Wheat straw, the dried stalks left over from grain production, is a potential source of biofuels and commodity chemicals. But before straw can be converted to useful products by biorefineries, the polymers that make it up must be broken down into their building blocks. Now, researchers reporting in
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Credit: Forestry and Forest Products Research Institute, Japan
Cryptomeria japonica, or the Japanese cedar, is highly revered as the national tree of Japan. Locally known as sugi, it covers over 4.5 million hectares of land, accounting for nearly half of Japan s artificial forests. However, it is also notorious for causing hay fever, with a good 26.5% of Japan s population reporting cedar pollen allergies in 2008. Over the past years, pollen allergy caused by this conifer has become a widespread social issue among Japanese residents, with many having to avoid going outdoors during pollen season.
As sterile trees cannot produce and release functional pollen, it is believed that breeding of male-sterile cedar trees could be crucial in reducing the pollen released into the environment. However, their frequency is drastically low, with only two male-sterile trees per 8700 trees in a forest! The rarity of these trees, combined with the large and repetitive genomes of conife
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Clemson University will play a significant role in advancing the nation s environmental, energy, and national security research and workforce development efforts as a member of the Battelle Savannah River Alliance (BSRA) that will now manage the Savannah River National Laboratory (SRNL).
Clemson faculty have worked with scientists at SRNL for three decades to study solutions to nuclear waste storage, advanced materials, environmental protection and energy security. The long-standing relationship has resulted in numerous internships for Clemson undergraduate and graduate students who have had unique opportunities to conduct research with SRNL scientists and Clemson faculty. The new partnership is expected to bring even more opportunities.
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Dry and cloudless weather was mainly responsible for the unusually high solar irradiance in western Europe during the spring of 2020, not the reduction in aerosol emissions due to the first lockdown. This was the result of an international meteorological study, in which scientists from the University of Cologne participated. The results have been published in the current issue of
Nature Communications Earth & Environment.
A large part of western Europe experienced exceptionally sunny and dry weather from March 23 to the end of May 2020. New sunshine extremes were reported in the United Kingdom, Belgium, Germany, and the Netherlands, coupled with exceptionally deep blue skies. At the same time, these countries had gone into lockdown in response to the coronavirus pandemic. The hypothesis was that higher solar irradiance at the Earth s surface was caused by reduced emissions of aerosols from industry and traffic.
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IMAGE: Proposed model suggested by researchers, where ABCG33 and ABCG37 uptake cesium inside the plant cell in a potassium-independent manner view more
Credit: Abidur Rahman
In recent time, HBO s highly acclaimed and award-winning miniseries Chernobyl highlighted the horror of nuclear power plant accident, which happened in Ukraine in 1986. It is not a fictional series just on TV. As we had seen such a catastrophic nuclear power plant accident in 2011 again caused by natural disaster, Tsunami, in Japan. Both historical nuclear power plant accidents released tons of radioactive cesium to the environment. Consequently, the radioactive cesium found their way to the surrounding land, river, into the plants and animal feed, and eventually to our food cycle and ecosystem. The more detrimental part is their half-life, as 137Cs has half-life of ~30 years. So, it is going to be a serious agricultural, economic, and health problem for such a long time without effective a