Latest news with #photosynthesis
The Guardian
4 hours ago
- Science
- The Guardian
Country diary: Komorebi is a green world within a green world
Komorebi is a Japanese noun for sunlight passing through tree leaves. It seems to mean more than the rays of light, the play of dappled shadow; more than the ephemeral quality of a green shade; it's an aesthetic experience of sunlight interacting with foliage. Today is the hottest day of a heatwave. The air is stifling. Sunlight is burning. Under a canopy of leaves, a small wing lands on the table where I'm writing this in a notebook. How did it get here? The flickering hoverflies drone before they alight on lilies and dahlias in pots. A small fountain dribbles against ferns in the rocks. There is a dense canopy of Japanese maple, plum, fatsia and clematis. Komorebi is a green world within a green world. Its direct translation suggests the sunlight 'leaks' or 'escapes' from the leaves. All these chloroplasts in leaf cells, turning light into life. For many leaves, this heat must be hotter than their optimum temperature for photosynthesis, and those in the lower layers may benefit from light escaping from above; photosynthesis removes carbon dioxide and increases transpiration (water vapour) to produce cooling. Mine and other lives are grateful for this cool sanctuary. But komorebi is not such a still, peaceful world, as evidenced by this fallen wing. It's likely that a wasp ambushed a hoverfly in the leaves overhanging the table. Starting with its head, the scimitar blades of the wasp's jaws would have dismembered the hoverfly, discarding the legs and wings with surgical precision, the wasp returning to the nest to feed the chewed-up, protein-packed hoverfly to the larvae. What they are fed may determine their sex and caste – wasp destiny shaped by the beautifully banded bodies of hoverflies. This tiny wing is all that's left of the aerial magic trick of motionlessness; it's like a flake of celluloid film containing the places, lives and times composed of this green light of leaves. More importantly, komorebi is an experience life shares, a mood not described by just what it looks like or what it does. This heatwave is a sign of the coming climate; for komorebi, we need more foliage on all ecological levels. Under the Changing Skies: The Best of the Guardian's Country Diary, 2018-2024 is published by Guardian Faber; order at and get a 15% discount
CBC
6 days ago
- Science
- CBC
Jul 19: The science of art appreciation, and more...
Working in the protected reefs of Palau, an island country in the western Pacific Ocean, Alison Sweeney — associate professor of physics and of ecology and evolutionary biology at Yale University — was intrigued by the iridescence of the giant clams. Her team discovered that the giant clams' tissues are optimized to channel sunlight to photosynthetic algae that live inside them. They work like solar panels, but are far more efficiently than the ones we manufacture, providing inspiration for bio-inspired energy technology. The study was published in the journal PRX Energy. Researchers have found a new biodiversity hotspot. Environmental microbiologist Erica Hartmann and her team sampled shower heads and toothbrushes in ordinary bathrooms, and found a host of bacteria and hundreds of previously unknown viruses. But don't panic: much of this new life are bacteriophages — viruses that infect bacteria — which are harmless to humans and could be potential weapons against the bacteria that can cause human disease. The study was published in the journal Frontiers in Microbiomes. 106 million years ago, in what is now South Korea, a bird-like dinosaur with wings ran across a muddy flat and left behind tiny footprints. By reconstructing its stride from these prints, paleontologists have found that it ran faster than could be explained if it weren't using its wings to push it along. Hans Larsson of McGill university says this discovery gives new insight into the evolution of flight in dinosaurs. This study was published in the journal PNAS. Scientists have long known that humpback whales use bubbles to corral and concentrate krill and small fish to feed on. But new underwater cameras and airborne drones have provided an unprecedented view of how this is done, revealing how the whales use complex patterns of bubbles in different ways depending on the prey. Andy Szabo, a Canadian whale biologist and executive director of the Alaska Whale Foundation, said the humpbacks' bubble-nets result in a sevenfold increase in the amount of krill they gulp up per lunge. The study was published in Royal Society Open Science. Recent studies of two of the world's most famous paintings by Dutch artists have provided surprising insights into the depths of their art. A new analysis of the entire sky in Vincent van Gogh's painting, The Starry Night, which includes 14 swirling eddies shows how the artist intuitively understood the nature of turbulence, an incredibly complex phenomenon of fluid dynamics. Francois Schmitt, an oceanographer and research director at France's National Centre for Scientific Research, said the turbulence depicted in the night sky is completely compatible with the Kolmogorov law of large scale turbulence and the smaller scale Batchelor law with van Gogh's brushstrokes. Their research is in the journal Physics of Fluids. To figure out what it was about Johannes Vermeer's painting, Girl with the Pearl Earring, that viewers find so captivating, the Mauritshuis museum where the artwork hangs in The Hague commissioned a neuroscientific study. Andries van der Leij, the research director of Neurensics — a consumer neuroscience company — and lecturer at the University of Amsterdam, said they found that people's eyes were automatically drawn to the girl's eyes, mouth and pearl earring in a way that captured the observers' attention and drew them in for an emotional experience. Their research has not been published, but is described by the Mauritshuis museum.
