Nitrogen fertilizers' impact on lawn soils Nitrogen fertilizers from farm fields often end up in aquatic ecosystems, resulting in water quality problems, such as toxic algae and underwater 'dead zones'. There are concerns that fertilizers used on lawns may also contribute to these problems. All of the lawns in the United States cover an area almost as large as Florida, making turfgrass our largest 'crop' and lawn fertilizer use a legitimate issue. In a study funded by the National Science Foundation Ecosystem Studies and Long Term Ecological Research programs, researchers from Cornell University and the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies have utilized recent technological advances to measure gaseous nitrogen emissions in home lawns. In the past, scientists have conducted nitrogen input-output studies on lawns to determine how much nitrogen is taken up by vegetation or deposited in soils, and how much is lost. The complete results from this study can be found in the November/December issue of Journal of Environmental Quality.
If plants generate magnetic fields, they’re not sayin’ A titan arum nicknamed "Trudy" is fully opened after flowering in June 2009 in the UC Botanical Garden. Two sensors of a magnetomer are visible to the lower left. (Eric Corsini) Searching for magnetic fields produced by plants may sound as wacky as trying to prove the existence of telekinesis or extrasensory perception, but physicists at the University of California, Berkeley, are seriously looking for biomagnetism in plants using some of the most sensitive magnetic detectors available. In an article that appeared this week in the Journal of Applied Physics, the UC Berkeley scientists describe the instruments they used to look for minuscule magnetic fields around a titan arum – the world’s largest flower – during its brief bloom, the interference from local BART trains and traffic that bedeviled the experiment, and their ultimate failure to detect a magnetic field. Why look for biomagnetism in plants? “We haven’t given up,” Corsini said.
Scientists Discover First Night-Flowering Orchid : The Two-Way hide captionBulbophyllum nocturnum, the only known night-flowering orchid Andre Schuiteman/Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew When scientists brought the Bulbophyllum nocturnum back to the Netherlands, they were perplexed. They had found the plant on the island of New Britain, near Papua New Guinea. They knew the plant came from a rare group, but the orchid's blooms would die before opening up. The orchid's uniqueness never became clear until one scientist brought it home with him. "[Dutch researcher Ed de Vogel] took a plant home with him one evening. The Bulbophyllum nocturnum is now the first orchid known to bloom at night. Of course the big question is why?
5 Ridiculous Myths People Use to Trash Local Food -- And Why They're Wrong November 18, 2011 | Like this article? Join our email list: Stay up to date with the latest headlines via email. It's become predictable. The arguments are stale, shallow and often incorrect. Myth #1: People who eat local eat the same diet as those who don't. A favorite anti-locavore argument is that eating local does not reduce oil usage or carbon emissions. James McWilliams likes to use the example of a study on lamb which shows that eating New Zealand lamb in London actually has a smaller carbon footprint than lamb from the U.K. Myth #2: The only reason for eating local is reducing 'food miles.' Often anti-locavore arguments, such as the one above from McWilliams, are predicated on the notion that locavores only eat local to reduce food miles -- the number of miles the food traveled from farm to fork -- and the reason they do that is to reduce carbon emissions. But that assumes this is the only benefit to eating local, and it isn't.
Leafy social network: Scientists study how stomata communicate (PhysOrg.com) -- To survive, leafy plants need to take in as much carbon dioxide as possible through pores in their leaves without losing water. Known as stomata, these pores somehow work together, processing and exchanging the information necessary to open and close at opportune times to achieve constant, optimal balance. An amazing and puzzling aspect of this process is that plants have no central processing unit, says Utah State University physicist David Peak. “What we’re observing is a very primitive form of intelligence,” Peak says. Peak and colleague Keith Mott, a professor of plant physiology at USU, have studied the function of stomata in intact leaves, with an emphasis on information processing, for nearly a decade. “Colleagues in the science community made a potentially revolutionary proposal that stomata respond to total absorbed radiant energy rather than to visible radiation alone,” Mott says.
Digital inventory of medicinal plants underway in Pune - Mumbai The Maharashtra government’s Rajiv Gandhi Science and Technology Commission is setting up a digitised inventory of medicinal plants of Maharashtra. The inventory will come up by March 2012. The commission, in April 2009, initiated the project of Rs3 crore with the Agharkar Research Institute, Pune. In all, 14 universities in the state have been given the task of compiling the data of the medicinal plants in the different districts. Shivaji University (SU) has been given the responsibility of compiling the data from Sangli, Satara and Kolhapur. Gaikwad said that information on the medicinal plants like their location, GPS mapping, usage of the medicinal plants in various diseases; life stages of these plants, suitable environment and photos are being collected. In fact, 300 medicinal plants have been selected on priority basis. “The project is immensely important in the age of globalisation.
Do Plants Have Minds? : 13.7: Cosmos And Culture hide captionPlants do seem to have a sense of where they want to go. Brent Stirton/Getty Images Plants do seem to have a sense of where they want to go. In my last contribution to 13.7, I suggested that Watson has the mind of a plant; he just sits there, plugged in, responding to what he is fed. On reflection — and as readers and colleagues were quick to point out to me — I may have been unfair to plants. For excellent surveys, see here and here. The guiding idea of this literature seems to be, first, that plants do in fact act, and they act in ways which, when animals act that way, we are disposed to think of as signs of intelligence. Plants reshape themselves — extending, growing, opening, closing, altering leaf size, etc — in direct response to what they need, what they have good reason to shun and to a broad range of local conditions. Granted, by human and animal measures, plants are very slow. Is it correct to say that plants forage for light, or that they actively avoid shade?
Plants Clean Up More Air Pollution Than Previously Thought photo: James Jordan/Creative Commons Let's just take it as a given that plants are awesome in many practical and inherent ways and go from there: New research, led by scientists from the National Center for Atmospheric Research, shows that plants clean out air pollution to a much greater extent than previously thought. In fact, some types of trees actively consume certain types of air pollution.Looking at oxygenated volatile organic compounds (oVOCs)--which are emitted from both manmade and non-manmade sources and can have serious effects on the health of the environment and humans--the team found that deciduous plants take up oVOCs as much as four times more rapidly than previously thought. The canopies of dense forest actually are responsible for 97% of observed uptake of oVOCs. Science Codex on what's happening: Globally Over One-Third More oVOCs Consumed by PlantsAt the global level, plants are taking up 36% more oVOCs than has been accounted for in previous studies. Like this?