Feature Channels: Nature

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October is peak season for admiring fall foliage and soon those leaves will begin to fall, if they haven’t already done so. Before you start to clean them up, Virginia Tech turf experts suggest that you try a different approach instead of bagging and tossing.

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Basic Research Findings by Johns Hopkins Scientists Focus on Gene Sequencing, Hearing Loss and a Brain Disorder

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Michigan State University has harnessed its vast water research expertise to create the MSU Water Alliance. This will be a bridging organization among existing water science units on campus and among faculty with water expertise to address challenges, which are immense.

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University of Queensland research has found despite considerable conservation efforts, the illegal killing of critically endangered orangutans on Borneo may be an ongoing threat to the species.

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Named after its habitat preference, Paroedura manongavato, from the Malagasy words “manonga” (to climb) and “vato” (rock), is a bouldering expert. Part of its “home range” is also very well-known to rock climbers for its massive granitic domes.

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Tens of thousands of endangered sharks and rays are caught by small-scale fisheries off the Republic of the Congo each year, new research shows.

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Under normal conditions, the floating macroalgae Sargassum spp. provide habitat for hundreds of types of organisms. However, the Great Atlantic Sargassum Belt (GASB) that emerged in 2011 has since then caused unprecedented inundations of this brown seaweed on Caribbean coastlines, with harmful effects on ecosystems while posing challenges to regional economies and tourism, and concerns for respiratory and other human health issues.

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It's tough to catch the eye of a potential mate when you’re dressed all in black with no fancy feathers to jiggle around. But a tiny bird called the Blue-black Grassquit has found a way. Learn about this fascinating species during the 2023 Paul C. Mundinger Distinguished Lectureship presented by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology.

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Ateam from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and the USDA Agricultural Research Service has used SIF to measure the effects of elevated ozone (O3) on soybean plants.

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Killer whales are some of the oceans’ top predators, but even they can be exposed to environmental pollution. In the largest study to date on North Atlantic killer whales, researchers in ACS’ Environmental Science & Technology report the levels of pollutants in 162 individuals’ blubber.

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Research teams from 11 projects will use resources at the Environmental Molecular Sciences Laboratory (EMSL) and the Joint Genome Institute (JGI). Several of the projects also were awarded access to the Bio-SANS beamline through the Center for Structural Molecular Biology (CSMB) at Oak Ridge National Laboratory and the Advanced Photon Source (APS) at Argonne National Laboratory.

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The need for “real-time” forecasting of tropical cyclones is more necessary than ever given the impact of climate change on rainfall amounts. Two climate scientists suggest Hurricane Ian can be used as a blueprint for rapid operational climate change attribution statements about extreme storms, in a paper published in the journal Environmental Research: Climate.

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Plant pathogens can hitch rides on dust and remain viable, with the potential for traveling across the planet, according to a new Cornell University study – a finding with important implications for global food security and predicting future outbreaks.

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Recent conservation efforts have proven effective at controlling wild pig populations in the Southeastern United States, according to new research from the University of Georgia’s Savannah River Ecology Laboratory and Warnell School of Forestry and Natural Resources. Within 24 months of the start of control efforts in the study area located around the Savannah River Site in Aiken, South Carolina, researchers found a reduction of about 70% in relative abundance of pigs and a corresponding decline in environmental rooting damage of about 99%.

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Research from Washington University in St. Louis and the Georgia Institute of Technology provides a more complete explanation of how evolution plays out among species that live side-by-side.

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Mercouri Kanatzidis, an Argonne and Northwestern University materials scientist, has studied sulfur-containing materials called chalcogenides for more than 30 years. A new chalcogenide mineral has just been named for him.

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Researchers mapped the locations of 1,034 proteins inside the chloroplast of the unicellular green alga Chlamydomonas. This map is a spatial atlas of the chloroplast proteome—all of the proteins that the organism can produce in the algae’s structure that drives photosynthesis.

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•New Michigan State University research published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences shows that plants such as oak and poplar trees will emit more of a compound called isoprene as global temperatures climb. •Isoprene from plants represents the highest flux of hydrocarbons to the atmosphere behind methane. •Although isoprene isn’t inherently bad — it actually helps plants better tolerate insect pests and high temperatures — it can worsen air pollution by reacting with nitrogen oxides from automobiles and coal-fired power plants. •The new publication can help us better understand, predict and potentially mitigate the effects of increased isoprene emission as the planet warms.

