http://phys.org/ en-us Phys.org internet news portal provides the latest news on science including: Physics, Nanotechnology, Life Sciences, Space Science, Earth Science, Environment, Health and Medicine. Light is crucial for photosynthetic organisms, but one can have too much of a good thing. Excess light can harm organisms when the amount of energy absorbed exceeds the rate of carbon fixation. http://phys.org/news289816596.html Biology Fri, 07 Jun 2013 10:00:03 EST news289816596 (Phys.org)—Describing how living organisms emerged from Earth's abiotic chemistry has remained a conundrum for scientists, in part because any credible explanation for such a complex process must draw from fields spanning the reaches of science. http://phys.org/news274609121.html Chemistry Thu, 13 Dec 2012 08:20:00 EST news274609121 (Phys.org)—Our oldest national park may hold answers to questions about the activities of microbial communities that, in turn, may help in developing bioenergy technologies or safely storing carbon dioxide. Detailed analyses of metagenome assemblies have revealed a new archaeal phylum in microbial mats from Yellowstone National Park (YNP) hot springs. http://phys.org/news272708370.html Biology Wed, 21 Nov 2012 09:10:02 EST news272708370 A study published in PLoS Computational Biology maps the development of life-sustaining chemistry to the history of early life. Researchers Rogier Braakman and Eric Smith of the Santa Fe Institute traced the six methods of carbon fixation seen in modern life back to a single ancestral form. http://phys.org/news254072492.html Biology Thu, 19 Apr 2012 17:10:01 EST news254072492 Located between 200 and 1,000 meters below the ocean surface is a "twilight zone" where insufficient sunlight penetrates for microorganisms to perform photosynthesis. Details are now emerging about a microbial metabolic pathway that helps solve the mystery of how certain bacteria capture carbon in the dark ocean, enabling a better understanding of what happens to the carbon that is fixed in the oceans every year. They appear in the September 2, 2011, edition of Science. http://phys.org/news234104438.html Biology Thu, 01 Sep 2011 14:01:41 EST news234104438 Carbon fixation by phytoplankton in the open ocean plays a key role in the global carbon cycle but is not fully understood. Until now researchers believed that cyanobacteria overwhelmingly accounted for phytoplankton's role in carbon fixation in the open ocean. But now scientists at the University of Warwick and the National Oceanography Centre in Southampton have opened 'the black box' of eukaryotic phytoplankton and discovered that they actually account for almost half the ocean's carbon fixation by phytoplankton. http://phys.org/news190545060.html Space & Earth Thu, 15 Apr 2010 10:11:16 EST news190545060