Why plants form sprouts in the dark

Exposed to light, plants turn green and form leaves. Not so in the dark. A signal responsible for this phenomenon has now been decoded.

Cities Can Cut Greenhouse Gas Emissions Far Beyond Their Urban Borders

Greenhouse gas emissions caused by urban households’ purchases of goods and services from beyond city limits are much bigger than previously thought. These upstream emissions may occur anywhere in the world and are roughly equal in size to the total emissions originating from a city’s own territory, a new study shows. This is not bad news but in fact offers local policy-makers more leverage to tackle climate change, the authors argue in view of the UN climate summit COP23 that just started. They calculated the first internationally comparable greenhouse gas footprints for four cities from developed and developing countries: Berlin, New York, Mexico City, and Delhi. Contrary to common beliefs, not consumer goods like computers or sneakers that people buy are most relevant, but housing and transport – sectors that cities can substantially govern.

Biological Consequences of Climate Change on Epidemics May Be Scale-dependent

Conventional thinking holds that current climate warming will increase the prevalence and transmission of disease. 

Circadian clock discovery could help boost water efficiency in food plants

A discovery by Texas A&M AgriLife Research scientists in Dallasprovides new insights about the biological or circadian clock, how it regulates high water-use efficiency in some plants, and how others, including food plants, might be improved for the same efficiency, possibly to grow in conditions uninhabitable for them today.

Why the Post-Paris Climate Challenge Is Even Harder Than We Thought

Climate negotiators gathering in Germany this week are still flush with the success of the Paris Agreement two years ago. But as they begin assembling a rule book for ensuring that the national pledges made in Paris are fulfilled, there comes a hard dose of reality. Those pledges, which constrain greenhouse gas emissions from now to 2030, will only deliver a third of the cuts needed to put the world on track to keep warming below the promised 2 degrees Celsius.

Relocating bus stops would cut riders' pollution exposure, UCLA study finds

oving bus stops away from intersections would substantially reduce the amount of pollution bus riders are exposed to, UCLA scientists report today in the journal Environmental Pollution.

Research has shown that in many cities in the United States and internationally, bus riders frequently spend 15 to 25 minutes or more each way waiting for a bus.

Alma's Image of Red Giant Star Gives a Surprising Glimpse of the Sun's Future

A Chalmers-led team of astronomers has for the first time observed details on the surface of an aging star with the same mass as the Sun. ALMA:s images show that the star is a giant, its diameter twice the size of Earth’s orbit around the Sun, but also that the star’s atmosphere is affected by powerful, unexpected shock waves. The research is published in Nature Astronomy on 30 October 2017.

Biochemist to study how proteins contribute to neurodegenerative diseases

Bulent Mutus is a micro mechanic.

But instead of fixing cars with wrenches and grease, the biochemist rolls up his sleeves and chops up and rebuilds proteins using microscopes and Petri dishes.

Increases in rats, bedbugs and mosquitoes are unintended consequence of urbanization

The recent uproar about seats on a British Airways flight crawling with bedbugs is only one of the unintended consequences that urbanization worldwide has on evolution, says a University of Toronto researcher whose new study takes a comprehensive look at those consequences.
 
 “As we build cities, we have little understanding of how they are influencing organisms that live there,” says Marc Johnson, an associate professor of biology at U of T Mississauga who is also a director of the University of Toronto’s Centre for Urban Environments.

NASA's GPM Radar Spots Tornado Spawning Thunderstorms in Ohio Valley

Severe weather that rolled through the Ohio Valley on Nov. 5 was analyzed by NASA's Global Precipitation Measurement mission or GPM satellite. GPM provided forecasters at the National Weather Service with rain rates and cloud heights that showed where strongest storms were located.