Ecology and the Environment

The earth is heavily polluted , no question about that. So we have to find a solution. Maybe clouds could be a solution , because in clouds there lives a lot of bacteria and algae and if we could stimulate the growth of algae in clouds , more CO2 would be processed by the algae into O2. Another solution could be a ‘homemade’ cloud consisting of a plate on which algae can grow attached to drones or a hot air balloon that can bring the plate to a certain altitude. The algae would survive because it gets H2O from passing by clouds and it would take the CO2 from the polluted air and trasnfer it into O2. Also another solutions could be a genetically modified algae …

Hi, I am new to this forum … I was wondering if anyone could tell me why deciduous trees can store more carbon compared with evergreen trees? I think it may have something to do with non-structural carbohydrates.. but I am not positive. Any info would be great!! Thanks!

Most of Human Evolution happened in Africa and Eurasia where we evolved and adapted to our surroundings. Now we have only been living in North America for a few hundred years. (unless your native American)... My questions being.. Are we adapted to the climate, vegetation, air quality, etc. the same way we would be to the other continents? I am finish, French Canadian, german, and everyone somewhere long down the line is African. etc... But now my body is in North America. Am I just as healthy?

Hi there I have a question. (Please be kind I am unaware of how any of this works) Is it possible to design a plant seed to create a plant? Not a genetically modified seed but a seed from scratch. If not, what needs to be established for the possibility of creating a seed?

People, Need to understand better how a fruit tree flowers, then generates the fruit. In other words, Can phosphate encoursge flowering, but not necessarily allow for the development of the actual fruit from the flower?? Why does a tree "flower", but then does not develop fruit, and another year, it will develop fruit? can a tree develop flowers with low phosphate availability? Thanks

Hello, Using an open-flow respirometry system that provides data on V02 and VCO2 for each individual in the system, how do you go about calculating the energy expenditure for each individual? Thanks.

people, This has been bugging me (no pun here), for years- so much talk/scare about ingesting one or 2 or even 1000 cells of e coli accidentally say, by eating some undercooked beefburger which had been infected/contaminated- such that one has to wonder just how much e coli does one have to "eat" to become ill (overwhelmed). How many colonies per plate(?). How much e coli (or salmonella. for that mater) should the healthy immune system be able to control/attack/kill/surround/isolate/"neutralize" by the white blood cells? Immune system subject for sure. How many - in terms of however the micro people like to "count" such bacteria. (maybe this is for the micro fo…

Hello everyone, I come here after a maddening stint of Googling, trying to find my awnser--with no luck. So I hope you will all forgive me for my strange (and most likely stupid question). Some backstory: I am writing a satirical novel, and one major element of the fictional United States-sized contintent it takes place in, is that a lot of the landmass is covered in tall grass, and I mean tall--twice as tall than most buildings, wider than most humans, and just as thick as a lawn. You could say roughly 30% of the landmass is covered with the stuff (so imagine 30% of the United States being covered with it--but scatered throughout). So my question is, would th…

Hi all, Basically I am looking for anecdotes, mildly amusing (or at least amusingly written) about things that have happened within the field. Can be any length and from any area of the natural sciences. I'm looking for stuff that will get students/young people more interested in this field of science by opening it up, showing the funny bits behinds the scenes and hopefully making it seem less 'stuffy'. The stories will hopefully go into a blog post, for which the submitter will get full acknowledgement. If you have any, you can post them here (in their entirety or an outline and I will embellish it), or you can private message me or follow the link and submit the…

Hey, I wrote a paper briefly describing the affects of genetically modified crop (GMC) on the environment. I've attached the paper. If anyone is interested they can download it and read it over and then let me know what they think about it (i.e. does it need any corrections?). Thanks. paper_GMC.doc

Can someone explain this one im having a hard time with this. How to get the percentage?and also the ratio below what does it mean?

Hello, I was wondering if anyone using thermochron ibuttons could give me some advice about battery life problems. In our project, we used Maxim’s thermochron ibuttons for three field seasons of approximately 6 months each. We were sampling wood turtles nests, so they were buried with a sampling rate of once per hour. The temperatures they were exposed to ranged from -23 C to 37 C. To prevent water damage we used Plastidip with the spray and dip method. According to the specs, we should have had at minimum of 2 more years of battery life, however, they have already died. Has anyone else experienced problems like ours? Or have any suggestions as to prevent this f…

OOps- sorry, title should read "bad", not "bqad".......but: Believe it or not, some people say burning plant material like "incense", and sage is not detrimantal to your health. OK, maybe not as bad as cigarette manufacturers which add about 10% additives to "tobacco", but still, smoke from a weed/plant/leaf is still smoke particles, and that inside your lungs is technically foreign body , and can cause pneumonia, I believe. Why would smoke from a sage plant be "good" for you but tobacco say, raw natural tobacco, without the processing likely from cigarette companies, be "bad" for you. isnt that kind of being biased?

