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Categories: Biology: Botany, Space: Astrophysics

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Analyses of amber show that insect larvae were already using a wide variety of tactics to protect themselves from predators 100 million years ago.

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Scientists have discovered that plants send tiny, innocuous-seeming lipid 'bubbles' filled with RNA across enemy lines, into the cells of the aggressive mold. Once inside, different types of RNA come out to suppress the infectious cells that sucked them in.

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Older tree plantations can be more attractive to animals who are looking for a new home than younger plantations, according to a new study. In the tropics, older plantations also welcome a greater variety of different plants and animals -- though sadly, Christmas tree plantations do not become more biodiverse over time.

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Supercomputer helped astronomers develop PRIYA, the largest suite of hydrodynamic simulations yet made of large-scale structure in the universe.

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A study appearing in Nature Communications based on field and greenhouse experiments at the University of Kansas shows how a boost in agricultural yield comes from planting diverse crops rather than just one plant species: Soil pathogens harmful to plants have a harder time thriving. While crop rotation and other farming and gardening practices long have reflected benefits of a mix of plants, the new research puts hard data to one important mechanism underpinning the observation: the numbers of microorganisms in the soil that eat plants.

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Early in the 1970s, paleontologists discovered strange fossilized fruits between hardened rock from one of the largest volcanic eruptions in Earth's history. The identity of these fossils remained elusive for the next several decades. Using CT scanning, scientists have now determined they are the oldest fossils from species in the Frankincense and Myrrh family.

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Plants often develop communities with microorganisms in their roots, which influences plant health and development. Although the recruitment of these microbes is dictated by several factors, it is unclear whether the genetic variation in the host plants plays a role.

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The Earth is a wonderful blue and green dot covered with oceans and life, while Venus is a yellowish sterile sphere that is not only inhospitable but also sterile. However, the difference between the two bears to only a few degrees in temperature. A team of astronomers has achieved a world's first by managing to simulate the entirety of the runaway greenhouse process which can transform the climate of a planet from idyllic and perfect for life, to a place more than harsh and hostile. The scientists have also demonstrated that from initial stages of the process, the atmospheric structure and cloud coverage undergo significant changes, leading to an almost-unstoppable and very complicated to reverse runaway greenhouse effect. On Earth, a global average temperature rise of just a few tens of degrees, subsequent to a slight rise of the Sun's luminosity, would be sufficient to initiate this phenomenon and to make our planet inhabitable.

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A team of astronomers has used asteroseismology, or the study of stellar oscillations, to accurately measure the distance of stars from the Earth. Their research examined thousands of stars and checked the measurements taken during the Gaia mission to study the near Universe.

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Not all discoveries turn out to be actual new discoveries. This was the case for the extremely red objects (EROs) found in James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) data. Analysis shows that they are very similar to blue-excess dust obscured galaxies (BluDOGs) already reported in Subaru Telescope data.

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Astronomers have discovered a population of massive stars that have been stripped of their hydrogen envelopes by their companions in binary systems. The findings shed light on the hot helium stars that are believed to be the origins of hydrogen-poor core-collapse supernovae and neutron star mergers.

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Supernovae -- stellar explosions as bright as an entire galaxy -- have fascinated us since time immemorial. Yet, there are more hydrogen-poor supernovae than astrophysicists can explain. Now, scientists may have found the missing precursor star population.

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Two galaxies in the early universe, which contain extremely productive star factories, have been studied by a team of scientists. Using powerful telescopes to split the galaxies' light into individual colors, the scientists were amazed to discover light from many different molecules -- more than ever before at such distances. Studies like this could revolutionize our understanding of the lives of the most active galaxies when the universe was young, the researchers believe.

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Brown dwarfs are objects that straddle the dividing line between stars and planets. They form like stars, growing dense enough to collapse under their own gravity, but they never become dense and hot enough to begin fusing hydrogen and turn into a star. At the low end of the scale, some brown dwarfs are comparable with giant planets, weighing just a few times the mass of Jupiter.

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This holiday season brings surprising news about your Christmas tree. Scientists just discovered that globally, trees growing in wetter regions are more sensitive to drought. That means if your tree hails from a more humid clime, it's likely been spoiled for generations.

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Plants emit odors for a variety of reasons, such as to communicate with each other, to deter herbivores or to respond to changing environmental conditions. An interdisciplinary team of researchers carried out a study to investigate how biodiversity influences the emission of these substances. For the first time, they were able to show that species-rich forests emit less of these gases into the atmosphere than monocultures. It was previously assumed that species-rich forests release more emissions. The Leipzig team has now been able to disprove this assumption experimentally.

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The Colorado Ultraviolet Transit Experiment (CUTE) spacecraft is about the size of a cereal box. It has also recorded incredibly detailed measurements of the atmospheres of planets hundreds of light-years from Earth.

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It may soon be time to wake up and smell the lab-grown coffee made from cultured plant cells. But it's not clear whether drinks from this product replicate coffee beans' complex flavors. Now, a study found that some of the comforting aromas and tastes of a conventional cup of coffee could be reproduced by roasting and brewing coffee cell cultures.

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Paleontologists are getting a glimpse at life over a billion years in the past based on chemical traces in ancient rocks and the genetics of living animals. New research combines geology and genetics, showing how changes in the early Earth prompted a shift in how animals eat.

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Increasing urbanization worldwide is a growing threat to biodiversity. At the same time, flowering plants are often more diverse in cities than in the countryside. This is due to flowering plants and agricultural crops, which are increasingly being grown in cities. A recent study shows that the interactions between plants and pollinators, which are important for agricultural production, are surprisingly dynamic. For example, the plant and bee species involved in pollination vary greatly between the seasons.