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Celebrating Plants and People

  • Drunk birds sober up in Environment Yukon holding tank

    What happens around this time of year is that after the frost, the berries will ferment and so the birds actually can get a little intoxicated from eating these berries and they do in fact get drunk

  • Humble plants that hide surprising secrets: TED Talk

    Now the question you’re probably asking yourself is, why is she telling us all these stories? The reason for that is that we tend to overlook the diversity and the variety of the natural world. These particular habitats are unique and they are host to a whole lot of plants. We don’t realize how valuable and how precious these resources are, and yet, through our insouciance, we keep on destroying them.

  • Do Plants Have Rights?

    So the question that emerges is this: How can we ethically justify, promote, and financially subsidize the use of plants in the context of plant biotechnology and bioengineering, when the premises of this scientific endeavor are rooted in the erroneous view of plants as insensitive objectified organisms?

  • Flowers That Call To Bats

    We know that in step with bats’ ability to “see” with sound, plants themselves have shaped their flowers to be heard, becoming as brilliant to the bat’s ear as their brightly colored daytime counterparts are to the eyes of their pollinators. In such intricate interactions, nature reveals its most profound magic.

  • Greenhouse Revolution: A tomato plant that can tolerate continuous light

    It could be a tomato game-changer: Scientists have discovered a gene that would allow commercial tomato plants to tolerate 24 hours of light a day. In theory, more light exposure means more energy production for the plant, so the discovery could lead to tomato plants that yield up to 26% more tomatoes compared with plants that are given 18 hours of light in a greenhouse setting

  • Attracting Mammal Seed Dispersers Without Offering Fruit

    Hovenia dulcis peduncle sets are confirmed to adapt primarily to mammalian endozoochory, a mutualistic association similar in function to fleshy pulp or foliage. This demonstrates that plant organ systems can be adapted to unique mutualisms that utilize animal dispersal agents. Such an ecological role has until now been attributed only to bird epizoochory.

  • Jasmine Fragrance May Be The Best Thing For You

    When the effects of the jasmine odor were compared to the effects of the lavender odor and the non-odor control condition, the dispensing of jasmine led to greater sleep efficiency and reduced sleep movement. There were no differences in the total amount of sleep, thus the jasmine condition led to a greater quality rather than quantity of sleep. When the participants woke, those who breathed the jasmine rated their level of anxiety and vigor lower, and performed cognitive tests more rapidly.

  • Drones Made Of Fungus Dissolve When No Longer Needed

    The drone’s chassis was made of mycelium, a fungal material that can be grown into specific shapes, from packaging to surfboard cores. That mycelium was given a covering of cellulose “leather” sheets grown by bacteria, before being coated in the same proteins paper wasps use to coat their nests, cloned from the insects saliva.

  • ‘Guns kill trees too’: overhunting raises extinction threat for trees

    “Unless steps are taken to reduce hunting pressure on animal seed dispersers, the integrity of tropical forests is at risk,” he noted, adding that “the threat of overhunting to tropical forests is particularly worrisome, because overhunting could degrade even forests that are protected from logging, fire and other disturbances. And if animal-dispersed trees decline, we risk losing valuable ecosystem services, including carbon storage, biodiversity, and wild populations of important commercial tree species.”

  • New Oilseed Crop Offers Anti-Cancer and Nutritional Promise

    This seed meal is a promising nutritional supplement because its bioactive ingredients increase the liver’s ability to clear foreign chemicals and oxidative products. And that gives it potential anti-cancer benefit,