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What have I done: I've killed him, KILLED HIM!! **insert sobbing noises here**
Courtesy Women's DayA few weeks ago I received the cutest little basil plant as a gift. I made sure to quench his thirst everyday as he sat on my windowsill enjoying the sun. But, silly me, I left town for a weekend and forgot to get someone to water him. Arriving home, I saw that his leaves were shriveled and he was inches from death. What was I to do to bring my lil’ guy back to life?
Well, according to a new experiment by the Royal Horticultural Society, women’s voices make plants grow faster. Over the course of one month, scientists at RHS found that tomato plants group up to two inches taller if women chatted them up verses men.
After a round of open auditions, ten voices were chosen to play to ten tomato plants. Every plant heard their respective voice through a set of headphones that was connected to the plant pot. There were also two control plants that grew in silence. The results showed that on average, women’s plants grew an inch higher than their male counterparts. Some men’s plants grew less than the plants that were left alone.
“We just don’t know why,” Colin Grosbie from RHS said of the results. “It could be that they have a greater range of pitch and tone that affects the sound waves that hit the plant. Sound waves are an environmental effect just like rain or light."
Interestingly, the great-great granddaughter of Charles Darwin (you remember this guy, right?) had the most effective “discussions” with her plants. Sarah Darwin read passages from the On the Origin of Species, to which her plant grew two inches taller than the best performing male and half an inch higher than the nearest female competitor.
She responds, "I'm not sure if it's my dulcet tones or the text that I read from On the Origin of Species that made the plant sit up and listen, but either way I think it is great fun and I'm proud of my new title."
So maybe reading my physical chemistry book won’t necessarily bring my basil plant back from the dead, but I’m sure it couldn’t hurt.
Fire up the computer.
Pour a hot cup of coffee.
Sit down at desk.
Read secret, innermost thoughts of a houseplant.
Illinois landscape, 300 million years ago: Late 19th Century illustration portraying a Carboniferous rainforest
Courtesy Mark RyanLast year, news came out about the discovery of a large fossil forest dating from 300 million years ago in a coal mine located in eastern Illinois. Now, five more prehistoric forests have been identified in the same region.
Central Illinois above the coal mine: The terrain and vegetation today is a far cry from how it looked 300 million years ago.
Courtesy Illinois State Geological SurveyThe remains of the ancient tropical rainforests cover a tremendous area – 36 square miles – and have been under study by scientists from the Smithsonian, the UK, and the Illinois State Geological Survey. A presentation given at the British Association Science Festival held in Liverpool this week detailed some of the highlights of this incredible find.
"Theses are the largest fossil forests found anywhere in the world at any point in geological time,” said Dr Howard Falcon-Lang a paleobotanist at the University of Bristol.
The prehistoric landscapes existed within only a few million years of each other – a short span geologically speaking – and are found stacked one upon the other. Segments of the forest fossilized in their original vertical position. At places, scientists can trace the original ground cover in well-preserved fossils.
Donning cap lamps, battery packs, and rock hammers Falcon-Lang and his colleagues rode an armored vehicle 250 feet beneath the Herrin coal seam in the Riola and Vermillion Grove coal mine. Once underground, the scientists took an incredible hike through a long-gone prehistoric fossil forest, illuminated only by lights on their caps.
Ancient tree trunk protruding from coal mine ceiling
Courtesy Illinois State Geological Survey“We walked for miles and miles along pitch-black passages with the fossil forest just above our heads,” Falcon-Lang said. "It's kind of an odd view looking at a forest bottom-up. You can actually see upright tree stumps that are pointed vertically up above your head with the roots coming down; and adjacent to those tree stumps you see all the litter.”
Fallen fossil tree in coal mine: Howard Falcon-Lang (University of Bristol) and John Nelson (Illinois State Geological Survey) mark off the width of a large fossil tree trunk lying just above the contact of the coal bed.
Courtesy Illinois State Geological SurveyIn some cases toppled trees – complete with crowns – and over 100 feet long were measured lying stretched out in the shale across the ceiling. For paleobotanists it presents a remarkable opportunity to actually stroll through a 300 million year-old ecological system as if taking a walk in the local woods today.
The reason for this unusual preservation is thought to be due to the prehistoric rain forest growing in an estuary near the Royal Center fault in Indiana, which caused the terrain to subside below sea level making it vulnerable to incidents of flooding and abrupt drowning. Geologists suspect earthquakes along the fault are the reason for the subsidence.
