Questions tagged [environment]
The natural world, especially pertaining to the interactions of life therein.
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Has this 2018 report of nematodes frozen for 30 to 40,000 years been confirmed? Has Carbon 14 dating confirmed their age?
Gizmodo's 2018 article Russian Scientists Claim to Have Resurrected 40,000-Year-Old Worms Buried in Ice says:
A team of Russian scientists is lining themselves up to be the opening cast of a John ...
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What is the thickness of the biosphere?
In other words, what is the vertical distance between the deepest and highest point on Earth where life is found?
Life has been discovered at the bottom of the Mariana Trench, 13 km below sea level. ...
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What is the effect of pesticides on worm growth?
As a new semester begins, we were asked to propose ideas for investigatory projects. Our idea revolves around the effects of pesticides on non-target organisms. Since frequent use of pesticides may ...
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What would actually be the ecological impact of deep sea mining?
In the last few months I have read a number of articles with increasing alarm concerning the potential of many countries soon engaging in deep sea mining. The idea is that in order to produce numerous ...
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What's the lowest atmospheric pressure a tardigrade can remain active in?
I'm not asking what atmospheric pressures they can survive (we now they can survive the vacuum of space) I'm wondering at what point a deficit of atmospheric pressure would cause them to enter one of ...
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Could trees be engineered to produce rainfall-nucleators?
Scientists are using genetic engineering to make trees produce more terpenes. Is it possible to genetically engineer trees to produce more hygroscopic volatile organic compounds? These trees could be ...
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Is there species of mushrooms that grow in the wild in Mediterranean environment?
I'm looking for species of mushrooms which can grow wild (or with minimal human intervention) in Mediterranean environment (which is characterized by dry summers and mild, wet winters.), specifically ...
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What's the lowest temperature a tardigrade can remain active at?
There's a lot of information floating around the net about how tough they are & what they can survive, like "We now know that some tardigrades can tolerate being frozen to -272.8 °C".
But any ...
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How different is breathing in wildfire smoke in urban areas compared to sitting by a campfire for a night?
The air quality in the Bay Area is currently the worst in the world, due to the devastating Butte County wildfires. I understand smoke inhalation can cause inflammation and respiratory issues, ...
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Firefly mating displays
I live in the northeast US, and really enjoy firefly displays at dusk in the summer. However, when paying attention this summer, I noticed that the fireflies were not displaying every night, but ...
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Is an animal's body height dependent on its environment?
Imagine the follwing situation: a newly born animal is brought into a small room. This room has no windows, but artifical light to imitate the sunlight. Furthermore, this light behaves like the sun, ...
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Birth control hormones in the water? Or not?
This prior question talks about natural estrogen (TL;DR: Months to years):
How quickly do estrogens break down in the environment?
Ref:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/485441a
A lot of media has said, "...
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Is it possible to simulate the effects of high altitudes for plants?
Note- I considered asking this on gardening.stackexchange.com but i believe it is better suited for this site since it deals with more complicated material.
As I understand it, certain plants (...
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How do climate and location affect the Pine Processionary moth?
I have statistics on the occurence of the Pine Processionary moth (Thaumetopoea pityocampa); we have the regions that are located in Algeria, infested area in percent, the defiliation degree (small, ...
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Why do so many pollutants affect the estrogen receptor?
We make loads of chemicals, and release them into the environment for reasons. We have loads of hormone receptors.
There are many instances of human made chemicals affecting the estrogen receptor, ...
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Are there different species that profoundly changed the earth?
In the narration of the first episode of the new Netflix series Life on Our Planet it says that one species (humans) “would go on to change our planet like nothing before.” My immediate thought was ...
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the effect of aquatic photoautotrophs on CO2 concentration in the air
The CO2 concentration in the air is more strongly influenced by the northern hemisphere than the southern hemisphere. A given explanation is that the northern hemisphere contains more terrestrial ...
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Who were the first authors to talk about local adaptation?
I was curious to read about what Darwin had to say about the existance of locally adapted subpopulations. I discovered to my surprise that the expressions and terms "local adaptation", "spatial ...
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Have there been any efforts to release opossums as a biological control against ticks?
There's plenty of examples of people recognizing opossums as a great ally in controlling tick populations (here's one example). However, I can't find any examples of opossums being intentionally ...
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How did hydrophilic plants become established on an isolated island with an arid coastal zone?
I find unconvincing the existing explanation of how several hydrophilic endemic plants became established at St Helena. This is one of the most isolated islands in the world, has an arid semi-desert ...
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Does overfishing in one ocean hurt fishstock in another?
If there's overfishing in the Atlantic or North Sea - will this affect fish stocks in the Indian ocean? Are there papers on this?
The question I'm trying to answer is whether overfishing by developed ...
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How common is it for environmentally occurring bacillus strain to contain some sort of plasmid?
I am designing a method for testing whether two new bacillus isolates, that are ionic silver resistant, store the silver resistance mechanism on a plasmid or on the chromosome of the bacteria.
In my ...
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Persistency of botulinum toxin in environment
There is information about decontamination times here on pages 6 and 7. My specific question is how persistent botulinum toxin is in a natural environment, or alternatively, what is the half life of ...
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Potential evapotranspiration constant for trees in the area of London
I am trying to find the ET0 (Potential evapotranspiration) under the climate conditions of London (UK) and Coimbra (Portugal) for each month. From what I understand these data is available in the FAO'...
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If we were to discover an alien ecosystem that has a D-configuration of proteins, how would it react to our L-sided biology?
I'm concepting a hard-sci-fi story where a scientist discovers microorganisms in our solar system with disastrous results. I was thinking about how any cross-contamination with an alien ecosystem ...
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I am conducting an experiment with oil eating bacteria. However, I am struggling to find a method to check how much oil they cleaned?
I am experimenting to determine the optimum conditions for microbes to break down motor oil. The conditions I am going to test are different pH levels to resemble freshwater pH and saltwater pH. I ...
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What happens if a population of songbirds increases rapidly without predators?
Suppose there’s an area where there’s a rapid increase in the population of songbirds and no presence of predators. What type of detrimental effects, if any, would this have on the environment in ...
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