tree

The secret lives of whales

...e ability to read genes to counting the rings of a tree ?but looking at the history of an entire population, not just an individual. “Knowing the history of populations is critically important to managing their future,?says Palumbi, “especially for populations like these whales that have figured out how t...

New Clues Add 40,000 Years to Age of Human Species

...astern Mediterranean, which, along with ice cores, tree rings and annual lake deposits, are part of the geological record scientists study for indications of climate change. The team believes the Africa-Mediterranean correlation ties both regions to moister climates long ago, yielding another method to un...

Essential mangrove forest threatened by cryptic ecological degradation

...from adverse shifts in the composition of mangrove tree species to disrupted ethnobiological relationships, lagoon fisheries, and many additional functions provided by mangroves. The authors believe that the worrying aspect of the research is that a degradation of the most vulnerable, most socio-economic...

New protein discovered by Hebrew University researchers

...overing and isolating a new proteinfrom the poplar tree with special structural and qualitativecharacteristics that could have consequences for development of futurenanocapsules for drug delivery to cancer cells.In addition to being obtained from plant tissue, the protein can nowalso be produced in large ...

The death of a very special chimpanzee

...overing and isolating a new proteinfrom the poplar tree with special structural and qualitativecharacteristics that could have consequences for development of futurenanocapsules for drug delivery to cancer cells.In addition to being obtained from plant tissue, the protein can nowalso be produced in large ...

First real-time view of developing neurons reveals surprises, say Stanford researchers

...ey could watch the branches grow and recede like a tree waving in the wind, losing the occasional twig. Over time, the network of branches stabilized into the mature form. "We're looking at a dynamic process that nobody has ever seen before," Smith said. Understanding how neurons mature into their adult...

Falling ants glide back to trunk to avoid dangers of forest floor

...and then made this nice little cascade back to the tree trunk," said Yanoviak via phone from Iquitos. "Tha...called Cephalotes atratus ?are able to land on the tree trunk and climb back up, as compared to a mere 5 percent that would be expected to land on the trunk...

World's largest rainforest drying experiment completes first phase

...es to the "umbrellas" from the normal variation in tree growth, tree death, leaf production, and other aspects of forest behavior, researchers compared this dry plot of ...

Family trees of ancient bacteria reveal evolutionary moves

...olution of Cyanobacteria, Blank drew up a backbone tree using multiple genes from whole genome sequences. Additional species were added to the tree using ribosomal RNA genes. Morphological characters, for instance, the presence or absence of a shea...

Live fast, die young true for forests too

...) and "withdrawals" (tree deaths) are high. But if tree births suddenly stopped, or if tree death rates doubled, the numbers of trees in these forests would be halved in just 30 years. In con...

Biodiversity hotspots identify conservation priorities

...demics), about a third of the world's oak and pine tree species, and over 1,500 vertebrate species (including 134 endemic species). Among many charismatic flagship species in the region is the volcano rabbit or zacatuche (Romerolagus diazi), one of the world's smallest rabbits, which is found only in the ...

Shift of weather patterns necessitates rethinking of reforestation methods

...ers can greatly increase the survival rate of pine tree seedlings by changing when and how they plant, according to research conducted here. "There's been too many (reforestation) failures over the last decade or so," said Dr. Eric Taylor, Texas Cooperative Extension forestry specialist. "Some landowner...

FDA Works To Speed The Advent Of New, More Effective Personalized Medicines

...n on submitting genomic data, including a decision tree to simplify data submissions, relevant regulatory information, and FDA contact information. FDA has already received several pharmacogenomic data submissions through both the regulatory and voluntary processes and will continue to work closely with ...

The biggest family tree ever

...hat every tenth person is building a little family tree at home. They go to all the records and they're using Web sites to trace back their history." The UA scientists will analyze a tiny fraction of the participants' genetic material: the y-chromosome, which is passed on from father to son, and mitochon...

Finding hidden invaders in a Hawaiian rain forest

... The fingerprints showed where the native dominant tree 'ohia' (Metrosideros polymorpha) has been taken ov...ties. On Kilauea Volcano, the native Metrosideros tree typically has a low concentration of nitrogen in its leaves ( .6% to .8%), while the invading Canary...

Retrovirus struck ancestors of chimpanzees and gorillas millions of years ago, but did not affect ancestral humans

...struck after humans had split off the evolutionary tree from primates, researchers said. The infection may have played a role in the evolution of such great apes as chimps and gorillas. The research appears in the April issue of the journal Public Library of Science-Biology, which is available online on M...

