Environment : Nature World News

Can a Hands-on Model Help Forest Stakeholders Fight Tree Disease?

When a new, more aggressive strain of the pathogen that causes sudden oak death turned up in Oregon, scientists and stakeholders banded together to try to protect susceptible trees and the region's valuable timber industry.

May 18, 2019 10:22 AM EDT

Machine Learning Speeds Modeling of Experiments Aimed at Capturing Fusion Energy on Earth

Machine learning (ML), a form of artificial intelligence that recognizes faces, understands language and navigates self-driving cars, can help bring to Earth the clean fusion energy that lights the sun and stars. Researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL) are using ML to create a model for rapid control of plasma -- the state of matter composed of free electrons and atomic nuclei, or ions -- that fuels fusion reactions.

May 16, 2019 10:22 AM EDT

Organic Animal Farms Benefit Birds Nesting in Agricultural Environments

The abundance of bird species living in agricultural environments has decreased both in Finland and elsewhere in Europe. Attempts to rectify the situation have been made with the help of agri-environment-climate subsidies. They are granted to agricultural producers by the EU for implementing measures that are presumed to be beneficial to the environment. There is a range of such subsidies, but their potential effects on biodiversity at national scales have been seldom comprehensively investigated.

May 16, 2019 10:20 AM EDT

A New Iron-Based Superconductor Stabilized by Inter-Block Charger Transfer

Iron-based superconductors (IBSCs) have attracted sustained research attention over the past decade, partly because new IBSCs were discovered one after another in the earlier years. At the time being, however, exploration of IBSCs becomes more and more challenging.

May 16, 2019 10:04 AM EDT

Transfer of EU Powers Leads to Silent Erosion of UK Pesticide Regulation

New analysis by the UK Trade Policy Observatory is warning that what should have been the technical formality of transferring EU powers into national law when the UK leaves the European Union, could instead open the gates for the widespread use of outlawed carcinogenic pesticides that have been shown to alter human reproductive, neurological, and immune systems.

May 15, 2019 08:24 AM EDT

Native Forest Plants Rebound When Invasive Shrubs are Removed

Removing invasive shrubs to restore native forest habitat brings a surprising result, according to Penn State researchers, who say desired native understory plants display an unexpected ability and vigor to recolonize open spots.

May 15, 2019 08:19 AM EDT

Where There's Waste There's Fertilizer

May 15, 2019 - We all know plants need nutrients, especially nitrogen and phosphorus. To give crops a boost, they are often put on fields as fertilizer. But we never talk about where the nutrients themselves come from.

May 15, 2019 08:16 AM EDT

Amount of Carbon Stored in Forests Reduced as Climate Warms

Accelerated tree growth caused by a warming climate does not necessarily translate into enhanced carbon storage, an international study suggests.

May 14, 2019 09:53 AM EDT

Breakthrough in New Material to Harness Solar Power Could Transform Energy

The most affordable, efficient way to harness the cleanest, most abundant renewable energy source in the world is one step closer to reality.

May 14, 2019 09:40 AM EDT

It's Not Just Fish, Plastic Pollution Harms the Bacteria that Help us Breathe

Ten percent of the oxygen we breathe comes from just one kind of bacteria in the ocean. Now laboratory tests have shown that these bacteria are susceptible to plastic pollution, according to a study published in Communications Biology.

May 14, 2019 09:32 AM EDT

Dead Zones in Circadian Clocks

Most organisms on Earth have circadian clocks. In mammals, the circadian pacemaker is located in the suprachiasmatic nucleus (SCN) of the brain. The SCN consists of about 20,000 neurons, and oscillatory gene expression with an approximate 24-hour period can be observed independently in each.

Research structure at Hyytiälä, Finland (IMAGE)

May 14, 2019 09:30 AM EDT

A Late-Night Disco in the Forest Reveals Tree Performance

In 2017, the group from the Optics of Photosynthesis Lab (OPL) developed a new method to measure a small but important signal produced by all plants, and in this case trees. This signal is a called chlorophyll fluorescence and it is an emission of radiation at the visible and near-infrared wavelengths.