While Matt Damon relied on potatoes cultivated in crew biowaste to survive in the hit film The Martian, researchers say it is a humble desert moss that might prove pivotal to establishing life on Mars.
“The unique insights obtained in our study lay the foundation for outer space colonisation using naturally selected plants adapted to extreme stress conditions,” the team write.
Dr Agata Zupanska, of the SETI Institute, agreed, noting moss could help enrich and transform the rocky material found on the surface of Mars to enable other plants grow.
Writing in the journal The Innovation, researchers in China describe how the desert moss not only survived but rapidly recovered from almost complete dehydration.
“Looking to the future, we expect that this promising moss could be brought to Mars or the moon to further test the possibility of plant colonisation and growth in outer space,” the researchers write.
Dr Wieger Wamelink of Wageningen University, also raised concerns, including that temperatures on the red planet rarely get above freezing, making outdoor plant growth impossible, while the new study did not use Mars-like soil.
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I'd read some research-result release that said there is a specific virus-fungus combination that all colony-collapse hives had both of ( & their immune-systems were essentially non-functional: they were infected with EVERYTHING ),
vs colonies which had 0 or 1 of the 2.
I don't remember the names of either the virus or the fungus.
When we keep importing/exporting contaminated bits of wildlife, there are consequences.
A few corrections so your message doesn’t get picked apart by people arguing in bad faith:
You confused methane and methanol. Methanol is an alcohol that burns invisibly, methane is the main component of natural gas, the same that burns blue in gas stoves. Hard to see in broad daylight, but birds have much better vision than us. So why would they burn themselves? The burn happens at the base of the wide part of the flare, hiding it from view. The superheated column of coming out the stack is more than hot enough to cause the injuries, though.
In the end, the best thing we could do is twofold:
follow the 3Rs: reduce consumption to reduce trash generation, reuse and recycle to further reduce waste.
Thank you for catching the mistake with the methanol. I've removed that video link.
I'd be curious to know more about what the birds see. They could also be landing on stacks after they finish flaring. That would still be extremely hot, or if they're sitting there when the flare ignites.
It looks like there are new rules coming into effect now, as rules for flaring have been updated after 40 years.
The action follows a more comprehensive methane-reduction plan announced by the Environmental Protection Agency in December. The plan, announced at a global climate conference in the United Arab Emirates, targets emissions from existing oil and gas wells nationwide, rather than focusing only on new wells, as previous EPA regulations have done. It also regulates smaller wells that are now required to find and plug methane leaks.
It seems they are using the stick instead of the carrot to stop the venting as much as possible on new and existing sources.
The article says between 2010 and 2020, enough gas was wasted this way to power 675,000 homes.
I'm encouraged also by articles I've been seeing calling for producers of waste (plastic bottles, packaging, etc) to be now responsible for doing something with it instead of the responsibility being placed on consumers.
I'd love to see more reusable containers, like glass, but I get there are a number of issues with that, so maybe better quality aluminum containers.
I don’t know much about landfill flares, but I wouldn’t think they’d flare up high like the post picture.
Industrial flares need to be designed for the maximum load they could face, usually an emergency situation like an unplanned shutdown. In those scenarios, the flame goes up and burns out like the picture, and burns yellow due to lack of sufficient air.
Landfill continuously generate a low pressure, low flow stream of methane and other gases. The only way they’d flare up and down is if they are storing the gases then releasing. Which… why? Maybe there’s a reason for it, but I don’t see it.
I’m glad the EPA is finally doing something. The lack of environmental regulation in the US is near criminal. And you have to listen to temporarily vexed industrialists complain about the regulations that do exist.
Huh....now I don't feel so good about putting up a sign next to the aquarium with the word 'lunch' on it, or pointing to the inhabitants and then the sign and then my belly.
The tale starts 30 years ago, when Bernie Krause made his first audio clip in Sugarloaf Ridge state park, 20 minutes’ drive from his house near San Francisco.
His sensitive microphones captured the sounds of the creek, creatures rustling through undergrowth, and the songs of the spotted towhee, orange-crowned warbler, house wren and mourning dove.
He lost 70 years of letters, photographs and field journals, in flames so intense they left the refrigerator an unrecognisable puddle of aluminium and steel.
Desirae Harp, an educator at the state park and member of the local Mishewal Wappo tribe, says the silence that fell after the fires broke her heart.
Caitlin Cornwall, a project manager at the Sonoma Ecology Center, says: “There is a direct link between reversing climate change and having more birds in Bernie’s recordings.
Find more age of extinction coverage here, and follow biodiversity reporters Phoebe Weston and Patrick Greenfield on X for all the latest news and features
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A new species of tiny parasitic worm has been discovered, and it could be used to kill insect pests in place of chemical pesticides.
When new species of these worms are discovered, scientists get excited, as they may have special properties that allow them to control some insects, or withstand different types of weather, enabling them to be used instead of pesticides.
"We spray trillions of them on crops every year, and they're easy to buy," Adler Dillman, a University of California Riverside nematology professor and co-discoverer of the new species, said in a statement.
The paper reveals that S. adamsi can indeed infect and kill insects, which was confirmed after experimenting with placing the nematodes in containers with wax moths.
The researchers hope to discover more of the new species' properties, such as which insects it can infect, and its limitations in terms of exposure to ultraviolet light, heat and dryness.
"Also they're from a warm, humid climate that could make them a good parasite of insects in environments where currently, commercially available orchard nematodes have been unable to flourish."
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