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American University and Football for Peace Join Forces to Promote Sports Diplomacy, Launch Peace Center

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A survey of New York state residents found that nearly half of respondents increased the amount of time they spent on wild and backyard food in the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic – confirming anecdotes about increases in activities such as sourdough baking, fishing and gardening.

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This asynchronous beating comes from how the flight muscles interact with the physics of the insect’s springy exoskeleton. This decoupling of neural commands and muscle contractions is common in only four distinct insect groups. For years, scientists assumed these four groups evolved these ultrafast wingbeats separately, but research from the Georgia Institute of Technology and the University of California, San Diego (UC San Diego) shows that they evolved from a single common ancestor. This discovery demonstrates evolution has repeatedly turned on and off this particular mode of flight. The researchers developed physics models and robotics to test how these transitions could occur.

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For the first time, big data and artificial intelligence (AI) are being used to model hidden patterns in nature, not just for one bird species, but for entire ecological communities across continents. And the models follow each species’ full annual life cycle, from breeding to fall migration to nonbreeding grounds, and back north again during spring migration.

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Plants have highly evolved mechanisms to shed or drop organs (abscission) in response to environmental or developmental cues. It’s why you have to rake leaves in the Fall! But in agriculture, the natural shedding of flowers or seeds is detrimental, and cereal crops with abscission-inhibiting mutations in certain genes, like SHATTERING1, have been bred to dramatically increase yield. Using Crispr gene editing and detailed analyses, Yu et al. show for the first time some mechanistic features of abscission in the grasses, including the role of the plant hormone auxin.

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Protected nature areas are considered fundamental for maintaining biodiversity and countering its loss. But how effectively do established protected areas work and prevent negative trends? Research at the University of Helsinki shows mixed effects of protected areas on various species.

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A study published in Nature found that, while protected areas in Southeast Asia were shown to be good for animals inside their borders, as expected, that protection also extended to nearby unprotected areas, which was a surprise.

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A new study, which combines satellite thermal and in situ warming experiment data from across the world’s tropical forests, looks at the variation of leaf temperatures within forest canopies. The data collected revealed that a small percentage of tropical leaves are already reaching, and occasionally exceeding, the temperatures at which they can no longer function—suggesting that as climate change continues, entire canopies could die, eliminating a key regulator of Earth’s climate and putting the world’s biodiversity at risk.

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The discovery that birds evolved from small carnivorous dinosaurs of the Late Jurassic was made possible by recently discovered fossils of theropods such as Tyrannosaurus rex and the smaller velociraptors. In a way, you could say that dinosaurs are still with us and seen tweeting from your own backyard! Below are the latest research headlines in the Birds channel on Newswise.

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Though cars are the biggest threat to coyotes taking up residence in U.S. cities, a new study suggests urban living poses a different kind of hazard to coyote health – in the form of chronic stress.

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Bats gather to feast as nocturnal insects fly through mountain passes in the Pyrenees each autumn, new research shows.

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In the waters off the Hawaiian Islands, rates of calcification were measured in the deepest coral colonies and reported recently in a study led by a University of Hawai‘i (UH) at Mānoa oceanographer.

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Researchers at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign demonstrated a way to use electricity to recycle polyoxymethylene (POM), a form of plastic that’s growing in use but more challenging to recycle.

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The latest headlines from the Food and Water Safety channel on Newswise.

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Tropical forests often harbor hundreds of species of trees in a square mile, but scientists often struggle to understand how such a diversity of species can coexist.

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The REPLANT Act provides money for the US Forest Service to plant more than a billion trees in the next nine years. The World Economic Forum aims to help plant a trillion trees around the world by 2030.

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Photonic crystal structures have excellent light control properties and are hot topics in the field of photonics. For the preparation of photonic crystal structures with nanoscale three-dimensional spatial resolution inside the crystal, new femtosecond laser processing technologies are urgently needed. Scientists in China proposed a photonic crystal structure fabrication method based on nanoscale femtosecond laser multi-beam lithography. The technique will open possible ways to fabricate nanostructures for applications in optical communication and light manipulation.

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Summertime is synonymous with fresh berries, and there may be no better place to be on a sunny day – besides the beach – than a berry-picking patch. Berry production is a $6 billion industry in the United States, and Virginia has been become a key contributor with a suitable climate and soil types for growing blueberries and blackberries, in particular.

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While the smell of fresh pine or the softness of fir branches can ease holiday woes, West Virginia University researchers have discovered that even the act of shopping for real Christmas trees offers consumers mental health benefits they don’t get on a hunt for artificial ones.