Don't define me. Flowers Communicate with Electricity. MIT creates solar cell from grass clippings. A researcher at MIT, Andreas Mershin, has created solar panels from agricultural waste such as cut grass and dead leaves. In a few years, Mershin says it’ll be possible to stir some grass clippings into a bag of cheap chemicals, paint the mixture on your roof, and immediately start producing electricity. If you remember high school biology classes, you will hopefully remember a process called photosynthesis, whereby plants turn sunlight into energy. Mershin has found a process which extracts the photosynthesizing molecules, called photosystem I, from plant matter. Photosystem I contains chlorophyll, the protein that actually converts photons into a flow of electrons. These molecules are then stabilized and spread on a glass substrate that’s covered in a forest of zinc oxide nanowires and titanium dioxide “sponges.”
When sunlight hits the panels, both the titanium dioxide and the new material absorb light and turn it into electricity, and the nanowires carry the electricity away. 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. At nearly regular intervals, someone, somewhere, will decide it's time to write another article "debunking" the local food movement.
The latest installment is by Steve Sexton, posted on the Freakonomics blog (which also treated us to a previous post called " Do We Really Need a Few Billion Locavores? ") And we must not forget the leading anti-locavore, James McWilliams, who gave us " The Locavore Myth" and many other, similar articles. 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. Amazonian Mushroom Eats Indestructible Plastics. Yarrow: Ancient Insect Repellent.
(Before It's News) Image: University of Wisconsin If you plan on spending time outdoors this summer, then yarrow, Achillea millefolium, is a very useful herb to know about. As the title of this post suggests, you can make an alcohol extract of the upper parts of the yarrow plant — the leaves and flowers — and spray it as an insect repellent. (The recipe is one part herb per two parts liquid menstruum, which should be 50% alcohol). Yarrow has other applications, too. Wikipedia Image If you’re into home-brewing your own beer, yarrow is for you. The Latin name for yarrow, Achillea millefolium, refers to two of its characteristics. But if you’re an anthropology nerd like me, then the most interesting thing to know about yarrow is that archeologists detected it inside Shanidar Cave, a 62,000-year-old Neanderthal site in northern Iraq. Share this post and tell your friends all about this amazing plant some call a “weed”. Read more at First Ways Source:
Steroids control gas exchange in plants. Public release date: 5-Feb-2012 [ Print | E-mail Share ] [ Close Window ] Contact: Zhiyong Wang zywang24@stanford.edu Carnegie Institution Stanford, CA— Plants leaves are sealed with a gas-tight wax layer to prevent water loss. Plants breathe through microscopic pores called stomata (Greek for mouths) on the surfaces of leaves. Over 40% of the carbon dioxide, CO2, in the atmosphere passes through stomata each year, as well a water volume twice that of the whole atmosphere. The mechanisms for such regulation have remained elusive. Brassinosteroids are found throughout the plant kingdom and regulate many aspects of growth and development, including inhibition of photosynthetic genes when there is insufficient light for photosynthesis. Wang, lead author Kim and their colleagues Marta Michniewicz and Bergmann set out to determine brassinosteroid's role in stomatal development.
. [ Print | E-mail AAAS and EurekAlert! 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.
Lichens. 7 Edible Weeds - Article :: Networx. What You Eat Affects Your Genes: RNA from Rice Can Survive Digestion and Alter Gene Expression | 80beats. Breaking News: Monsanto To Face Biopiracy Charges In India. An farm worker assorting eggplants in the Indian state of Gujarat. by Arne Hückelheim/WikicommonsAccording to an article published this month in the journal Nature Biotechnology, Monsanto is facing biopiracy charges in India. In an unprecedented decision, India's National Biodiversity Authority(NBA), a government agency, declared legal action against Monsanto (and their collaborators) for accessing and using local eggplant varieties (known as brinjal) to develop their Bt genetically engineered version1 without prior approval of the competent authorities, which is considered an act of "biopiracy. "2 The journal of Nature Biotechnology reported: "An Indian government agency has agreed to sue the developers of genetically modified (GM) eggplant for violating India's Biological Diversity Act of 2002.
India's National Biodiversity Authority (NBA) is alleging that the developers of India's first GM food crop--Jalna-based Maharashtra Hybrid Seeds Company (Mahyco) partnered with St. Scientists invent transparent soil to reveal the secret life of plants. Lettuce grown in transparent soil developed by researchers at the James Hutton Institute and the University of Abertay Dundee in Scotland Most people’s image of plants is actually upside down. For most of our photosynthetic friends, the majority of the plant is underground in the form of an intricate system of roots.
