New discovery by SMART allows early detection of shade avoidance syndrome in plants

Researchers have developed a tool that allows early detection of shade avoidance syndrome (SAS) in plants using Raman spectroscopy in significantly less time compared to conventional methods. The discovery can help farmers better monitor plant health and lead to improved crop yield.

‘Going Green’ Risks Destroying The British Car Industry

To my mind, Boris Johnson’s announcement of the ban on the sale of all new petrol and diesel cars from 2030 – just ten years off ­– is one of the most significant political decisions in modern times. It says…

Nature is widely adapted to current climate — making it harder to adjust to a new one

To do the right thing at the right time, organisms need to glean cues from their environment. With ongoing climate change, the timing of these cues, like the accumulation of warm days, is rapidly shifting. Now a network of researchers working on an unprecedentedly large dataset of seasonal events has shown that the timing of species’ activity fail to keep up with their cues, and that how quickly activity shifts reflects past evolution.

Some Amazon rainforest regions more resistant to climate change than previously thought

A new observational study demonstrates that increasing air dryness does not reduce photosynthesis in certain very wet regions of the Amazon rainforest, contradicting Earth System Models that show the opposite.

One-way street for electrons

(University of Oldenburg ) An international team of physicists, led by researchers of the Universities of Oldenburg and Bremen, Germany, has recorded an ultrafast film of the directed energy transport between neighbouring molecules in a nanomaterial. Theoretical simulations confirmed the experimental finding. The results have been published in the journal Nature Nanotechnology.

Some Amazon rainforest regions more resistant to climate change than previously thought

(Columbia University School of Engineering and Applied Science) Is the Amazon rainforest as sensitive to water stress as what the current models have been showing? Columbia Engineering researchers found that the models have been largely over-estimating water stress in tropical forests. While models show that increases in air dryness greatly diminish photosynthesis rates in certain regions of the Amazon rainforest, observational data results show the opposite: in certain very wet regions, the forests instead even increase photosynthesis rates in response to drier air.

Hidden 15th-century text on medieval manuscripts

Students have discovered lost text on 15th-century manuscript leaves using an imaging system they developed as freshmen. By using ultraviolet-fluorescence imaging, the students revealed that a manuscript leaf held in RIT’s Cary Graphic Arts Collection was actually a palimpsest, a manuscript on parchment with multiple layers of writing.

Very hungry and angry, caterpillars head-butt to get what they want

When food is scarce, monarch butterfly caterpillars go from docile to domineering. The results look something like a combination of boxing and ‘bumper’ cars. The less food, the more likely caterpillars were to try to head-butt each other out of the way to get their fill, lunging and knocking aside other caterpillars to ensure their own survival. And, they are most aggressive right before the final stages of their metamorphosis.

Iconic Paris Bookstore Gets So Many Orders After Pleading With Fans, They Had to Shut Down Website to Catch Up

What happens when a world-famous independent bookshop finds itself in dire straights due to the global pandemic? It gets creative, of course. As with other struggling bookstores like New York City’s venerable Strand, landmark Paris bookstore Shakespeare and Company experienced a devastating drop in revenue as the COVID-19 lockdown forced them to drastically change the way […]

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November butterflies!

Lovely photos of November butterflies from an ashram garden in India.