Nature provides inspiration for important new adhesive

...lso been explored to create the new adhesives from tree bark or wood decayed by brown rot fungus. Regardless of the material used to produce the adhesives, they are renewable and may reduce the need for the currently used urea-formaldehyde wood adhesives that have health concerns, and are based on increas...

Mother birds increase progesterone to hatch females

...uch as the Seychelles warbler, the zebra finch and tree swallow, adaptively manipulate the sex of their offspring before an egg is laid," says Stephanie Correa, a doctoral student in neurobiology and behavior at Cornell and the lead author of the study that was posted online recently in The Royal Society'...

What the eye doesn't see

...erns on the moths the team were able to mimic real tree characteristics and identify which pattern combinations were the most successful. Professor Innes Cuthill said: "The rate at which mealworms were eaten by birds gives a measure of how effective each combination was at preventing detection by a preda...

Chemists synthesize molecule that helps body battle cancers, malaria

...ia. An extract from the bark of the South American tree Quillaja saponaria Molina, QS-21A is available only in small quantities. "Now that we have synthesized this remarkable molecule and confirmed its structure, we are in a position to examine how it works and investigate ways to improve its performance...

Beneficial Beetles Battle Pesky Saltcedar

...her parts of Asia--all lands where the troublesome tree is native--the beetles devour saltcedar's scale-like leaves. That happens when the insect is in its caterpillar-like larval stage or has matured into a quarter-inch-long adult beetle. Besides disrupting the natural surroundings needed by native plan...

Roundup®highly lethal to amphibians, finds University of Pittsburgh researcher

...l mass of tadpoles. Leopard frog tadpoles and gray tree frog tadpoles were completely eliminated and wood frog tadpoles and toad tadpoles were nearly eliminated. One species of frog, spring peepers, was unaffected. "The most shocking insight coming out of this was that Roundup®, something designed to kil...

Researchers reveal secrets of flying snakes

...body postures of Chrysopelea paradisi, or paradise tree snake, and Chrysopelea ornata, golden tree snake. In this study, Socha, who also is a biologist at Argonne National Laboratory, found that par...

Researchers discover key gene involved in bark beetle pheromone production

...otected. Only for a few hours do they fly from one tree to another to join other bark beetles, mate and start a new life cycle. But other bark beetles know where to locate mates because they are responding to an "aggregation" pheromone. If this pheromone could be disrupted, the beetles wouldn't be able t...

Study of energy and health in Africa focuses spotlight on charcoal and forest management

...permit and on somebody else's land, cutting down a tree or two, chopping it up, lighting it, covering it with dirt, and then hovering around it for two to four days while it becomes charcoal," Kammen said. "It's no surprise it's not generally a high-efficiency operation." The authors found that by creati...

Map of life on Earth could be used on Mars

...s, and can illuminate trait development across the tree of life. "We try to construct the core with gene ...arances of certain traits among prokaryotes on the tree of life can betray a trend of habitat divergence, facilitated by lateral gene transfer. The emergenc...

A whole lot of shaking goin' on triggers early hatching in red-eyed tree frogs

...rain At the edge of Ocelot Pond, Panama, red-eyed tree frog embryos still in their eggs are about to make...ignal the embryos to hatch. Undisturbed, red-eyed tree frog eggs usually hatch six to eight days after fertilization, but can hatch up to 30 percent earlie...

Biologists determine genetic blueprint of social amoeba

...ellow working in Loomis' laboratory, to generate a tree of life and show that amoebozoa, the group to which Dictyostelium belongs, evolved from the common ancestor of eukaryotes (the group of organisms that contain all animals, plants, algae, protozoa, slime mold and fungi) before fungi. Dictyostelium has...

Self-assembled DNA buckyballs for drug delivery

...oup created molecules with several arms, a sort of tree shape (dendri- means tree in Greek). Then they attached polystyrene molecules to the dendrimerlike DNA forming a hybrid molecu...

Spider blood found in 20 million year old fossil

...der died. He believes the spider was climbing up a tree when it was struck head-on by a sudden strong flow of resin. The spider then became engulfed in the resin and died. He argues that the shape and position of the blood droplets reveals which direction the spider was travelling in. It also reveals whi...

