To a child, soil is just dirt – a home for worms. To a gardener, soil is a collection of organic matter and nutrients. But to plants, soil is a hotbed of chemical activity. And plants don't just observe, they actively participate ...
Environment
Jun 6, 2017
2
192
Iron is a critical nutrient in the ocean. Its importance for algae and the nitrogen cycle has already been investigated in detail. Now, a new discovery shows that microbes also need iron to process phosphorus. A team of researchers ...
Earth Sciences
May 19, 2017
0
16
Increasing water temperatures are responsible for the accumulation of a chemical called nitrite in marine environments throughout the world, a symptom of broader changes in normal ocean biochemical pathways that could ultimately ...
Environment
Apr 20, 2017
17
287
Research led by the University of St Andrews and published yesterday (Monday 6 February) in Nature – provides new insight into how life evolved alongside changes in the chemistry of Earth's surface. These researchers examined ...
Earth Sciences
Feb 8, 2017
4
390
Those concerned with the health of Chesapeake Bay are familiar with nitrogen as a major pollutant whose excess runoff into bay waters can lead to algal blooms and low-oxygen dead zones. Perhaps less familiar is the significant ...
Environment
Jan 16, 2017
0
20
Nitrogen is one of the essential nutrients of life on Earth, with some organisms, such as the kinds of microbes found within the roots of legume plants, capable of converting nitrogen gas into molecules that other species ...
Earth Sciences
Nov 29, 2016
0
70
Plants can grow faster as atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations increase, but only if they have enough nitrogen or partner with fungi that help them get it, according to new research published this week in Science.
Environment
Jun 30, 2016
0
1017
When considering human impacts on earth systems, disturbance to the carbon cycle grabs the headlines. But another critically important earth process, the nitrogen cycle, has also seen major disruption from human activity.
Environment
May 9, 2016
7
476
It's easy to think of plants as passive features of their environments, doing as the land prescribes, serving as a backdrop to the bustling animal kingdom.
Ecology
Dec 1, 2015
0
444
It could never be found until recently, in a fish tank a few floors below Radboud University's microbiology department: one single organism able to perform the complete process of nitrification. Microbiologists used to think ...
Cell & Microbiology
Nov 27, 2015
0
65
