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Tag: "sunlight" at biology news

Envisat captures first image of Sargassum from space

...hetic compound in plants that captures energy from sunlight necessary for photosynthesis. The amount of chlorophyll present in vegetation plays an important role in determining how healthy it is. Accurately monitoring chlorophyll from space, therefore, provides a valuable tool for modelling primary productivi...

Dirty snow may warm Arctic as much as greenhouse gases

... is darker than natural snow. Dark surfaces absorb sunlight and cause warming, while bright surfaces reflect h...y darker than the snow. The darker surfaces absorb sunlight more rapidly than snow, causing additional warming. This cycle causes temperatures in the polar regi...

Sun exposure early in life linked to specific skin cancer gene mutation

...presents some of the first data to link early life sunlight exposure to a specific mutation in melanomas. Researchers interviewed 214 melanoma patients in North Carolina about their risk factors for melanoma and about the various places they had lived. Each patient's UV sun exposure was estimated from thei...

Arctic ice retreating more quickly than computer models project

...e partly because regions of sea ice, which reflect sunlight back into space and provide a cooling impact, are ...r areas of open water, which are expanding, absorb sunlight and increase temperatures. This feedback loop has played a role in the increasingly rapid loss of ic...

Amphibians in losing race with environmental change

...ns lay their eggs in shallow, open water in direct sunlight to provide a more oxygenated environment, increase growth rate of larvae and reduce predation. But the increased levels of UV-B radiation in today's sunlight, due to erosion of the Earth's ozone layer, is causing mutations, impaired immune systems an...

Alien plants attack using 'resource conservation' as weapon, researchers say

... into the soil to lock up nutrients or by blocking sunlight with tarps. But these experiments had relatively limited success. "Our results can maybe explain why that method didn't work for all the invasive species," Funk said. Current techniques for fighting invasive species typically involve early detecti...

Tundra disappearing at rapid rate

...face declines because coniferous trees absorb more sunlight than the tundra. This light energy is then re-emitted to the atmosphere as heat. This sets up a "positive feedback," the same process that is associated with the rapidly decaying Arctic ice cap. "These results are very relevant to the current deb...

Tropical forests -- Earth's air conditioner

... warm the Earth, because their dark canopy absorbs sunlight that would otherwise be reflected back to space by...o have to account for whether they help to reflect sunlight by producing clouds, or help to absorb it by shading snowy tundra." Forests in colder, sub-polar ...

'Guardian of the genome' protein found to underlie skin tanning

...easure. "Even as p53 is causing skin to tan during sunlight exposure, it may also affect neuronal circuits," Fisher says. "These proteins may provide an explicit link between the regulation of tanning and of mood. It raises the question of whether p53-mediated induction of beta-endorphin is involved in sun-se...

How trees manage water in arid environments

... tree root zones don't freeze, and there is enough sunlight for photosynthesis. The trees slow down during the pre-monsoon dry season in May and June when water is scarce, and then quickly respond to the sudden availability of water at the onset of the monsoon in July. As unlikely as it may seem, Arizona d...

NASA predicts nongreen plants on other planets

...nthesis, a process by which plants use energy from sunlight to produce sugar. Organisms that live in different light environments absorb the light colors that are most available. For example, there is a type of bacteria that inhabit murky waters where there is little visible light, and so they use infrared ra...

Global 'sunscreen' has likely thinned, report NASA scientists

...dimming" can occur at the same time. "When more sunlight can get through the atmosphere and warm Earth's su...bservations by other scientists that the amount of sunlight reaching Earth's surface, which had been steadily declining in recent decades, suddenly started to r...

Scientists to track impact of Asian dust and pollution on clouds, weather, climate change

...hlamydomonas reinhardtii, which, as a plant, needs sunlight for photosynthesis. Tiny hairlike structures along the outside of the algae propel it toward the light. These structures are controlled by channelrhodopsin-2, a so-called "ion channel," which reacts to light by stimulating movement toward it. Whil...

Common algae helps illustrate mammalian brain electrical circuitry

...hlamydomonas reinhardtii, which, as a plant, needs sunlight for photosynthesis. Tiny hairlike structures along the outside of the algae propel it toward the light. These structures are controlled by channelrhodopsin-2, a so-called "ion channel," which reacts to light by stimulating movement toward it. Whil...

Sunshine pill for prostate cancer in 2009

...akers came up with the idea because vitamin D from sunlight improves the prognosis of certain cancers. But taking natural levels of the vitamin has no effect. Novacea, the company that makes Asentar, produced a novel formulation that reproduces the healing effect without the dangerous side-effects of a vitami...

Deep in the ocean, a clam that acts like a plant

... in the black depths of the ocean? At the surface, sunlight allows green plants to "fix" carbon from the air to build their bodies. Around hydrothermal vents deep in the ocean live communities of giant clams with no gut and no functional digestive system, depending on symbiotic bacteria to use energy locked u...

Chemicals in brown algae may protect against skin cancer

...ltraviolet B (UVB) radiation. UVB radiation in sunlight is thought responsible for 90 percent of the estimated 1.3 million cases of non-melanoma skin cancer diagnosed in the United States annually. Researchers applied the BAPs to the skin of hairless mice and fed it to the animals in their diet. In bo...

Vitamin D deficiency widespread during pregnancy

...ing vitamin formulations or a moderate increase in sunlight exposure might be necessary to boost vitamin D sto...Since vitamin D is made by the body in reaction to sunlight exposure, it has long been known that vitamin D deficiency is more common among darker-skinned indiv...

Record ozone loss during 2006 over South Pole

...tospheric stratum of the atmosphere that acts as a sunlight filter shielding life on Earth from harmful ultrav...polar spring arrives, the combination of returning sunlight and the presence of polar stratospheric clouds leads to splitting of chlorine compounds into highly ...

Researchers link ocean organisms with increased cloud cover and potential climate change

...may influence the formation of clouds that reflect sunlight away from our planet. Discovery of the new link...g increase in cloudiness reduced the absorption of sunlight by an amount comparable to what has been measured in highly polluted areas of the globe. If confirm...

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