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Trees' Leaves Grow At a Cool 70° All Over the World
biogeochick writes "Ever turn on the air conditioner on a hot day? How about a heater when it gets cold? OK, so we all know that humans act to keep themselves cool, but what about trees? A recent article on tree core isotopic evidence has shown that trees from tropical to boreal forests all grow at 70 degrees. The study, published in Nature by some fantastic researchers (so one of them is my adviser, so sue me) and covered by NPR on All Things Considered, has shed some light on the convergent temperature at which trees perform photosynthesis." Update: 06/19 21:31 GMT by T : I give, I give -- that's 70 degrees Fahrenheit.
That's 21C for anyone living in the 21st century.
Spelling mistakes, grammatical errors, and stupid comments are intentional.
with hanging toilet paper! It's over the top, Like it or not! Allways and everywhere unless your some kind of freaking psychopath!
How much is your data worth? Back it up now.
It didn't, it made it into NPR.
The abstract for the nature article:
So it made it into Nature because their results challenge an apperantly widely held assumption used in determining global warming... I think? I'm no ecologist/arborologist/whatever science is involved here. But it's actual science.
Mod parent down. This is absolute rubbish, how did it get to +5 informative? I assume it's there as a joke so it should only be +5 funny, or possibly now, +5 fooled Slashdot. I am a plant physiologist, there are three basic types of chlorophyll in land plants, a,b & c. They have slightly different spectra, but they are not blue and yellow, they all have minimal absorbance in the green part of the spectrum and thus look green. The yellows and reds in senescing leaves are from carotenoids and anthocyanins.
Si hoc legere scis nimium eruditionis habes.
The evolution of chlorophyll followed (perhaps in Cyanobacteria) in organisms at the bottom of the sea. These were the first organisms to fix carbon dioxide. Being at the bottom of the ocean, only the far bands of visible light were available to them (blue and red), and hence green chlorophyll evolved.
Since then, accessory pigments have also evolved (e.g. phycobiliproteins), which have reclaimed other parts of the visible spectrum, and changed the colour of the plants or algae.
Not quite. -40 is the convergence point
Hanging toilet paper over the top has no benefit except to make the foldy triangle look nice in hotel rooms.
It's actually a pain because when you go to tear some off with one hand you have to be quick and nimble to keep the paper from spooling out all over the place.
Hanging it under is far more practical. You can tear if it off with one hand very easily without having the paper unspool 7 yards of itself onto the floor.
Hang it under.
Operator, give me the number for 911!
Commercial and military aviators seem to think so.
"degree Rankine", same as "degree Celcius," "degree centigrade," and "degree Fahrenheit." Kelvin is the odd man out.
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
No; despite the Wikipedian oracle's attempt to change it by fiat, the stone remains a unit of weight. As the pound, in terms of which the oracle defines the stone. Both predate the concept of mass, and in normal English usage can only be used as units of weight. If you read the relevant Wikipedia articles carefully, and have ever studied physics, you'll notice that they imply that the pound is a unit of both weight and mass (even having two separate articles, one for the "pound (mass)" and one for the "pound (weight)", which any engineering professor will tell you is rubbish. Fortunately, they do mention the correct, if contrived and inelegant, 'pound-mass' as a synonym for this supposed sense of 'pound'. They avoid the slug and its relation to the pound altogether in those articles, because that would make clear their pretense.
I think you mean 70 Kelvin, the Kelvin scale does not use degrees.
Actually, it does, but it uses the Celsius degree. The term "Kelvin" unit is defined as "degrees Celsius above absolute zero". So a phrase like "70 degrees Kelvin" expands to "70 degrees degrees Kelvin above absolute zero". This isn't so much wrong as silly (at least to someone who knows the definition).
It's the same sort of error as saying "PIN number", which expands to "Personal Identification Number number". It's easy to understand why someone who doesn't understand the term might say something like this. But in both cases, saying such things just makes you sound ignorant of the term's meaning.
There are lots of technical terms what are used incorrectly in this fashion. Maybe others will post their favorites ...
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
No, kelvin is defined as 1/273,16 of the difference between absolute zero and triple point of water. This definition does mean that 1 K increment has the same magnitude as 1 Celsius degree increment, but it isn't defined by it.
One that hath name thou can not otter