Are Plants Intelligent?
As a follow-up on the story about a Japanese woman trying to have a conversation with her cactus, check out the HowStuffWorks team’s attempt to answer this age-old question:
Teaching A Cactus The Japanese Alphabet
Could plants communicate with us, if we had the right way of listening? The wife of a Japanese researcher gives her cacti a language lesson:
The chief of research for Fuji Electronic Industries has constructed special instruments which translate the electrical output of plants into modulated sounds, giving voice to a cactus. Relying on her affinity for plants, Mrs. Hashimoto looks forward to actual conversation with her cactus…Convinced it possesses an intelligence, she is determined to teach it the Japanese alphabet.
Plants That Point To Hidden Ruins
BLDG BLOG delves into the beauty of how plant life can reflect what is buried in the earth below, and could even be used to find the location of hidden treasure:
I absolutely love stories like this, and I swoon a little bit when I read them; it turns out that “plants growing over old sites of human habitation have a different chemistry from their neighbors, and these differences can reveal the location of buried ruins.”
The brief article goes on to tell the story of two archaeologists, who, in collecting plants in Greenland, made the chemical discovery: “Some of their samples were unusually rich in nitrogen-15, and subsequent digs revealed that these plants had been growing above long-abandoned Norse farmsteads.”
The idea that your garden could be more like an indicator landscape for lost archaeological sites—that, below the flowers, informing their very chemistry, perhaps even subtly altering their shapes and colors, are the…
Seedbank Vaults In Case Of Mass Extinction
Via Wired, Dornith Doherty’s photographs offer a glimpse inside several of humanity’s vital seed-saving facilities, where samples of our planet’s flora are stored and protected in case of future mass extinction (be it due to climate change, nuclear war, astroid impact, or disease epidemic). Perhaps most stark is the Svalbard “Doomsday” Seed Vault, located on an island near the North Pole. One of these tiny outposts could someday be the savior of life on Earth:
Dornith Doherty’s documentary images of seed-saving facilities capture the logistics — and existential anxiety — behind the elaborate steps now in place to preserve the world’s crop diversity.
Once a traditional, year-to year practice by smallholding farmers to develop sturdy varietals, this simple act of putting seed aside has more and more become the concern of international affairs and corporate policy.
“Seed saving and its role in preserving biodiversity is of utmost importance. We are in an era…
A Simple Cure For Heart Disease
David Irving
David Irving
[disinfo ed.'s note: the following is an excerpt from The Protein Myth: Significantly reducing the Risk of Cancer, Heart Disease, Stoke and Diabetes while Saving the Animals and the Planet courtesy of John Hunt Publishing.]
Current research suggests that death from cardiovascular disease is on the decline. However, the incidence of people who get heart disease remains the same, and risk factors may be increasing.1 (Cardiovascular disease includes stroke, high blood pressure, heart failure, and other conditions like arrhythmias, atrial fibrillation, cardiomyopathy, and peripheral arterial disease.) Discoveries that isolate the cause of heart disease and offer cures like the remarkable breakthroughs made by Dr. Caldwell B. Esselstyn, Jr. and Dr. Dean Ornish should, consequently, excite cardiologists. Yet in spite of the proved effectiveness of these new treatment options, most mainstream cardiologists and cardiovascular treatment facilities have ignored them.
Dr. Esselstyn began a twelve year cardiac disease arrest and reversal trial in 1985. Five years into the…
Wild & Crazy Sci-Fi Abilities of Real-Life Plants
Via Blastr:
Plants don’t get enough respect as sci-fi monsters. Sure, Triffids will always rule, but sci-fi baddies tend to be mutants, zombies, vampires and other altered mammals. This is in ignorance of plants’ amazingly creepy special abilities. To prove it, we’ve dug up six plant skills that freak us out more than Godzilla.
Eating Rats: Okay, here’s the horrifying plot: You’re a missionary near the Philippine Archipelago. While doing your daily missioning or whatever, you wander up to the top of a mountain. Thirsty, you stumble upon what looks like an ornate birdbath filled with nectar. Leaning over to take a sip, you see a dead rat inside … and it’s slowly being digested by the plant.
This is Nepenthes attenboroughii, one of the most badass scary plants on Earth. See, while most pitcher plants stick to eating bugs, Nepenthes attenboroughii prefers to lure in birds and rats by looking as tasty…
Number Of Species On Earth Estimated At 8.7 Million
Ever wonder how many species are sharing this Earth? Apparently it’s 8.7 million, give or take a few. This takes into account the few thousand plant or marine species we haven’t discovered yet or documented. Via Physorg:
That is a new, estimated total number of species on Earth — the most precise calculation ever offered — with 6.5 million species found on land and 2.2 million (about 25 percent of the total) dwelling in the ocean depths.
