6 results found.
... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 116: Mar-Apr 1998 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Eyeless Vision Tomatoes see red. And other colors, too! We touched on this subject over a decade ago. (SF#54) Then we described how the use of red plastic mulch greatly improves the yields of tomato plants. More recent research reveals that fruit quality and resistance to pests are also improved. How can this be? Plant leaves, it turns out, contain color sensors -- light-sensitive pigments similar to those it the human retina. Obviously, the plants do not "see," but the pigments provide environmental information. Here's the mechanism: plant leaves reflect infrared light well, so when a tomato plant's pigments detect a lot of infrared, the plant "thinks" that it may be crowded out by competing vegetation. The tomato plant responds aggressively by growing more rapidly. The red plastic mulch between the rows also reflects a lot of infrared light, and it thereby tricks the tomato plant into accelerating its growth. (Raloff, Janet; "When Tomatoes See Red," Science News, 152:376, 1997.) Fire-detecting beetles. The beetle Melanophila acuminata seeks out forests that have just been ravaged by fires so that it can lay its eggs in the nutritious, freshly burnt wood. These insects are capable of detecting fires up to 32 kilometers (20 miles) distant. They do not see the fire with their eyes but instead detect the ...
Terms matched: 1 - Score: 79 - 15 May 2017 - URL: /sf116/sf116p07.htm
... divide the total by 7; the remainder gives the day of the week. For example, 27 October 1964 gives 27+ 1 (the code for October)+ 3 (the code for 1964) = 31. Dividing by 7 gives a remainder of 3 which is the third day of the week, Tuesday." (Ref. 2) Note the connection between TM's feats and those of those idiot savants adept at calendar-calculating. Demonstration 3. TM quickly gives the telephone number of any of the 15,000 hotels listed in a large directory. "The telephone have been learned through a mnemonic system for encoding numbers as a series of two-digit pairs. Each pair has a learned associate (e .g . 00 is a bicycle, 57 is tomato sauce, 39 is Hitler, 41 is mum, his mother's age when he started this system). For larger numbers these associates are combined into wholes which are usually highly imageable (a bottle of tomato sauce riding a bicycle) and attached to some other associate to the hotel name." (Ref. 2) TM's mnemonics seem weird, but they work; and they probably could work for anyone -- for we barely tax our mental powers in modern life. But would our latent mental capabilities been of use to ancient man, or is this still another case of "evolutionary overshoot", as we harped on so heavily under BIOLOGY in this issue? References 1. Wilding, John, and Valentine, Elizabeth; "Memory Champions," British ...
Terms matched: 1 - Score: 24 - 15 May 2017 - URL: /sf099/sf099p14.htm
... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 54: Nov-Dec 1987 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Plants are not color blind!" Scientists have long known from laboratory experiments that various colors of light can affect stem size, root structure and other aspects of plant growth. But they have remained largely in the dark about the potential practical benefits of the phenomenon. "Using colored mulch to bathe plants in reflected light of certain hues, the South Carolina group (Clemson University) has begun to explore what colors plants prefer in agricultural growing conditions. Last year, for example, the group found that tomatoes grown with red mulch -- made with plastic sheets painted red -- had 20% higher yields than those with black mulch. Preliminary results this year show that potatoes and bell peppers grow best with white mulch...." (Anonymous; "Plants' Colors," Wall Street Journal, September 16, 1987. Cr. J. Covey.) Comment. Many questions arise here, but we'll take only three: (1 ) How do plants sense colors? (2 ) How do different colors mediate growth differently? (3 ) Is all this explicable in terms of evolution? From Science Frontiers #54, NOV-DEC 1987 . 1987-2000 William R. Corliss ...
Terms matched: 1 - Score: 15 - 15 May 2017 - URL: /sf054/sf054b07.htm
... Acoustical Society, University of California researchers reported that elephants also send low-frequency acoustic signals by stomping the ground. Almost inaudible in the air, the sounds travel through the ground and can be picked up by ground microphones. It is thought that this communication channel has a range of as much as 50 kilometers -- far greater than the sounds could be perceived in the air. Supporting this notion, anecdotes say that elephants somehow know when other elephants are being killed far, far away. They run in the opposite direction! But how do they detect the stomping sounds if they travel through the ground? (Anonymous; "Stomping Ground," New Scientist, p. 25, December 13, 1997.) Some sperm are immense -- and nutritious. Fruitflies smaller than a tomato seed pro-duce sperm almost 6 centimeters (2 .3 inches) long. These can be seen coiled up in the tiny fertilized eggs. Why so long? Perhaps they carry nourishment for the developing embryo. (Boyce, Nell; "Monster Sperm," New Scientist, p. 40, April 11, 1998.) From Science Frontiers #118, JUL-AUG 1998 . 1998-2000 William R. Corliss ...
Terms matched: 1 - Score: 14 - 15 May 2017 - URL: /sf118/sf118p09.htm
... impact area as sealevels rose. Some geologists do not concur with the asteroid theory, but they are all reviewing Florida's geological history in a new light. (Weisburd, S.; "Asteroid Origin of the Everglades?" Science News, 128:294, 1985.) Reference. Very large craters and astroblemes are cataloged in ETC in out catalog: Carolina Bays, Mima Mounds, which is described here . Time, of December 9, 1985, has a nice map of the asteroid's "footprint", but copyright laws prevent us from using it; so we've made our own. The black circle is the collapsed basin surrounding the impact point. The elliptical coral reef is tangent to the southern rim of the collapse basin and runs northwest through the tomatoes, loops around Lake Okeechobee between the peas and lima beans. From Science Frontiers #43, JAN-FEB 1986 . 1986-2000 William R. Corliss ...
Terms matched: 1 - Score: 13 - 15 May 2017 - URL: /sf043/sf043p15.htm
... . The car was parked on a dead-end street. No people or other cars were in sight. "Suddenly there was a horrific bang and the car rocked. A missile from the sky lay in plain view, square in the center of my car's hood. .. .. . "I cautiously got out to examine the fallen object. Tiny pieces had broken off, but it was largely intact and measured four to five inches across. I smelled it -- yes, it still carried a faint scent -- of pizza! It was a slice of pizza, solid as a rock and stone cold. This was no ordinary meteorite. I thought of God feeding the Israelites manna from heaven, but God knows I prefer pepperoni. This was plain, tomato and cheese, on a thin crust." (Becker, Peter W.; "Manna or Meteorite?" Sky and Telescope, 86:7 , August 1993.) Comment. After you stop laughing, recall that many accounts of fish falling from the sky mention that they are frozen. Hummm. Perhaps a whirlwind whipped through a pizzeria! Reference. Over the centuries, many strange objects have been reported to fall from the sky. See GWF in our catalog: Tornados, Dark Days. Description here . From Science Frontiers #90, NOV-DEC 1993 . 1993-2000 William R. Corliss ...
Terms matched: 1 - Score: 13 - 15 May 2017 - URL: /sf090/sf090g10.htm
