Modeling of Earth's response to global warming has suggested dry regions will become more arid and wet regions will experience more precipitation, with an uneven distribution of moisture in the atmosphere. With enhanced seasonality, ...
Colloidal crystals and glasses are tunable, iridescent, nonfading and nontoxic materials that can be used to develop structural colors. In a new report now published in Science Advances, Jong Bin Kim, and a team of researchers ...
Using specialized nanoparticles embedded in plant leaves, MIT engineers have created a light-emitting plant that can be charged by an LED. After 10 seconds of charging, plants glow brightly for several minutes, and they can ...
Nanomaterials
Sep 20, 2021
0
1079
Since antiquity, cultures on nearly every continent have discovered that certain plant leaves, when chewed or brewed or rubbed on the body, could relieve diverse ailments, inspire hallucinations or, in higher dosages, even ...
Biotechnology
Sep 2, 2020
0
234
Glass frogs are well known for their see-through skin but, until now, the reason for this curious feature has received no experimental attention.
Plants & Animals
May 25, 2020
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283
MIT engineers have developed a way to closely track how plants respond to stresses such as injury, infection, and light damage, using sensors made of carbon nanotubes. These sensors can be embedded in plant leaves, where ...
Bio & Medicine
Apr 15, 2020
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1197
Imagine that instead of switching on a lamp when it gets dark, you could read by the light of a glowing plant on your desk.
Bio & Medicine
Dec 13, 2017
4
1241
In 2013, an ASU research team found the oldest known evidence of our own genus, Homo, at Ledi-Geraru in the lower Awash Valley of Ethiopia. A jawbone with teeth was dated to 2.8 million years ago, about 400,000 years earlier ...
Archaeology
May 15, 2017
0
898
A computer program that learns and can categorize leaves into large evolutionary categories such as plant families will lead to greatly improved fossil identification and a better understanding of flowering plant evolution, ...
Computer Sciences
Mar 7, 2016
0
18
(Phys.org)—A team of researchers in the U.S. has found that our early human ancestors expanded their diet to include savannah grasses and other food sources approximately a quarter of a million years earlier than had been ...
In botany, a leaf is an above-ground plant organ specialized for photosynthesis. For this purpose, a leaf is typically flat (laminar) and thin. There is continued debate about whether the flatness of leaves evolved to expose the chloroplasts to more light or to increase the absorption of carbon dioxide. In either case, the adaption was made at the expense of water loss. In the Devonian period, when carbon dioxide concentration was at several times its present value, plants did not have leaves or flat stems. Many bryophytes have flat, photosynthetic organs, but these are not true leaves. Neither are the microphylls of lycophytes. The leaves of ferns, gymnosperms, and angiosperms are variously referred to as macrophyll, megaphylls, or euphylls.
Leaves are also the sites in most plants where transpiration and guttation take place. Leaves can store food and water, and are modified in some plants for other purposes. The comparable structures of ferns are correctly referred to as fronds. Furthermore, leaves are prominent in the human diet as leaf vegetables.
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