Announced today by Census of Marine Life scientists, the figure is based on an innovative, validated analytical technique that dramatically narrows the range of previous estimates. Until now, the number of species on Earth was said to fall somewhere between 3 million and 100 million.
Furthermore, the study, published today by PLoS Biology, says a staggering 86% of all species on land and 91% of those in the seas have yet to be discovered, described and…
Food Ark: Will Seed Banks Save Our Sources of Food?
“Experts estimate that we have lost more than half of the world’s food varieties over the past century”. Charles Siebert writes in National Geographic:
Svalbard Vault Mountain (Cutaway). Illustration: Global Crop Diversity Trust
A crisis is looming: To feed our growing population, we’ll need to double food production. Yet crop yields aren’t increasing fast enough, and climate change and new diseases threaten the limited varieties we’ve come to depend on for food. Luckily we still have the seeds and breeds to ensure our future food supply — but we must take steps to save them.
Six miles outside the town of Decorah, Iowa, an 890-acre stretch of rolling fields and woods called Heritage Farm is letting its crops go to seed. It seems counterintuitive, but then everything about this farm stands in stark contrast to the surrounding acres of neatly rowed corn and soybean fields that typify modern agriculture. Heritage Farm is devoted…
Atomic Gardens: Mutant Plants In The Suburbs
Pruned talks to Paige Johnson about the strange story of atomic gardening, a post-war phenomenon in which plants were irradiated in the hopes of producing beneficial mutations. It’s a largely forgotten, surreal slice of 1950s culture, with housewives hosting atomic peanut dinner parties and attending Radioactivity Jubilees:
After WWII, there was a concerted effort to find ‘peaceful’ uses for atomic energy. One of the ideas was to bombard plants with radiation and produce lots of mutations, some of which, it was hoped, would lead to plants that bore more heavily or were disease or cold-resistant or just had unusual colors. The experiments were mostly conducted in giant gamma gardens on the grounds of national laboratories in the US but also in Europe and countries of the former USSR.
These efforts utimately reached far into the world outside the laboratory grounds in several ways: in plant varieties based on mutated stocks that were—and still…
Indonesia’s Plant-Based Birth Control Pill for Men
While the U.S. progress lags, Indonesia readies a male contraception pill. Patrick Winn writes on Global Post:
On the remote Indonesian island of Papua, tribesmen have long noticed the curious effect of a shrub called “gandarusa.”
If you chew its leaves often enough, men say, your wife won’t get pregnant. Indonesian scientists, who have transferred this folk method from the jungle to the lab, claim they can extract the shrub’s active ingredient and mass produce it as an over-the-counter pill.
If they’re right, they will accomplish what Western pharmaceutical giants have researched but failed to deliver for decades: a birth control pill for men.
“With luck, it could be released late this year, but it will probably be sold in stores early next year,” said Sugiri Syarief, the head of Indonesia’s state-run National Family Planning Coordination Board. Researchers began analyzing gandarusa in 1988, Sugiri said. Animal and human trials began in the 1990s and…
Is It Unethical To Kill Plants?
Our green, leafy friends lack faces and voices, but below the surface, they possess a surprising sensitivity and a desperate will to remain alive and unharmed. The New York Times questions the ethics of vegetarianism:
Surely, I’d thought, science can defend the obvious, that slaughterhouse carnage is wrong in a way that harvesting a field of lettuces or, say, mowing the lawn is not. But instead, it began to seem that formulating a truly rational rationale for not eating animals, at least while consuming all sorts of other organisms, was difficult, maybe even impossible.
The differences that do seem to matter are things like the fact that plants don’t have nerves or brains. They cannot, we therefore conclude, feel pain. In other words, the differences that matter are those that prove that plants do not suffer as we do. Here the lack of a face on plants becomes important, too, faces being requisite…
Growing Your Own Security: Professor Breeding Bomb-Detecting Plants (Video)
Spencer Ackerman writes on WIRED’s Danger Room:
The next hydrangea you grow could literally save your life. With the help of the Department of Defense, a biologist at Colorado State University has taught plant proteins how to detect explosives. Never let it be said that horticulture can’t fight terrorism.
Picture this at an airport, perhaps in as soon as four years: A terrorist rolls through the sliding doors of a terminal with a bomb packed into his luggage (or his underwear). All of a sudden, the leafy, verdant gardenscape ringing the gates goes white as a sheet. That’s the proteins inside the plants telling authorities that they’ve picked up the chemical trace of the guy’s arsenal.
22% of Plants Facing Extinction
Author: Ryan Kitko (CC)
The Earth could lose more than one fifth of all known plants — forever! Story from the Guardian:
One in five of the world’s plant species – the basis of all life on earth – are at risk of extinction, according to a landmark study published today.
At first glance, the 20% figure looks far better than the previous official estimate of almost three-quarters, but the announcement is being greeted with deep concern.
The previous estimate that 70% of plants were either critically endangered, endangered or vulnerable was based on what scientists universally acknowledged were studies heavily biased towards species already thought to be under threat.