Investigating 'brain shrinkage' in alcoholics

...anching processes ?similar to the root system of a tree ?that allow them to 'talk' with neighbouring neurons, often as many as five to 10,000 at a time." Alcohol appears to be particularly damaging to the "white matter" or "hard wiring" of the brain, and can also cause shrinkage or retraction of neuronal...

Expanding forests darken the outlook for butterflies, study shows

...meadows. According to Roland, the altitude of the tree line in the Canadian Rockies is rising--likely due to global warming--and, outside of national parks, forest fires are usually suppressed. These factors are combining to create larger forests and smaller alpine meadows. This is bad news for butterfli...

Past droughts geographically widespread in the West, according to tree-ring data

...d Salt and Verde river basins. By using data from tree rings, University of Arizona researchers conclude that water supply for those western rivers fluctuated in synchrony during periods of severe drought. The study goes back almost 800 years in the Salt-Verde basin and covers waterways from the states o...

Women cautioned against using herbal supplements

...no effect, while a beneficial response from chaste tree berry extracts was found in about half the women studied. For menstrual pain, two clinical trials have examined the Japanese herbal preparations toki-shakuyakusan and toki-shakuyakusan with shakuyaku-kanzoto; neither found a beneficial effect. "Some...

Menopause Symptoms May Come Back After Stopping Menopausal Hormone Therapy

...no effect, while a beneficial response from chaste tree berry extracts was found in about half the women studied. For menstrual pain, two clinical trials have examined the Japanese herbal preparations toki-shakuyakusan and toki-shakuyakusan with shakuyaku-kanzoto; neither found a beneficial effect. "Some...

Ants, not evil spirits, create devil's gardens in the Amazon rainforest, study finds

...rsuta plants. Two saplings of a common Amazonian tree called Cedrela odorata , or Spanish cedar, were p...inside each garden near the base of a D. hirsuta tree actively patrolled by worker ants. A sticky insect barrier was applied to one cedar sapling to excl...

NHGRI Selects 13 More Organisms for Genome Sequencing

...erus species), microbat (Microchiroptera species), tree shrew (Tupaia belangeri), bushbaby (Otolemur garnetti), hyrax (Procavia capensis), pangolin (Manis species) and sloth (Bradypus or Choloepus species). The ninth mammal is the Northern white-cheeked gibbon (Nomascus leucogenys). This non-human primat...

Possible treatment found for 'chemobrain'

...erus species), microbat (Microchiroptera species), tree shrew (Tupaia belangeri), bushbaby (Otolemur garnetti), hyrax (Procavia capensis), pangolin (Manis species) and sloth (Bradypus or Choloepus species). The ninth mammal is the Northern white-cheeked gibbon (Nomascus leucogenys). This non-human primat...

From a Few Wild Ancestors, a Citrus Cornucopia

...by some records from the 1950s indicating that the tree actually was a lemon with the scientific name Citr... from breeding programs or mutations from a parent tree -- so they wouldn’t differ enough from other accessions to be surveyed. “About 50 of the 400 access...

Neanderthal teeth grew no faster than comparable modern humans'

...ncremental growth of enamel on a young tooth. Like tree rings that can gauge the age of a redwood, these striations ?called perikymata ?record new growth on the surface of the tooth. Researchers know from earlier work that these markings are present in all forming teeth, signifying six to 12 days of gro...

Ancient DNA confirms single origin of Malagasy primates

...cus and Megaladapis. The first has been likened to tree sloths and the second compared to koala bears. Both ranged in body weights from 100 to 150 pounds, as compared to the largest living lemur, Indri indri, which weighs in at fewer than 15 to 17 pounds. "The most important conclusion to be drawn from o...

New technique could alter field of mouse genetics

...c can also be removed from its place in the family tree by breeding a mouse with another that carries the enzyme necessary to excise the jumping gene. "We do not know why the P element did not work in mammalian organisms, and we do not know why this particular one works," Xu said, "but this system is a d...

Long-sought flower-inducing molecule found

...that can also lead to the development of efficient tree breeding for forestry". ...

Quick identification needed to save Florida's citrus industry from devastating disease

...tle and leaf yellowing that spreads throughout the tree with lopsided fruit that fail to color properly. Citrus greening has seriously affected citrus production in Asia, Africa, the Indian subcontinent and the Arabian Peninsula, and was recently discovered in Brazil. ...

Birds and bats sow tropical seeds

...ed trees and will be far less likely to accumulate tree species from nearby forests. "In the tropics, thi...o surrounding landscapes." Over the coming years, tree growth in adjacent forest remnants will be studied. Howe suspects that evidence will support the hyp...

