Anti-organic: Why do some farmers resist profitable change?
Washington DC (SPX) Nov 12, 2014 -
Why do some chemical farmers resist a profitable conversion to organic methods? A new study in the Journal of Marketing suggests it may be because making that change feels like switching belief systems.
"The ideological map of American agriculture reveals an unfolding drama between chemical and organic farming," write authors Melea Press (University of Bath), Eric Arnould (Southern Denmark ...
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Mapping reveals targets for preserving tropical carbon stocks
Washington DC (SPX) Nov 12, 2014 -
A new high-resolution mapping strategy has revealed billions of tons of carbon in Peruvian forests that can be preserved as part of an effort to sequester carbon stocks in the fight against climate change. Tropical forests convert more carbon from the atmosphere into biomass than any other terrestrial ecosystem on Earth.
However, when land is used for agriculture, as a wood source, or for ...
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IU biologists collaborate to refine climate change modeling tools
Bloomington IN (SPX) Nov 12, 2014 -
A new climate change modeling tool developed by scientists at Indiana University, Princeton University and the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration finds that carbon dioxide removal from the atmosphere owing to greater plant growth from rising CO2 levels will be partially offset by changes in the activity of soil microbes that derive their energy from plant root growth.
So ...
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Weeds yet to reach their full potential as invaders
Sydney, Australia (SPX) Nov 12, 2014 -
Weeds in the UK are still evolving hundreds of years after their introduction and are unlikely to have yet reached their full potential as invaders, UNSW Australia scientists have discovered.
The study is the first to have tracked the physical evolution of introduced plant species from the beginning of their invasion to the present day, and was made possible by the centuries-old British tr ...
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We Are Not Alone
Santa Barbara CA (SPX) Nov 12, 2014 -
The adult human body is made up of about 37 trillion cells. Microbes, mainly bacteria, outnumber body cells by 10 to 1. Increasingly, scientists recognize that this huge community of microbes, called the microbiome, affects the health, development and evolution of all multicellular organisms, including humans.
Studies show symbiotic microbes can help prevent infection by disease-causing pa ...
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The oceans' sensitive skin
Kiel, Germany (SPX) Nov 12, 2014 -
Ocean acidification might alter climate-relevant functions of the oceans' uppermost layer, according to a study by a group of marine scientists published in the "Journal of Geophysical Research: Oceans".
In an experiment led by GEOMAR Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research Kiel, the researchers observed a close coupling between biological processes in the seawater and the chemistry of the sea ...
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Farmers and scientists divided over climate change
West Lafayette IN (SPX) Nov 12, 2014 -
Crop producers and scientists hold deeply different views on climate change and its possible causes, a study by Purdue and Iowa State universities shows.
Associate professor of natural resource social science Linda Prokopy and fellow researchers surveyed 6,795 people in the agricultural sector in 2011-2012 to determine their beliefs about climate change and whether variation in the climate ...
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