The soil that once supported these rainforests was later transformed into coal. Once this coal seam was mined from underground, the base of the fossilized forest was revealed encased in a shale matrix.
These tropical rain forests originally flourished during the Pennsylvania period (known as the Upper Carboniferous in Britain), back when the US Midwest was located near the equator. Forests of giant club moss trees and tree-sized horsetails came and went over a geologically short span of time. At the same time, major shifts in climate were taking place, alternating from cooler temperatures with large planetary ice caps to periods of extreme warming.
The episodes of climatic change coincide with changes in the forest ecology. Close study of the fossil vegetation show that several times the climatic stress pushed the rain forests into extinction, making way for skimpier fern growths to replace them.
Over the next five years Dr. Falcon-Lang’s team will search for reasons why this rainforest extinction took place. Understanding how the first rainforests responded to global warming could help shed light on how climatic change may affect present day rainforests.
Additional photos of the amazing fossil forest can be found here. But if you want to see some of the real thing, visit the coal-mining exhibit at the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago where an actual slab of the gray roof shale is on display.
LINKS
Illinois State Geological Survey story
University of Bristol story
BBC website story
Coal-mining info
More about the Carboniferous period
A four-leafed clover: Imagine five four-leafed clovers, and one one-leafed clover, and you've got the idea. Or just click on the link and see an actual photo.
Courtesy PhyzomeThat's right, Buzz Creatures--a 21-leaf clover has been found by a clover enthusiast in Japan. Each leaf is luckier than the last, to the point where the top leaves are blisteringly lucky, and may only be observed through a welder's mask. So lucky.
As far as I can tell, no magic was used in creating or finding the clover, although the man who found it has been breeding many-leafed clovers for years. Since the discovery, he has become the Emperor of Neo-Japan (his term) and Duke of the Moon (his idea). No one can stop him.
The Bhut Jolokia: Hot, spicy. Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.Television has once again invaded reality. Normally I approve of this unconditionally, because it usually involves supernatural powers or really attractive people. This occasion, however, might require delicate handling.
Do you remember the episode of The Simpsons where Homer eats the Guatemalan insanity peppers at the chili cook off? I know that you do.
Well, it seems that Guatemalan insanity peppers do exist, after a fashion. Researchers at New Mexico State University have recently revealed that the Bhut Jolokia pepper is, by far, the hottest pepper known to man. It turns out that the Bhut Jolokai (also known as the Naga Jolokia) is from India, not Guatemala, but the term “insanity pepper” may still be applicable.
The second hottest pepper in the world, the Red Savina, registers at about 500,000 on the Scoville scale (the Scoville scale is a somewhat subjective test, but is generally accepted as the best measurement pepper hotness, or piquancy). The Bhut Jolokia measures in around 1,000,000 on the Scoville scale, with a variety cultivated in Dorset, England reaching as high as 1,600,000. As a reference point, standard grade US pepper spray (used by police, people afraid of bears, etc) has a lower end Scoville rating of 2,000,000. Pure capsaicin, the chemical that makes peppers spicy, rates between 15,000,000 and 17,000,000.
A fun fact: it was recently discovered that tarantula venom and capsaicin activate the same pain pathways in mammalian brains.
In case you are somehow unfamiliar with Guatemalan insanity peppers, you can watch this.
Nipping crime in the bud: When asked whether or not this method could be used to find the source of other illegal drugs, the Alaskan scientist stated, "Um... What?"
(photo by ilmungo)
Sometimes I place quotation “marks” randomly. It’s a kind of written-language Tourette’s Syndrome, and I live in constant fear that its effects might “lead” people to false conclusions. “”
Anyhow, scientists at the University of Alaska Fairbanks are developing methods of tracing samples of marijuana back to their points of origin by studying the “isotopic fingerprint” of the plants. Presumably this is to aid people suffering from the advanced stages glaucoma find their medicine.
Whatever the reason for it might be, the process for determining the growing location of the drug is an interesting one. Isotopes, for those of you who are still reading, are, of course, elements with the same number of protons and electrons, but different numbers of neutrons. For example, the element nitrogen can be found with 13 neutrons, 14 neutrons, or 15 neutrons – those are all isotopes of nitrogen.
When you look at the ratio of isotopes in an object, you can sometimes find out where that object came from geographically, because certain areas will sometimes have isotopic signatures. This is how scientists figured out where Otzi the Iceman came from: the enamel on his teeth had an isotopic match with a small region in Italy, so it’s very likely he grew up there.