Yahoo
12-07-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
‘It's really been a lifelong mission;' U of I professor speaks on trailblazing career
URBANA, Ill. (WCIA) — A retired University of Illinois professor was recently recognized with a top honor for decades of research into photosynthesis. The World Food Prize Foundation recognized Stephen Long as a 2025 Top Agri-Food Pioneer. The honor recognizes people who drive change in agriculture and global food security. 'I've been working with photosynthesis for 50 years,' Long said. 'It's really been a lifelong mission.' From the Farm: U of I professor named World Food Prize recipient He spent his career working on improving the productivity of crops through photosynthesis. He said it hasn't always been easy. 'Nobody really believed you could make photosynthesis more efficient, because the argument was nature would have already done it,' Long said. But his research was moving in a different direction. Organizations became interested in his work and wanted to fund it. ''How about we put our money where your mouth is, and you show us this can actually be done in a crop,'' Long said. 'And so that started the RIPE project.' RIPE stands for Realizing Increased Photosynthetic Efficiency, and it started in 2012. Long was the director from its founding until his retirement earlier this year. The RIPE project improved crop resilience. 'We were getting more photosynthesis and higher productivity,' Long said. Long's research is making an impact globally. He said almost 10% of the world's population is starving, a number approaching one billion people. He said he has the answer to help solve the gap between food supply and the world's growing population. 'If we can up photosynthesis, then we can get more seed, more food,' Long said. U of I researcher honored for his work in making crops more resilient But it's what's in the Energy Farm in Urbana that makes their work feel truly special. 'Right next door to these laboratories, we have six square miles of experimental farm,' Long said. 'So when we develop something new in the crop world, we can test it in the real world.' But it's not just Long who works in the lab. He has technicians like Noga Adar helping him 'I especially like the hands-on of seeing the plants out in the field,' Adar said. 'I feel like you can almost see visually the plants get bigger, and that's really exciting, knowing that downstream, that is going to help so many people.' Long said an important aspect of his work is that he has been able to train many scientists in this field of study, and they've been able to take what they learned all over the world. People he's trained are now working in places like Canada, the Netherlands and his native England. 'I have reached the end of my career, but this work is going to become much bigger and better beyond me,' he said. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Yahoo
11-07-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
From the Farm: U of I professor named World Food Prize recipient
CHAMPAIGN (WCIA) — The University of Illinois has another faculty member who has received an international distinction. From the Farm: All American Junior Sheep Show Dr. Stephen Long, Ikenberry Professor of Crop Sciences and Plant Biology at U of I, has been figuring out how to make crops yield more by using sunlight energy for the last 50 years. As a result, he has been declared agrifood professor and the recipient pioneer for the World Food Prize this October in Des Moines, Iowa. 'That'll be a very special day, a very special recognition for all the people who've worked with me at [the University of] Illinois and are carrying on this work, here and around the world,' Long said. 'My major objective in all of the work has really been to improve the process of photosynthesis in our crops, and also future proof it so that it can still function under the changes we know that are going to happen over the next 50 years.' Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Yahoo
10-07-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
U of I researcher honored for his work in making crops more resilient
CHAMPAIGN-URBANA, Ill. (WCIA) — A longtime researcher at the University of Illinois is being recognized as a trailblazer, and for driving change in agriculture and global food security. Stephen Long, the Ikenberry Endowed Chair Emeritus of Plant Biology and Crop Sciences at the U of I, was named a 2025 Top Agri-food Pioneer (TAP) by the World Food Prize Foundation. 39 innovators around the world were chosen, representing 27 countries. Each of the nominees worked to transform food systems, and work in fields related to food or agriculture. U of I team creates global warming resilient potatoes Long's research showed that by engineering crops to improve photosynthesis, it leads to better productivity. His work offered solutions to make crops more resilient in the face of climate change. He also led Realizing Increased Photosynthetic Efficiency (RIPE), an international research project, from 2012 to earlier in 2025. 'The world is running out of food relative to the number of people, and every year more people are starving according to the United Nations' definition,' Long told the College of Agricultural, Consumer & Environmental Sciences. 'Improving photosynthesis is one way to boost the food supply, and it has two main advantages. First, it will enable us to produce more per acre of land. Second, the process is fairly similar across crops. So if you can find a way of improving it in one, you can probably do it in all of them.' Long said over time, his work has shown that making crops more resilient is possible. Central Illinois family farms picking, selling corn until sold out 'I've been studying photosynthesis in crops for 50 years, and people used to believe that you can't improve it, or nature would have already done it,' he said. 'We've been able to show that is not the case; our crops probably only achieve about a third of the theoretical efficiency of photosynthesis. This suggests there's quite a lot of room for improvement, and now some of that improvement is being made.' Long also said that after looking back, one of the things he is most proud of is the time he spent mentoring young researchers who are now carrying on the work. The 2025 TAP trailblazers will be recognized at the Borlaug Dialogue in Des Moines, Iowa, in October. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
