Surplus sugar helps whiteflies detoxify plant defenses

When attacking crucifers, the sap-sucking whitefly Bemisia tabaci can activate the chemical defenses of these plants. In a new study, an international team of researchers demonstrated that the pest is able to render a large ...

Western wildfire smoke causes East Coast haze, vivid sunsets

The smoke from dozens of wildfires in the western United States is stretching clear across the country—and even pushing into Mexico, Canada and Europe. While the dangerous plumes are forcing people inside along the West ...

Strigolactones increase tolerance to weevils in tobacco plants

A team of researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Chemical Ecology in Jena, Germany, has discovered that strigolactones, a class of novel plant hormones, mediate the fine-tuning of the production plant defensive substances ...

Routine gas flaring is wasteful, polluting and undermeasured

If you've driven through an area where companies extract oil and gas from shale formations, you've probably seen flames dancing at the tops of vertical pipes. That's flaring—the mostly uncontrolled practice of burning off ...

NASA's first planetary defense mission target gets a new name

Nearly two decades ago, a near-Earth asteroid was discovered to have a moon and the binary system was given the name "Didymos"—Greek for "twin," a loose description of the larger main body and the smaller orbiting moon, ...

The balancing act between plant growth and defense

Researchers from Kumamoto University in Japan have pinpointed the mechanism that regulates the balance between plant growth and defense. Plants synthesize and accumulate protective hormones to protect them from pathogen infections, ...

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