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News tagged with nutrient

Hearty bacteria help make case for life in the extreme

(PhysOrg.com) -- The bottom of a glacier is not the most hospitable place on Earth, but at least two types of bacteria happily live there, according to researchers.

Biology / Cell & Microbiology

created Jan 19, 2012 | popularity 4.5 / 5 (4) | comments 1 | with audio podcast

Scientists find evidence for 'great lake' on Jupiter's moon Europa, potential new habitat for life

In a significant finding in the search for life beyond Earth, scientists from The University of Texas at Austin and elsewhere have discovered what appears to be a body of liquid water the volume of the North ...

Space & Earth / Space Exploration

created Nov 16, 2011 | popularity 4.8 / 5 (38) | comments 30 | with audio podcast

Yeast 'rewired' to mate when starving

(PhysOrg.com) -- New research has found that the mating habits of the dairy yeast depends on the levels of nutrients available as well as the availability of cells of the opposite "sex."

Biology / Cell & Microbiology

created Dec 17, 2010 | popularity 5 / 5 (1) | comments 0 | with audio podcast report

Ants take on Goliath role in protecting trees in the savanna from elephants

(PhysOrg.com) -- Ants are not out of their weight class when defending trees from the appetite of nature's heavyweight, the African elephant, a new University of Florida study finds.

Biology / Plants & Animals

created Sep 02, 2010 | popularity 5 / 5 (3) | comments 0 | with audio podcast

Behavior breakthrough: Like animals, plants demonstrate complex ability to integrate information

A University of Alberta research team has discovered that a plant's strategy to capture nutrients in the soil is the result of integration of different types of information.

Biology / Plants & Animals

created Jun 24, 2010 | popularity 5 / 5 (10) | comments 1 | with audio podcast

Fungi shifted plant balance of power

Cooperating with fungi didn't just help the earliest plants spread across a barren, rocky landscape; it also played a decisive role in the rise of more complex plants with roots and leaves that make up most ...

Biology / Plants & Animals

created May 24, 2012 | popularity 5 / 5 (2) | comments 0 | with audio podcast

Mathematical physics reveal nature's formula for survival (w/ Video)

(Phys.org) -- The vascular system of a leaf provides its structure and delivers its nutrients. When you light up that vascular structure with some fluorescent dye and view it using time-lapse photography, details begin to ...

Other Sciences / Mathematics

created May 14, 2012 | popularity 3.9 / 5 (12) | comments 10 | with audio podcast

Analysis raises atmospheric, ecologic and economic doubts about forest bioenergy

A large, global move to produce more energy from forest biomass may be possible and already is beginning in some places, but scientists say in a new analysis that such large-scale bioenergy production from ...

Space & Earth / Environment

created Apr 18, 2012 | popularity 4.3 / 5 (3) | comments 2 | with audio podcast

Toxic menu: Marine worm feeds on carbon monoxide and hydrogen sulphide with the help of symbiotic bacteria

In a study published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, scientists from the Max Planck Institute for Marine Microbiology in Bremen and Greifswald University, together with collea ...

Biology / Plants & Animals

created Apr 17, 2012 | popularity 5 / 5 (5) | comments 0 | with audio podcast

Study: 800-year-old farmers could teach us how to protect the Amazon

In the face of mass deforestation of the Amazon, we could learn from its earliest inhabitants who managed their farmland sustainably. Research from an international team of archaeologists and paleoecologists, ...

Space & Earth / Environment

created Apr 09, 2012 | popularity 5 / 5 (14) | comments 7 | with audio podcast

Pulp NonFiction: Fungal analysis reveals clues for targeted biomass deconstruction

Without fungi and microbes to break down dead trees and leaf litter in nature, the forest floor might look like a scene from TV's "Hoarders."

Biology / Biotechnology

created Mar 22, 2012 | popularity 3.7 / 5 (3) | comments 0 | with audio podcast

Trace element plays major role in tropical forest nitrogen cycle

A new paper by researchers from the University of Georgia and Princeton University sheds light on the critical part played by a little-studied element, molybdenum, in the nutrient cycles of tropical forests. Understanding ...

Space & Earth / Environment

created Mar 22, 2012 | popularity 5 / 5 (2) | comments 0 | with audio podcast

New study links dust to increased glacier melting, ocean productivity

A University of Miami (UM) Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science-led study shows a link between large dust storms on Iceland and glacial melting. The dust is both accelerating glacial melting ...

Space & Earth / Earth Sciences

created Mar 01, 2012 | popularity 4.7 / 5 (13) | comments 4 | with audio podcast

Tree rings may underestimate climate response to volcanic eruptions: study

Some climate cooling caused by past volcanic eruptions may not be evident in tree-ring reconstructions of temperature change because large enough temperature drops lead to greatly shortened or even absent growing seasons, ...

Space & Earth / Earth Sciences

created Feb 05, 2012 | popularity 4 / 5 (4) | comments 22 | with audio podcast

Bacterial plasmids -- the freeloading and the heavy-lifters -- balance the high price of disease

Studying self-replicating genetic units, called plasmids, found in one of the world's widest-ranging pathogenic soil bacteria -- the crown-gall-disease-causing microorganism Agrobacterium tumefaciens -- Ind ...

Biology / Cell & Microbiology

created Feb 01, 2012 | popularity not rated yet | comments 0 | with audio podcast

Nutrient

A nutrient is a chemical that an organism needs to live and grow or a substance used in an organism's metabolism which must be taken in from its environment. They are used to build and repair tissues, regulate body processes and are converted to and used as energy. Methods for nutrient intake vary, with animals and protists consuming foods that are digested by an internal digestive system, but most plants ingest nutrients directly from the soil through their roots or from the atmosphere.

Organic nutrients include carbohydrates, fats, proteins (or their building blocks, amino acids), and vitamins. Inorganic chemical compounds such as dietary minerals, water, and oxygen may also be considered nutrients. A nutrient is said to be "essential" if it must be obtained from an external source, either because the organism cannot synthesize it or produces insufficient quantities. Nutrients needed in very small amounts are micronutrients and those that are needed in larger quantities are called macronutrients. The effects of nutrients are dose-dependent and shortages are called deficiencies.

See healthy diet for more information on the role of nutrients in human nutrition.

For more information about Nutrient, read the full article at Wikipedia.
This text uses material from Wikipedia and is available under the GNU Free Documentation License.