Today the first ever comprehensive assessment of plants, from giant tropical rainforests to the rarest of delicate orchids, concludes the real figure is at least 22%. It could well be higher because hundreds of species being discovered by scientists each year are likely to be…
U.S Government Clamps Down On Natural Remedies
Arabic herbal medicine book c. 1334
You knew it was coming — $5 Billion of sales that Big Pharma would like for itself is surely enough to get the U.S. Federal government and its friends in the mainstream media to persuade the public that plant medicines don’t work and are dangerous, despite many centuries of effective use by peoples around the world. To wit, this article from the Wall Street Journal:
Elderberry extract and acai to boost the immune system. Black cohosh to lessen the discomforts of menopause. Soy capsules to prevent bone loss and prostate cancer.
Many botanical supplements—made from the seeds, bark, leaves, flowers and stems of a wide range of plants—have been widely used as folk remedies for centuries. Americans have been consuming growing quantities of the supplements in hopes of warding off disease and easing symptoms of various conditions. But there is scant scientific evidence to support their health…
Plant Enzyme To Power Exhaust-Powered Cars
From Discovery News:
An enzyme found in the roots of soybeans could be the key to cars that run on air.
Vanadium nitrogenase, an enzyme that normally produces ammonia from nitrogen gas, can also convert carbon monoxide (CO), a common industrial byproduct, into propane, the blue-flamed gas found on stoves across America.
While scientists caution the research is still at an early stage, they say that this study could eventually lead to new, environmentally friendly ways to produce fuel — and eventually gasoline — from thin air.
“This organism is a very common soil bacteria that is very well understood and has been studied for a long time,” said Markus Ribbe, a scientist at the University of California, Irvine, and a co-author of the new paper that appears in the journal Science.
“But while we were studying it, we realized that the enzyme has some unusual behavior,” he added.
The organism that the researchers studied was…
Genetically Modified Canola ‘Escapes’ Farm Fields
Photo: Heather LeMoine/North Dakota Tourism
Geoffrey Brumfiel reports for NPR:
Genetically modified crops are commonplace in fields across the United States, but a new study suggests that some plants have spread into the wild. A survey of North Dakota has turned up hundreds of genetically modified canola plants growing along roads across the state.
The results, presented Friday at the annual meeting of the Ecological Society of America in Pittsburgh, show that the vast majority of feral canola plants in the state contain artificial genes that make them resistant to herbicides. Researchers also found two plants that contained traits from multiple genetically modified varieties, suggesting that genetically modified plants are breeding in the wild.
“What we’ve demonstrated in this study is a large-scale escape of a genetically modified crop in the United States,” says Cindy Sagers, an ecologist at the University of Arkansas, who led the study.
Canola plants are used in cooking oil and…
A Free Buffet To Beat Whole Foods
The LA Times profiles Christopher Nyerges, founder of the School of Self-Reliance and an expert on how to survive on food he finds in the urban wild:
Nyerges, who has been teaching for more than 30 years, says that it isn’t uncommon for hard-core survivalists to take his class, as well as people with end-of-the-world-related fears. “There have been individuals who have been seriously upset about things over the years. During Y2K they were petrified; now I get a lot of that with the 2012 baloney,” he says, referring to what some believe is the Mayan calendar’s end date.
“I tell people that society is not going to change, only the individual can change and that’s the source of calm that comes from true self-reliance,” he continues. “I’m convinced I will never go hungry, I’ll never be homeless, I’ll never be broke…
Is A Plant Poisoning Our Air More Than Cars?
As those of you who regularly visit this site know, the “global warming / climate change” debate is one of the most contentious issues on this site, with I have observed, equal numbers on chiming in on both sides of this issue.
Having seen the range of opinion, and paid close attention to the veracity of opinion on this particular issue with disinfo.com readers, I have been meaning to share this article I came across from the informative editor-in-chief over at io9.com, Annalee Newitz.
On face value, this article most reminds me of M. Night Shyamalan’s The Happening:
Are Pesticides from Plants Dangerous to Humans?
By Ferris Jabr for Scientific American:
Chemicals derived from flowers may sound harmless, but new research raises concerns about compounds synthesized from chrysanthemums that are used in virtually every household pesticide.
For at least a decade, pyrethroids have been the insecticide of choice for consumers, replacing organophosphate pesticides, which are far more toxic to people and wildlife. But evidence is mounting that the switch to less-toxic pyrethroids has brought its own set of new ecological and human health risks.
About 70 percent of people in the United States have been exposed to pyrethroids, with children facing the highest exposure, according to a study published this month. Although the human health threats are unknown, animal studies have found evidence of damage to neurological, immune and reproductive systems.
In addition, pyrethroids are flowing off yards and gardens, contaminating some streams and rivers at concentrations that can kill small creatures vital to the survival of fish and other…