Applying this basic method to marijuana, the Alaskan scientists are finding that isotopic levels of hydrogen and oxygen in the plants can show where the water they were fed with came from. Carbon in the plant can show whether or not it was grown indoors. Nitrogen isotope levels can also be used to learn about plants’ origins. Combining the information from all of these ratios, researchers are attempting to construct a map of marijuana isotopic signatures, so that any sample with unknown origins could be matched up with a specific location.
In order to achieve this isotope map, however, the project director says he needs “time, money and many more samples of marijuana.”
Gray garden: A growing trend in the western U.S. is the use of gray water, water that comes from the drains of shower, bath tubs and washing machines, to go through an outdoor filtering process and then be used to water plants. Some see the idea as too big of a healthAs more and more people become environmentally conscious, to what extremes should we as a society let them go to help protect the environment?
That’s a pressing question these days in some western states where water is scarce and some people are trying to find creative ways to reduce their water consumption.
Meet gray water, that water that comes from the drains of bath tubs, showers and washing machines. It’s not full of hazardous waste products, but is not usable for drinking or cooking. How about flushing your toilets or water lawns with gray water?
A growing “gray water brigade” is finding creative home plumbing solutions to re-route gray water into other uses in their homes. Sometimes the modifications are quite simple to do, costing just a few hundred dollars.
But they rarely meet the building codes of the cities the gray water. Systems that have been put into use by contractors meeting local construction guidelines can cost as much as $7,000. In a recent story in the New York Times, a plumbing contractor admitted that he now encourages people interested in recycling grey water to find their own home remedies rather than fork out big bucks for a professional solution.
The same story gave a quick description of one such homemade system. A pipe running from the house deposits shower and sink water into an elevated bathtub in the yard that is filled with gravel and reeds. The roots of the plants begin filtering and absorbing contaminants. The water then flows into a lower tub, also containing a reed bed, before flowing into a still-lower tub of floating water hyacinths and small fish. The whole system cost about $100 and the final product is used to water flower beds at a California home. Chemical tests of the filtered done by the homeowner show a slightly high level of phosphorus, but nothing the plants can handle.
But other water experts share their concerns with gray water, including the risks of open pools of water becoming a mosquito breeding ground, the possible crossing of gray water lines with other plumbing that could contaminate clean water, or using gray water to irrigate plants that might be eaten raw.
Most states now have regulations about gray water usage. But proponents of gray water say those rules make the idea cost prohibitive.
So what should be done on the gray water front? Is it okay for people to play with gray water at their own risk? Are the health risks too great for this kind of experimentation? Share your thoughts here with other Science Buzz readers.
Brassinosteroids in tobacco plants: The level of brassinosteroids regulates both the size and aging of tobacco. With low levels, tobacco is dwarfed (some as small as 10 inches tall; see plant in front) and the leaves do not age, while at normal levels of brassinosteroids, tobacco stands almost 6 feet tall and the leaves turn yellow as they age (plant in back). Photo courtesy Michael Neff and Joanne Chory.
I am all over this idea. While I don’t personally mind mowing, I know lots of people do, and truthfully, while I don’t mind, I sure would like the additional free time!
In a paper in the May 4 issue of Nature, scientists from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute report that they have figured out a class of hormones that regulates growth in plants – including grass! And while this would be great for me, there are a lot of other good things that could come of this besides a mow-free yard, such as the development of trees that could be halted at a specific height so that they don’t interfere with power lines, raspberry bushes grown taller so that they are easier to pick, and increase the yields of crops such as corn or soybeans.
The key hormones are called brassinosteroids. With this new knowledge regarding brassinosteroids scientists may be able to stop growth in yard grass by limiting brassinosteroids or increase the yield of a crop by increasing brassinosteroids. Increasing crop yields would be very useful, especially considering urban expansion and the loss of farmland worldwide and steadily increasing global populations.
I can’t wait until the mow-free lawn becomes a product – but we’re likely many years away from that happening. Until then, I’ll keep mowing – or just replace my lawn with Field Turf.
The level of brassinosteroids regulates both the size and aging of tobacco. With low levels, tobacco is dwarfed (some as small as 10 inches tall; see plant in front) and the leaves do not age, while at normal levels of brassinosteroids, tobacco stands almost 6 feet tall and the leaves turn yellow as they age (plant in back). Photo courtesy Michael Neff and Joanne Chory.
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