Hypothesis / Questions: My question is, “How do Venus flytraps catch their food?” My hypothesis was, “I thought the Venus flytraps grabbed their food and swallowed it.”

Materials: Venus-flytrap, bug

Procedure: First I purchased a Venus flytrap. Then I caught a bug. Last I watched the Venus flytrap eat the bug.

Results/Conclusion: I watched the Venus flytrap eat the bug. The Venus flytrap produced a sweet-smelling nectar that attracted the bug to its mouth and then if the bug hit two of the trigger hairs on the mouth, it closed and then digestive fluids dissolved the bug. A few weeks later it opened and the bug’s shell came out. I was wrong about the plant’s grabbing their victims.

About half of our DNA does not belong to us altogether. It is especially made virus called “endogenous retroviruses” squatters, who have infiltrated the heart of our cells and we pass on from generation to generation, sometimes from the age of dinosaurs. Fortunately, they are still asleep. Researchers from EPFL have developed in days the mechanism of inhibiting the host surprising. Published in Nature, this discovery tells us more about the complex process of natural selection. More pragmatically, the work of Lausanne could also pave the way for new therapies against the HIV virus or herpes.

Before being endogenous, these viruses were external aggressors, or exogenous, such as HIV, which colonizes the blood cells. However, endogenous retroviruses have targeted germ cells – the precursors of sperm and ova. Therefore, affected individuals have transmitted the intruders to their offspring.

A Boost for the evolution of species

These endogenous retroviruses are not only enemies. They are also great engines of evolution. For these unwanted visitors tend to mutate the DNA of their host. “They are true architects of the genome, explains Didier Trono, Director of Research They can enable, disable or modulate genes. “Indeed, the great waves of onset of endogenous retroviruses coincide with moments when, strangely, the evolution seems to put a boost. “In our genome, we find traces of the last two main waves. The first took place there 100 million years for the development of mammals, seconds it are about fifty million years, appearing just before the first anthropoid primates. ”

In ancient pandemics, some individuals were able to dive into the dormant retrovirus involved. They survived as likely to slaughter. Their descendants, including ourselves, has inherited this ability. To do this, our cells produce inhibitory proteins. These are capable of recognizing viral sequences in our own DNA, and neutralized. The Lausanne researchers have discovered a gene family comprising no fewer than 400 members is involved in this monitoring process.

In a mouse embryo that scientists from EPFL have uncovered the mechanism. Within five or six days of the embryo, a host of auxiliary proteins are responsible for recognizing the many viral sequences in our DNA. A master protein called KAP1, orchestra their sleep. “If we withdraw KAP1 at that time, other proteins do not work,” says Didier Trono. Endogenous retroviruses, old for some hundreds of millions of years, will awaken from their long sleep inside the cell. They induce numerous changes, “just as fast in HIV infection”, compares the researcher. The embryo dies.

This discovery could provide new therapeutic approaches, especially against AIDS. The Lausanne researchers are already in the process of determining whether the KAP1 protein is also involved in the ability of HIV to sleep temporarily in our cells, and thus avoid the treatment. “As in the case of endogenous retroviruses, this may be our own cells that inhibit the virus to defend the body. This could be the same process, but imperfect. We could then imagine waking up the sleeping virus during therapy, to remove them too. “

INTRODUCTION:
I did this project to see if different types of music affects the amount of cricket chirps in a six minute time period

HYPOTHESIS:
If I play sharp staccato type music then the crickets will chirp more.

MATERIALS:
crickets, shoe box, Fuji apples, grass, www.blackcricket.com, INSECTS, stopwatch, and a sponge

PROCEDURE:
First, I took the crickets and timed them for periods of six minutes. After, doing that for 11 times I averaged the times of the chirps. Then, I took the best time and that was the anwser to my problem

RESULTS/CONCLUSION:
The chirps increased when I played sharp staccato type music. My hypothesis was correct

The booklet on green biotechnology in the DFG covers many elements of the broad spectrum of applications in plant genetics: plant breeding, the potential of this technique for stress tolerance of plants grown from or to their needs limited to pesticides, improved food quality, preparation of therapeutic substances for the production of drugs, cultivation of biofuels, etc.. The environmental risks of genetically modified organisms and their possible impacts on consumer health are also addressed in the document published by the DFG. The last chapter of the booklet is dedicated to economic, social, political and legal green biotechnologies.

The document pronounces strongly in favor of the cultivation of genetically modified organisms. Its authors lament the “negative” position qu’adoptent Germany and the EU towards this practice, agricultural, is a vision that they believe a handicap for global competitiveness and in the future.