If we are comparing percentage what statistical tool are we going to use?

A few years back, I heard about the honey bee "crisis." Allegedly, honey bees were not around as much and were not pollinating foods as we humans would like them to. I don't know if scientists ever got down to the cause and/or causes. Where are we on this honey bee "crisis" in the world?

Dear all, I have been working on these bat echolocation calls for a while. Every now and then there is this weird drop in white noise followed by a peak at a wide range of frequencies. I hope there is anyone out there that has any idea what this can be. An example spectrogram of this weird pattern has been attached. The white noise is the sound between 60 and 70 kHz in this spectrogram. Thanks for any help and suggestions, Rob

I have formed an hypothesis that this particular plant has evolved the strategy of widely dispersing its seed using electrostatic force. Having made several efforts to find some reference to such a strategy and finding none, I thought I'd put the issue to the forum audeience. So, the plant is Western Yellow Oxalis - Oxalis suksdorfii. [aka Suksdorf Wood-sorrel, Western Yellow Wood-sorrel] Plants appeared as volunteers in my yard a few years back and I subsequently ID'd it & found it is ranked Sensitive in Washington State. In retrospect I suspect it hitched a ride home from one of my tramps in the wild. Among its interesting qualities, the leaves fold when t…

I am an undergraduate student at the University of Nebraska- Lincoln. Here in Nebraska, we covet our natural resources due to our economic reliance on their productivity but we also cherish our natural resources due to the fact that we have a very unique natural environment and we wish to protect our ecosystems. Nebraska is home to saline wetlands, the Ogalala aquifer, woodland forests, native prairies, sand hills and dunes which welcomes in all walks of life including rare endangered beetles such as the Salt Creek Tiger Beetle that only survives in habitats in Lincoln, NE along with habitats suited for Mountain Lions in Scott's Bluff, NE. Prairie conservation is …

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ty-rm4dngWM Hello guys i made this video , showing what could we lose if we continue like this. I wanted someone to see this because it has only 300 views and it seems that no one cares , so i hope you will watch it.. Please leave the comments here about the video , i want to know did you found it interesting.

One of the best forest parks and a place of a incalculable natural value in Galicia (Spain), known as "Monte de Cabral" or "Cotogrande", has serious risks of being destroyed, because of the complicity of the mayor of the city, Abel Caballero, with the Britsh corporation Eurofund. The mayor and the corporation want to convert the forest park into a commercial macroproject that they try to call "Porto Cabral". This videoclip is made in that place: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BwM4k3FYD2I

This may seem an offensive post to some but I was postulating on why in a well structured social unit like an ant colony there is no hint of rebellion? Compare this to analogous units in the human bio-sphere. Mob psychology takes over on many occasions and what follows is a fracas and traces of nihilist behavior. Why is it then that a highly evolved species like homo sapiens reacts in ways that defy normal social paradigms? What is the rationale behind this? Thanks in advance

Right now we are thinking of adding multiple mini-games with tips, and revolving around the theme of climate change and ecology. However, we need new ideas that make our game better, in any way. All ideas are welcome.

Think of an idealized chlorophyll bio-sensor which is responsive to light and is bio-degradable. Or a nitrogen fixing bacteria culture sensor that is responsive to nitrogen in the environment. These simple bio-sensors cause no environmental damage whatsoever and simply extend nature's bounty in the lab environment. How close are we to achieving these? Thanks in advance

Hey everyone, I'm looking for debatable topics on conservation biology. For example, "The effects of auto gas emissions on global climate change." The only criteria are that the topic must be debatable (i.e. not a one-sided fact, like "how hunting bears decreases their population," this probably wouldn't spark discussion or require critical thinking) and it must somehow relate to conservation biology. This is for a paper I'm writing, I'm just looking for suggestions or inspiration for choosing a topic and any relevant information you might want to share. Right now, I think that this might be a really good/ interesting question: "Is the introduction non-indigenous …

; and the spread of monoculture and use of high-yielding varieties of crops have been accompanied by the disappearance of old varieties of food plants which might have provided some insurance against pests or diseases in future. Would anyone kindly explain me readily or simply the following parts? Why do food plants have provided some insurance against pests or diseases in future? In addition, I can not the meaning of this one: use of high-yielding varieties of crops have been accompanied by the disappearance of old varieties of food plants .............. Source: www.teachers.cambridgeesol.org/ts/digitalAssets/115016_Academic_Reading_sample_task_-_Matching_headings_…