Thing #7b Post:
I enjoy the science articles coming from my reader. Right now it is a bit heavy with biological articles, so I should try to find more chemistry and physics feeds. But the biology news tends to be more relevant and is written in a way that seems to care about scientific literacy of the average reader. The chemistry and physics news feeds and blogs are often highly technical. I found an article discussing new research on how studying a plant's internal clock can impact the kinds of models being used to predict climate change. I am especially interested in biorhythms and the circadium clock of organisms, (partly because my body really takes a beating when I travel across several time zones) but also because it is such a marvelous tactic of adaptation. This article describes how plants have survived over the years based largely on its ability to adapt to environmental changes. It is estimated that 90% of a plants genes are controlled and regulated by its biological clock. The control of when a flower opens, or when a seed is ready to germinate, or in getting chloroplasts ready for photosynthesis before dawn- these are all "timing" control factors. When scientists created an experimental plant without these controls, the plant had a difficult time surviving and reproduced less frequently. The climate control models made routinely thus far have ignored any variables where plants might undergo photosynthesis more rapidly at different times of the day. This would change the amount of CO2 used up during these times, which means the model is not as accurate.