important that we take note of it, even on a humble blog such as this one. A great man has done a great thing, and I truly think the world is a better place because of him
I’m talking, of course, about the Florida Cracker, whose birthday it is today. So why don’t you hurry over to Pure Florida and wish the old boy well. He’s not a pup anymore, and he’s........Go to the Animal-science-blog (Added on 1/29/2009 12:18:01 AM)
Names give cows a lotta bottleA cow with a name produces more milk than one without, researchers at Newcastle University have found.
Drs Catherine Douglas and Peter Rowlinson have shown that by giving a cow a name and treating her as an individual, farmers can increase their annual milk yield by almost 500 pints.
The study, published online today in the academic journal Anthrozoos, observed that on farms where each cow was called by her name the overall milk yield was........Go to the Animal-science-blog (Added on 1/28/2009 6:22:22 AM)
Just Living With Females aloneLiving with a female mouse can extend the reproductive life of a male mouse by as much as 20 percent, as per a research studyconducted by Ralph Brinster and a team of other scientists at the University of Pennsylvania School of Veterinary Medicine. The study was reported online today in the journal Biology of Reproduction.
The scientists hypothesize that the females' effect on the environment of the spermatogonial stem cells likely occurs........Go to the Animal-science-blog (Added on 1/23/2009 6:12:45 AM)
How food choices influence California sea ottersSea otters living along the central California coast risk higher exposure to disease-causing parasites as a consequence of the food they eat and where they feed.
Sea otters that eat small marine snails are at a higher risk of exposure to Toxoplasma gondii, a potentially deadly protozoal pathogen, than animals that feed exclusively on other prey, while sea otters living along the coast near San Simeon and Cambria are more at risk than sea........Go to the Animal-science-blog (Added on 1/20/2009 7:16:43 PM)
Plant flowering in different environmentsIt has been known for some time that plants respond to environmental cues that guide their flowering. Chief among these signals are light, temperature and vernalization, when flowering is promoted by prolonged exposure to cold temperatures.
In some plants, researchers have identified particular genes that deal with each of these environmental signals. But they haven't fully grasped how plants integrate these signals in nature. For example,........Go to the Plant-science-blog (Added on 1/15/2009 7:31:30 PM)
Worldwide fish biomass and impact on climate changeAre there really plenty of fish in the sea? University of British Columbia fisheries researcher Villy Christensen gives the first-ever estimate of total fish biomass in our oceans: Two billion tonnes.
And fish play a previously unrecognized but significant role in mitigating climate change by maintaining the delicate pH balance of the oceans, as per a research studypublished in tomorrow's edition of the journal Science, co-authored by........Go to the Animal-science-blog (Added on 1/15/2009 7:22:11 PM)
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