SAN ANTONIO, Texas, U.S.A. — Scientists at The University of Texas Health Science Center San Antonio are on to something that should bring joy to sunbathers everywhere. Studies show that certain plant substances, administered in combination…
RIVERSIDE, Calif. — Drought-tolerant crops have moved closer to becoming reality.
A collaborative team of scientists has made a significant advance on the discovery last year by the University of California, Riverside’s Sean Cutler of pyrabactin…
Scientists at the University of Oregon have determined the fine-scale genetic structure of the first animal to show an evolutionary response to rapid climate change.
They used a high-throughput sequencing technique called Restriction-site As…
The widening of the Panama Canal currently underway has created a rare opportunity to study the insects that inhabit the plants of environmentally sensitive Central American rain forest habitats. Dr. Amy Berkov, Professor of Biology at The City Col…
When a few weeds appear on your front lawn, you can easily pick them off one by one. But if they start taking over the yard, the picking becomes laborious, and you may need to turn to a chemical weed-killer to hold the invaders in check. After several applications of the herbicide, however, the weeds could become resistant, forcing you to use an even more powerful solution. Meanwhile, the survival of your lawn hangs in the balance. Like weeds in a lawn, pathogenic fungi and yeasts (single-celled fungi) can invade and overtake our bodies. In people with healthy immune systems, cells called macrophages and neutrophils engulf these pathogens, nipping them in the bud. But when the immune system is weakened by disease or drugs, fungi ? much like weeds in your garden ? can grow unchecked.
A study in the journal Science is offering new insights into a long-standing mystery about plant growth. The scientists who conducted the experiment say their results could open new avenues of research for developing more effective herbicides and pharmaceuticals. Plant biologists from Stanford University and the Carnegie Institution of Washington report their new findings in the April 24 online edition of Science Express. The researchers are the first to witness the birth and growth of individual “microtubules” ? nanosize tubes of protein that form inside living plant cells.
The Justice Department and the Environmental Protection Agency today announced a major Clean Air Act settlement with Alcoa, Inc. under which the company will spend an estimated $330 million to install a new coal-fired power plant with state-of-the-art pollution controls to eliminate the vast majority of sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide emissions from the power plant at Alcoa’s aluminum production facility in Rockdale, Texas.
Genetic tools developed by MIT and Malaysian researchers will help identify and preserve a Southeast Asian tree containing a substance that inhibits viruses and boosts fertility. The work is reported in the March 2003 issue of Plant Physiology. Compounds extracted from the roots of the tree may lead to useful new drugs. New genetic tools for studying the trees and other tropical plants were developed by researchers at MIT and the Forest Research Institute of Malaysia (FRIM).
Fruits and veggies grown organically show significantly higher levels of cancer-fighting antioxidants than conventionally grown foods, according to a new study of corn, strawberries and marionberries. The research suggests that pesticides and herbicides actually thwart the production of phenolics ? chemicals that act as a plant’s natural defense and also happen to be good for our health. Fertilizers, however, seem to boost the levels of anti-cancer compounds.
Insect damage recorded in fossil plants and the types of plants present in the fossil record are helping researchers to understand how ecological communities recover from climate change and mass extinction events, according to a Penn State paleontologist and his colleagues.
As scientists attempt to learn about the origins of agriculture in the New World, they’re focusing on what, for the most part, is invisible ? microscopic plant crystals, tiny starch grains and fossilized pollen.
These microscopic plant traces reliably record the earliest use of domesticated plants, says Texas A&M University anthropologist Vaughn Bryant, who is also the director the university’s palynology laboratory.
Will bananas really become extinct within the next decade? Not likely says a plant pathologist with the American Phytopathological Society (APS). The plant pathologist is speaking out in response to an article that recently appeared in New Scientist depicting possible extinction due to the impact of two diseases, Black Sigatoka and Panama disease, on the global production of bananas. “Diseases are, and will remain, major constraints to both export and subsistence production of banana, and there is no doubt that Black Sigatoka and Panama disease constitute the most important threats,” said Randy C. Ploetz, Professor at the University of Florida’s Tropical Research and Education Center. “However, it is unlikely that these problems will cause production to decrease greatly in the next decade, let alone that the crop will become extinct,” said Ploetz.