Celebrating Plants and People
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Is Traditional Agriculture The Best Way To Restore This Reef?
To restore the reef and provide habitat, we turned to an agricultural system that is resistant to climate impacts including flooding and sea level rise
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Native Americans Managed Landscape For Food Production And Fire Suppression
The findings of the new research — more fire-tolerant, large-nut-bearing trees than expected within about 15 kilometers of village sites — suggest that Native American communities in the study area modified the forest in ways that favored those species,
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How Do So Many Plant-Eating Animals Avoid Destroying The Savanna?
Grevy’s zebra and plains zebra—two species that live in the same places and consume almost nothing but grass—eat varying amounts of different species of grass. To them, a grassland isn’t just one uniform banquet. It’s a patchwork landscape full of different foods, with some bits that appeal to one species and others that delight another. “The appropriate question is not, ‘Does it eat grass?’ but rather ‘Which grasses does it eat?’,”
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New Study Of Traditional Herbal Medicines Reveals Promise For Diabetes And Cancer
Diabetes is the fastest growing metabolic disease in the world. A new study has shown that traditional Aboriginal and Indian plant extracts could be used to manage the disease and may also have potential use in cancer treatment.
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The Tropical Flower That Supports Dozens Of Insect Species
If just two flowers could play host to so many species of insect, just think about how many more are lurking on or in the other plants of the rainforest. How many are there, and how would we ever find them all?
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Plant Provides Drug That Makes Mice Into Dieters
A compound called Celastrol, extracted from thunder god vine root, caused obese mice to spontaneously and voluntarily go on a diet. Celastrol-treated obese mice ate 80 percent less food than the control (non-treated) mice, and after three weeks of Celastrol treatment, the formerly fat mice had become positively svelte, shedding on average 45 percent of their body weight. The icing on the cake: Celastrol also decreased mouse cholesterol levels, improved liver function, and enhanced glucose metabolism.
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Trees Used To Create Super Batteries
A method for making elastic high-capacity batteries from wood pulp was unveiled by researchers. Using nanocellulose broken down from tree fibres, a team produced an elastic, foam-like battery material that can withstand shock and stress.
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Waterfowl May Transport Invasive Plants and Other Species Long Distances
Based on theobserved microclimate data, mallard ducks could facilitate longdistance dispersal of the aforementioned species. Thisfindingneeds to be considered in the context of the dispersal of invasivealien species, and their ecological management
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Giant Pandas Require Old Growth Forests, But Who Knows Exactly Why?
China’s endangered giant pandas thrive in old forest that has never been logged, research shows.
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Biodiversity: The Price We Pay For Demonizing Forest Fires
The old sites differed environmentally because of the periodic nature of fire — some burned recently, some a little longer ago, some hadn’t for a long time. But with fire suppression, the canopy closed everywhere — leaving few differences from site to site. Overall, that supports less variety and fewer of the rare species that occupy pine barrens. As we found elsewhere in Wisconsin, our plant communities are becoming more homogeneous.