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Tag: "soil" at biology news

Study finds the air rich with bacteria

... This diverse population matches the complexity of soil populations, which is considered to be one of the richest habitats for microbes. The scientists also sought to determine whether background levels of airborne bacteria change from city to city, or are generally the same throughout a region. To ex...

Plague proteome reveals proteins linked to infection

...from other infectious agents such as Salmonella to soil microbes of interest in cleaning up toxic waste. ...

New evidence of early horse domestication

...nmeier from the University of Pittsburgh collected soil samples from inside the fenced area and outside th...n the soils for millennia. As it turned out, the soil from inside the alleged corral had up to ten times the phosphorus concentration as the soils from ou...

Dust to gust

...n a supply of minerals washed off by rain from the soil in the Sahara and blown across the Atlantic by dust. By combining various types of satellite data, Dr. Koren and colleagues from Israel, the United Kingdom, the United States, and Brazil have now for the first time managed to obtain quantitative info...

Recycled paper and compost could both be key tools to control plant disease

...hat the replacement of around 20% of the volume of soil or peat by compost gave major disease control benefits. Professor Ralph Noble's latest research appears to add another ecological benefit. Early results from trials with conifers using compost made from paper waste shows that it is providing much ...

Plants' role in global warming re-examined

...9 percent more carbon will be stored in plants and soil with the acclimation of plants included in the model. While this amount is relatively small compared to different climate-carbon simulations performed over the years, the authors note that this acclimation phenomenon should not be ignored. "This is ...

Gut reaction: Researchers define the colon's genome

...ently scooped up whole environmental samples, from soil to sea, to study the diverse genomes contained within them. The idea is to survey a complex community in one fell swoop, examining how whole ecosystems of genomes respond to environmental perturbations--and, in the case of humans, how microbial ecosy...

Scientists use an 'ice lolly' to find polar bacteria in their own backyard

...o survive in extreme cold, have been isolated from soil in temperate environments. Professor Virginia Walker and her colleagues at Queen's University, Canada, have developed a technique to isolate bacteria which have properties to interact with, and modify, ice. This technique involved the formation of a...

Tests may help answer questions about GMOs and allergies

...StarLink contained the cry9C protein from a common soil bacterium, a strain of Bacillus thuringiensis. The cry9C protein protected the corn from several types of corn borers and black cutworms. StarLink was approved by the EPA for use in animal feed and nonfood products in 1998. But in 2000, fragments of ...

Gene therapy prevents the onset of diabetic symptoms in mice

...nducted, suggests that because acid rain makes the soil more acidic, unfavorable conditions are created fo...y drew these conclusions after adding nutrients to soil in a test plot and reproducing the favorable soil conditions that existed prior to 20th century indu...

Acid rain causing decline in sugar maples, say researchers

...nducted, suggests that because acid rain makes the soil more acidic, unfavorable conditions are created fo...y drew these conclusions after adding nutrients to soil in a test plot and reproducing the favorable soil conditions that existed prior to 20th century indu...

Beaver dams create healthy downstream ecosystems

...water levels in the Colorado River valley, keeping soil water levels high and providing moisture to plants...suggest that the elevated moisture levels found in soil surrounding the dams would otherwise require water from a very large natural flood, which they estim...

New method confirms importance of fungi in Arctic nitrogen cycle

...lant nitrogen supply. It has long been known when soil nitrogen is in short supply, mycorrhizal fungi (th...earch has found that when mycorrhizal fungi in the soil take up nitrogen from the soil and transfer it to small trees and shrubs, the heavy nitrogen isotope...

Microbes transform 'safest' PBDEs into more harmful compounds

Bacteria in the soil can transform the most commonly used flame retarda... a fire. Over time, PBDE’s can leach into the air, soil and sediment, and move up through the food chain. These compounds have been detected in fruits and v...

Plant protection from cold decoded

...ts respond to environmental stresses such as cold, soil salinity and drought. "From a genetic and molecular standpoint, these responses are all related," Zhu said. "Some of the same genes are involved in all of these responses and understanding how they work can help us develop crops that can better with...

Invasive species alter habitat to their benefit

...ter treatment had higher levels of nitrogen in the soil and higher turnover rates of nitrogen, along with much lower light levels and lower soil temperatures," Farrer said. "So the litter was creating a pretty different environment." When she...

What's nature worth? New computer models tell all

...ne studies how nature--through climate regulation, soil formation, crop pollination, flood protection, and so on--supports human welfare, and estimates its value in economic terms. Now, Costanza and his colleagues at UVM's Gund Institute for Ecological Economics have launched a project to solve a centra...

Tropical forest CO2 emissions tied to nutrient increases

...e added to forest plots in Costa Rica, they caused soil microbes to increase their CO2 emissions to the at...ose look at how changes in key nutrients may alter soil CO2 emissions in tropical forests," said Cleveland. "Processes in the tropics affect what is happeni...

Ammonia-loving archaea win landslide majority

A genetic analysis of soil samples indicates that a group of microorganisms c...ve bacteria and archaea in the complex mixtures of soil organisms. The international research team reports their findings in today's (Aug. 17) issue of Natu...

It's all in the genes

...he soil, which affect the insects that live in the soil or eat the leaves, which affect the birds that feed on the insects, and so on. In the July issue of Nature Reviews Genetics and the May issue of Evolution, Whitham and fellow researchers discuss how this phenotype is heritable on an ecosystem level....

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