At the bottom of plants' ability to sense touch, gravity or a nearby trellis are mechanosensitive channels, pores through the cells' plasma membrane that are opened and closed by the deformation of the membrane.
Plants need water to grow, but every hobby gardener knows that you shouldn’t carry this to excess either. During waterlogging or flooding, plants can’t take up enough oxygen that they urgently need for their cellular respiration and energy production.
Animals require oxygen, but oxygenated environments were rare on early Earth. New research from University of Southern Denmark shows that poisonous sulfide existed in the oceans 750 million years ago making large areas of the seafloor inhospitable to animal life. Such ocean conditions may have prohibited the emergence of animals on early Earth.
There’s an unsuspecting culprit contributing to U.S. water pollution: pet poop.
The global trend toward using fluorescent globes instead of incandescent ones as a strategy to beat climate change could be increasing eye disease, according to new research by scientists at The Australian National University.
The Antarctic ozone hole, which yawns wide every Southern Hemisphere spring, reached its annual peak on Sept. 12, stretching 10.05 million square miles, the ninth largest on record.
Removing a significant threat to public health and safety, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the municipality of Guaynabo, Puerto Rico, are proceeding with an emergency cleanup of improperly stored hazardous materials at a storage facility in Barrio Vietnam, Guaynabo.
Weeds have a greater impact on crop yields than any other pests. Over the past several decades, farmers have continually turned to synthetic herbicides because they are the most effective deterrent against weeds.
Reducing diesel emissions helps decrease asthma attacks and premature deaths.
Systems to harness the sun's energy typically generate either electricity or heat in the form of steam or hot water. But a new analysis by researchers at MIT shows that there could be significant advantages to systems that produce both electricity and heat simultaneously.
NOAA scientists have found that pressure from increasing coastal populations, ship and boat groundings, marine debris, poaching, and climate change are critically threatening the health of the Florida Keys ecosystem. Many historically abundant marine resources such as green sea turtles and coral habitat continue to be at risk with low rates of recovery.
Pesticides and pollutants are related to an alarming 450 percent increase in the risk of spina bifida and anencephaly in rural China, according to scientists at The University of Texas at Austin and Peking University.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) recently announced that Dry Creek Rancheria in Sonoma County, Calif., has gained authority to administer its own water quality programs under the federal Clean Water Act.
If courts were able to award appropriate punitive damages that punish wrongdoers at a level tied to a company's financial worth, then businesses big and small would be at risk of being put out of business by punitive damages, thus deterring unconscionable offenses and bad behavior in the first place.
In a new camera trap survey in the world’s most biologically diverse landscape, researchers for the Wildlife Conservation Society have identified more individual jaguars than ever before.
Studies of ant populations in Borneo reveal an unexpected resilience to areas of rainforest degraded by repeated intensive logging, a finding which conservationists hope will lead governments to conserve these areas rather than allow them to be cleared and used for cash crop plantations.
When contractors talk of green buildings, they mean environmentally-friendly and energy saving. Add agricultural experts in the plans, and “green” also means plants – vibrant ornamental grasses, shrubs and flowers in park-like settings on the roofs of multistoried office buildings in cities.
Lower emissions, less noise, more quality of life – all good reasons to turn to electricity where mobility is concerned. If the EU has its way, we will all be driving only electric cars in the major cities of Europe by the year 2050. A beautiful goal, but experts are going even further than that: citizens can forego a car of their own and share electric vehicles.
Smithsonian scientists have discovered two new, closely related bee species: one from Coiba Island in Panama and another from northern Colombia. Both descended from of a group of stingless bees that originated in the Amazon and moved into Central America, the ancestors of Mayan honeybees. The presence of one of these new species on Coiba and Rancheria Islands, and its absence from the nearby mainland, is a mystery that will ultimately shed light on Panama's history and abundant biodiversity.
NWO researcher Liesbeth Bakker made this discovery during her research into the food preferences of fish. The discovery turns our current understanding of the relationships between plants and animals on its head.