Science News

Plants | HULK GREEN BUT NO CAN FIX OWN CARBON. THAT MAKE HULK ANGRY!

Plants have the uncanny ability to send their roots down and their shoots up, even if the seedlings are rotated. The plants are sensing gravity. But how?

As it turns out, talking to plants may be a good thing. A new study published in PLoS One shows that chili seeds can perceive nearby plants even if these are enclosed in boxes. As it was not possible that the enclosed vegetables could communicate through air or soil, researchers believe that plants may be able to hear sounds.

As gardeners get busy filling tubs and borders with colourful bedding plants, scientists at the Universities of Cambridge and Bristol have discovered more about what makes flowers attractive to bees rather than humans.

FLOWERS: http://www.scoop.it/t/science-news?tag=flowers

Toxic chemicals kill unwanted weeds, but at a cost. Labor intensive organic methods won't be adopted by industrial farms. Could lasers be the answer?

Plants inhabited by ants have greater prey and nutrient inputs and are more successful.

Experiments may dramatically underestimate how plants will respond to climate change in the future.

Flowering is the most crucial act that plants undergo, as the fruits of such labor include crops on which the world depends, and seeds from which the next generation grows.

Analyzing massive amounts of data officially became a national priority recently when the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy announced the Big Data Research and Development Initiative.

One species of ant-eating carnivorous plant has a special trick to flip insects.

This talented plant is commonly known as the dodder vine. It's a parasite; tomato gardeners know it and hate it. Here it is at Penn State University — look for the stringy, wiggly thing on the left — sniffing. Notice as it grows from a seedling, it moves in small, lazy circles, like hands groping in the dark, and then, gradually, it leans toward the stalk of the tomato plant — which it then entwines, gouges, sucks and strangles.

http://www.npr.org/blogs/krulwich/2012/05/24/153583873/do-plants-smell-other-plants-this-one-does-then-strangles-what-it-smells

Over the past few billion years, life has undergone stark transformations, from isolated organisms to collections of cells to inventive machines able to grow with sunlight to larger creatures that swim, crawl, and hop across the planet’s surface.

New research on plant communication raises questions on the final frontier of dietary ethics.

In the race to breed better crops to feed the increasing world population, scientists at The University of Nottingham are using maths to find out how a vital plant hormone affects growth.

A growing body of research shows that birds and other animals change their behavior in response to human noise, such as the din of traffic or the hum of machinery. But human clamor doesn't just affect animals.