Getting to the Roots Problem
October 3, 2022
Understanding plant roots requires figuring out how they solve problems of physics.
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How Wood Is Made
March 5, 2021
Arboreal Artistry: The Amazing Talents of Wood Forming Cells By Margaret Helder As the major component of trees, wood seems useful and even beautiful in finished products, but scarcely biologically dramatic. Yet recent research on the development of wood portrays an elaborate ballet which proceeds inside young developing xylem cells. This performance culminates in […]
Make the Climate Alarmists Happy: Plant a Tree
July 6, 2019
Maybe everyone can calm down the climate alarmists without draconian political measures. But who really knows?
City Trees Give More in Ecosystem Services Than They Cost
March 25, 2018
City planners need to plant more trees in urban areas, but the benefits go beyond beautifying pavement. Urban areas occupy 4% of the land surface of the planet, says Theodore A. Endreny in a Comment article in Nature Communications. That may strike readers as surprising, given most people’s attention to cities for work, travel and […]
Human Evolutionists Fall Out of Their Science Tree
September 1, 2016
Tell a tale, get media attention: did Lucy fall out of a tree, or did paleoanthropologists fall off an empirical limb?
New Biomimetics Stories
May 26, 2013
Here are some new ways scientists are imitating plants and animals to understand their designs and make new products.