The bit that sticks up is almost an afterthought. That’s a problem for scientists trying to study plants because growing them in media that allow you to see the roots, such as hydroponics, doesn't mimic real soil very well. Now, a team of researchers at the James Hutton Institute and the University of Abertay Dundee in Scotland has developed an artificial transparent soil that allows scientists to make detailed studies of root structures and subterranean soil ecology on a microscopic level.
It’s made from granules of Nafion, which is a lot easier than calling it a sulfonated tetrafluoroethylene based fluoropolymer-copolymer. Source: James Hutton Institute About the Author. Dutch PlantLab Revolutionizes Farming: No Sunlight, No Windows, Less Water, Better Food. +92 more posted on Aug, 14 2011 @ 01:55 PM I always enjoy innovations such as this and thought this would be good to share in the spirit of hope regarding food issues and potential shortages. The Dutch have developed a program that is super efficient and maximizes every single aspect of a plant and it's characteristics to provide a perfect plant, with optimum results.
The yield is up to 3 times that of normal growing methods and uses only about 10% of the water by comparison, which is recycled as well. You’ve heard of paint by numbers? Man these LED's are increasing in their uses in todays world, and I would not have thought that they could serve so effectively in plant growth. Why use white light? I would not have guessed that at all, however red and blue are the primaries with the most oscillation properties when combined, creating an energetic spectrum. When grown outdoors plant photosynthesis is only about 9% efficient. Yea, but how do they taste? Peace, spec. Newly Discovered Plant Bows Down and Buries Its Own Seeds | 80beats. Why the hottest chilies grow in the wettest places. Well that depends on what you mean by "driest. " Some of the spiciest food I've had has been from Thailand and India, from regions that are hot, but seriously damn wet for parts of the year. Well, perhaps predominantly was a bad word to use, so I'll give you Thailand.
Likewise, India and Mexico are too large to generalize as one climate, and there are really wet regions. However there are also many notable dry/arid areas. Bangalore, Punjab, and to an extent, New Delhi have very hot and dry seasons (New Delhi gets both dust storms AND monsoons, lucky them...). So I probably could have rephrased what I originally said as, "I find it ironic that while the hottest chilies grow in the wettest places, they are used IN MANY ARID places. " I guess I was just hung up on the whole wettest, hottest, fungussy, pungent thing that I remembered that I needed to get my sister in law a Christmas gift and rushed through my original post.
I'm still sticking to my guns though. Except Thailand. Lettuce-Bot can kill weeds with 98% accuracy. Humans have a pesky way of increasing in number no matter what we do. All those people also consume resources, and the strain on global food supplies will only increase in the future. As everyone scrambles to find a solution to this problem, we come back to one of our favorite problem-solvers: robots.
A startup called Blue River Technology has been funded to continue development of its Lettuce-Bot, which is much, much cooler than it sounds. Angel investors have opted to put $3.1 million on the table to move development of the Lettuce-Bot forward. The system is designed to remove weeds from croplands without increasing the use of herbicides. Lettuce-Bot does this by taking advantage of recent advancements in computer vision systems. The Lettuce-Bot is not a miracle machine, though. Blue River, via Future Timeline.
Honeybee deaths linked to seed insecticide exposure. Honeybee populations have been in serious decline for years, and Purdue University scientists may have identified one of the factors that cause bee deaths around agricultural fields. Analyses of bees found dead in and around hives from several apiaries over two years in Indiana showed the presence of neonicotinoid insecticides, which are commonly used to coat corn and soybean seeds before planting. The research showed that those insecticides were present at high concentrations in waste talc that is exhausted from farm machinery during planting. The insecticides clothianidin and thiamethoxam were also consistently found at low levels in soil -- up to two years after treated seed was planted -- on nearby dandelion flowers and in corn pollen gathered by the bees, according to the findings released in the journal PLoS One this month.
"It's like death by a thousand cuts for these bees," Hunt said. "Whatever was on the seed was being exhausted into the environment," Krupke said. Unlocking the fractal patterns in cauliflower. How many plants would you need to generate oxygen for yourself in an airlock? Are the tables turning in the war between pests and genetically modified crops? I'm pretty sure they're aware of that fact, the problem is its the only way to produce enough food for a large population. Without the development of agriculture, humanity would still be relegated to a small population of hunter/gatherers. Not really. We could sustain 10 billion with crop rotation pretty easily. It's just that the agricultural markets and government subsidies are heavily skewed in favor of cash crops.
