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Florida Tech Research Finds Roots Use Chemical 'Photos' to Coordinate Growth
Though it may look haphazard, the network of intertwining plant roots snaking through the soil actually represents a deliberate process. Root growth is guided by chemical snapshots taken by young roots, allowing them to detect obstructions and coordinate the paths they take, new research led by Florida Institute of Technology finds.Roots compete for and share…
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Low-Level Radiation Less Harmful to Health Than Other Lifestyle Risks
Human populations have always been exposed to ionizing radiation, and more so in modern life due to its use in medicine, industry and the armed forces. Whilst the risks to human health from medium and high-level radiation are relatively well-understood, the risks at lower levels are less clear. Mixed messages about the safety of low…
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Helping Chinese Farmers Tackle Erosion, Increase Profits
On the steep farming slopes of China, Bozhi Wu and his research associates are finding ways to improve economic and environmental stability.
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Latin America Could Lose Up to 90 Percent of its Coffee-Growing Land by 2050
Studies have previously estimated that the amount of land worldwide suitable for growing coffee could shrink by an estimated 50 percent by 2050 as global temperatures rise, rain patterns change, and ecosystems shift due to climate change. But a new study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences predicts a far worse situation for Latin America, the…
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Type 2 Diabetes is a Reversible Condition
A body of research putting people with Type 2 diabetes on a low calorie diet has confirmed the underlying causes of the condition and established that it is reversible.
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An important process that fuels harmful algal blooms investigated in water bodies across Canada
For many Canadians, summer time means time at the lake, swimming, fishing, boating, and relaxing. Nothing can spoil this experience like blue-green mats of muck, caused by algal blooms. These blooms negatively affect not only recreational activities but also put drinking water source, property values, wildlife, and human health at risk. In the 1970s, scientists…
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Hatching an idea
Backyard chickens are permitted in a number of Canadian cities, including Vancouver, Victoria, Whitehorse and some boroughs of Montréal.Wanda Martin would like to see Saskatoon on that list.
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Pipeline pain relief on horizon with spill-resistant bitumen
Ian Gates describes each pebble of bitumen as resembling a liquid-filled headache capsule and, for an Alberta struggling to build pipelines, this tiny package could spell pain relief indeed.Freshly patented and weeks away from pilot-scale production, the professor’s revolutionary heavy oil and bitumen pellets may finally provide a pipeline-free solution to getting Alberta’s largest oil…
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Study Sets New Distance Record for Medical Drone Transport
Johns Hopkins researchers have set a new delivery distance record for medical drones, successfully transporting human blood samples across 161 miles of Arizona desert. Throughout the three-hour flight, they report, the on-board payload system maintained temperature control, ensuring the samples were viable for laboratory analysis after landing.
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Taking the Long View: The 'Forever Legacy' of Climate Change
A century or two from now, people may look back at our current era — with its record-breaking high temperatures year after year, rapid disappearance of Arctic sea ice, and gradually rising sea levels — as part of a much cooler and far more desirable past. The spate of extreme weather events in the past…