DNA traces evolution of extinct sabertooths and the American cheetah-like cat

...d this week, researchers created an updated family tree for the ancient cats by comparing ancient DNA extr...ted to any living felid species. The phylogenetic tree drawn from the new data also shows that the American cheetah-like cat is genetically most closely re...

New book expands biological classifications to account for 'alien' life

...y it. Otherwise you wouldn't have dinosaurs on the tree of life. And until now there hasn't been any place to put RNA life." In the current popular classification system the highest levels are three domains ?bacteria, archaea and eukarya, the last of which includes all animals. Ward's plan places those t...

Picky female frogs drive evolution of new species in less than 8,000 years

...e after two isolated populations of the green-eyed tree frog reestablished contact less than 8,000 years a...gs in the Oct. 27 issue of Nature. The green-eyed tree frog, Litoria genimaculata, lives in the Wet Tropics area of northeast Queensland, a rugged tropical...

Emerald Spectre haunts Ontario's ash forests

... a little human help. Adult beetles lay eggs under tree bark and the feeding larvae kill trees by disrupti...tch elm disease, which wiped-out a dominant forest tree species from eastern North America." Dr. MacIsaac's paper on the beetle will be published in a fort...

Study shows big game hunters, not climate change, killed off sloths

...r example, we might want to consider taking living tree sloths and introducing them to protected forested ...day's only surviving descendants are several small tree sloths whose range extends from southern Mexico to southern Brazil, he said. Such an experiment mig...

Shade trees getting 'scorched' by plant disease

...NJ, bacterial leaf scorch (BLS) affects many shade tree species such as American elm, red maple, sweet gum...se is estimated at $8,000 per tree. Landowners and tree care professionals in these locations must plan for the loss of property values and high costs of re...

Plant wounds trigger bacteria

...mostly strike the trunks or stems of dicot plants, tree or vines near the ground where freezing occurs during winter and a wound forms in spring. Such fruit trees as cherries and peaches, raspberries and high-quality vine grapes like chardonnay and cabernet sauvignon tend to be susceptible to the disease,...

Seeing the forest and the trees

...-line edition of the journal Science suggests that tree diversity in tropical forests plays a crucial role...ction scenarios and analyzing the resulting mix of tree species, the team was able to determine how much carbon the forest was able to hold. They found, ...

Logging doubles threat to the Amazon, rivaling clear-cutting, study suggests

...his type of deforestation, only certain marketable tree species are cut and logs are transported offsite t...s can pull down large amounts of vegetation when a tree falls. The forest also becomes drier and more flammable, as the shady canopy is thinned. "Logged fo...

Wright bros. upstaged! Dinos invented biplanes

... two-level, biplane wing configuration to fly from tree to tree in the early Cretaceous. Among the evidence for the early biplane is that Microraptor had unmistakab...

Why Christmas trees are not extinct

... about 100 times larger than the pore in flowering tree valves ?on the scale of one 10-millionth of a mete...e of a given size is 59 times lower in a Christmas tree than in an oak tree." Flowering trees have longer, more efficient conduits, but less efficient val...

Newly discovered birdlike dinosaur is oldest raptor ever found in South America

...ngoing project to assemble the evolutionary family tree of dinosaurs (including birds), and their relatives, by a team of scientists that includes Makovicky and is funded by the National Science Foundation. Remarkably different dinosaur Buitreraptor (bwee-tree-rap-tor) is about the size of a very la...

Storing carbon to combat global warming may cause other environmental problems, study suggests

Growing tree plantations to remove carbon dioxide from the atmo...s where land would be converted from other uses to tree plantations for carbon sequestration. Assessing the impact of existing conversions, the study showe...

Deep treasure to be found in Oculina Bank

...he past thousand years or so by the delicate ivory tree coral Oculina varicosa, and include a series of spectacular pinnacles, mounds, and ridges that can grow up to100 feet high. Deepwater Oculina reefs are not known to exist anywhere else on the planet besides off Florida. Fishing for shrimp and scal...

Underlying cause of massive pinyon pine die-off revealed

...at a nearby site. In 1992, the team began tracking tree mortality. "I could see the plot from my office w...er woodlands in 2002 and 2003 revealed significant tree die-off covering more than 4,600 square miles (12,000 square km). The effect was so dramatic it cou...