That's why the US produces a zillion tons of corn nobody wants so they have to keep inventing new ways to use it, like fructose corn syrup, corn based biofuels, paper made out of corn, building materials made of out corn, people made of corn and so on. The development of agriculture in ancient times has almost nothing to do with this current issue. Corpore-Metal, I am usually right there with you with comments that you leave on here. I do agree with you about the monoculture problem though. "Supply and Demand tends to turn something into a cash crop. First plants caused ice ages, new research reveals. New research reveals how the arrival of the first plants 470 million years ago triggered a series of ice ages. Led by the Universities of Exeter and Oxford, the study is published in Nature Geoscience. The team set out to identify the effects that the first land plants had on the climate during the Ordovician Period, which ended 444 million years ago.
During this period the climate gradually cooled, leading to a series of 'ice ages'. This global cooling was caused by a dramatic reduction in atmospheric carbon, which this research now suggests was triggered by the arrival of plants. Among the first plants to grow on land were the ancestors of mosses that grow today. This study shows that they extracted minerals such as calcium, magnesium, phosphorus and iron from rocks in order to grow. In so doing, they caused chemical weathering of Earth's surface. The team used the modern moss, Physcomitrella patens for their study. Discovery on how sugars are moved throughout a plant. Food prices are soaring at the same time as Earth's population has just reached 7 billion. As a result the need for increased crop yields is extremely important.
New research led by Carnegie's Wolf Frommer into the system by which sugars are moved throughout a plant -- from the leaves to the harvested portions and elsewhere -- could be crucial for addressing this problem. Their work is published December 8 by Science Express. Just as it's necessary for the human body to move nutrients to all of the organs, it is vital for green plants to transport sugars to supply its various parts. In humans, this is the circulatory system's job. But plants do not have a heart-like pump to move these vital energy sources. Twenty years ago, the Frommer team identified one of the key components of this molecular pump, which actively loads a sugar called sucrose into the plant's veins, a tissue called phloem. Key mechanism that regulates shape and growth of plants discovered. UBC researchers have discovered a key mechanism that -- much like a construction site foreperson -- controls the direction of plant growth as well as the physical properties of the biopolymers that plants produce.
The finding is a major clue in a 50-year-long quest to explain how plants coordinate the behaviour of millions of cells as they grow upward to compete for light, penetrate soil to obtain nutrients and water, and even open petals to flower. "We've known for decades that structures in plants called microtubules act as scaffolding to define the direction of cell expansion," says Professor Geoffrey Wasteneys, a UBC botanist and Canada Research Chair in Plant Cell Biology. "These are tiny multipurpose cylinders that grow, shrink and self-organize to transport cargo, capture and position large structures such as chromosomes, and establish the shape of cells.
But we haven't been able to determine how these tiny microtubules are organized into scaffolds in the first place. " Earliest known bug-repellant plant bedding found at South African rock shelter. Strawberries Protect The Stomach From Alcohol. Electricity from the marshes. Tiny protein helps bacteria 'talk' and triggers defensive response in plants. Organisms. Experimental Recipes with Azolla, Super Plant (and Future Space Food?)
Logy Magazine. No sun, no problem: scientists discover dark secrets of the plant world. Purple lights and math help PlantLab grow food more efficiently. Plants Use Body Clocks to Prepare for Battle | Wired Science. Why Do Some Like It Hot? | Anthropology in Practice. Plants create a water reserve in the soil. Plant Teacher - Entheogens and Healing Herbs. Digital inventory of medicinal plants underway in Pune - Mumbai. Nitrogen Fixation | Oscillator. Urban Physic Garden. PlantLab. Horticulture Discotech: LED Grow Lights Power Sustainable Farming. Plants Clean Up More Air Pollution Than Previously Thought. Scientists Discover First Night-Flowering Orchid : The Two-Way. Flowers in Ultra-Violet. Pests Are Developing Resistance to Monsanto's Engineered Supercorn. Inside Insides. All he is saying, is give pee a chance. Tip of the Tongue: The 7 (Other) Flavors Humans May Taste | Kokumi, Piquance & Coolness | Metallicity, Fat & Carbon Dioxide | Human Senses & Taste Buds.
Leafy social network: Scientists study how stomata communicate. How the first plant came to be. The ISME Journal - Endogeic earthworms shape bacterial functional communities and affect organic matter mineralization in a tropical soil. Plants and fungi play the 'underground market' Guide to Common Edible Wild Plants.