“The idea that plants absorb the volatile compounds is not so surprising that the poverty of the air quality that we measured in the homes’ surprise Stanley Kays. Indoor air concentrates large amounts of Volatile Organic Compounds (VOCs), sometimes at doses 100 times higher than outdoor air. These VOCs such as benzene, toluene, octane, alpha-pinene and TCE, tested on ornamentals, from glues, carpets, paints or solvents that line our interiors.



These pollutants are a danger to health, they are responsible, inter alia, asthma, cancer, reproductive and neurological disorders. They will cause more than 1.6 million deaths per year according to a study by the World Health Organization (2002).



Breathe 5 fruits and vegetables per day?


Phytoremediation is to say, the pollution by plants, ornamental here, is a promising way to significantly improve the quality of indoor air. Hence the recent enthusiasm for virtues remediation plants, which will also be an upcoming issue on Futura-Sciences.



The mechanisms that phytoremediation is still a mystery to solve. “We also want to determine the species and number of plants necessary to neutralize the problem of contaminants in homes and offices,” adds Stanley Kays, who works in the field of phytoremediation with researchers at Konkuk University in Seoul and the National Institute of Horticultural Research Suwon, Korea.



Beautiful and useful, these plants’ super Ornamental they become ubiquitous in our homes and offices? Will they ever mandatory for reasons of public health?

While many botanists, including Linnaeus, refused the idea that plants can eat animals, Darwin’s book on insectivorous plants changed that opinion. In fact, the behavior of carnivorous plants is much more widespread than thought, as explained by Mark Chase. “Although a man-eating tree is fiction, many common plants and crops could be cryptic carnivores [hidden], at least by absorbing through their roots elements from the animals they catch. We could be surrounded by a much larger number of plants deadly than you think. ”



What is to be carnivorous?


Potatoes, for example, seem very harmless even if they are in fact toxic (except for their tubers, thankfully), like many other species of the family Solanaceae. Toxic and carnivores.

These plants were indeed sticky hairs that catch insects. These animals eventually die of hunger or exhaustion, their bodies fall to the ground and decompose and fertilize the soil near plant roots. It is far from the plant-eating the little shop of horrors, but the potatoes were still killed animals and have benefited. Carnivore, because it has killed or scavenger because it was nourished by the decomposition of a corpse?



It’s a matter of nuances, from meat eaters, such as sundews up planters such as petunias or potatoes (Solanum tuberosum) is a carnivorous plant from the time it causes the death of an animal and benefits. This approach behavior of carnivorous plants could then be applied to many species, including your petunias …

This technique is simple and economical to raise the earth shaped mound at the base of plants. Practiced mainly on roses, some perennials and vegetables fragile stems or bulbs (asparagus, artichokes, leeks, chard, etc..) Mounding can be completed with a layer of dead leaves and compost.



Install a plastic tunnel


Plastic tunnels sold in garden centers are used to the boards of winter vegetables and seedlings of vegetable (corn salad, lettuce, sorrel, leeks, etc..). They must be removed to allow for watering.



Mulch the plants fragile


Straw, bark, branches and leaves are a very good protection for the roots of the plants most enthusiastic. Mulches are available at the base and must be aerated regularly after rain to avoid the risk of decay.



The clay pot and bell


Returned, a clay pot can effectively protect the stem of small plants that lose their leaves in winter. The drainage hole is then used to vent. The pot should be removed from the first leaves appear. For evergreen plants, use a transparent bell with an air hole.



Digging bulbs planted


The bulbous or tuberous plants with poor resistance to moisture, such as dahlias and begonias, can be dug up for the winter warm. When the leaves have disappeared after the first frost, stumps are uprooted and placed in crates inside a room or a garage, protected from freezing.



All pots shelter!


In a pot, the roots suffer more from cold in the ground. On the eve of the first frost, the pots must take direction from a shelter. Plants that retain their leaves in winter are placed in a bright area and a conservatory, a greenhouse, or indoors near a window. The large pots that can not be moved will be covered with several layers of fleece or plastic sheeting.

Color plays an essential role in the relations of plants with their environment. That is their main livelihood, through their photosynthetic pigments, and a means of communicating with wildlife, to attract (pollination, seed dispersal) or to reject it, warning of its toxicity or its unpalatable.

It was suggested that the color could also act as camouflage to conceal herbivores, but no experimental evidence had supported the idea. Until now.

Live happy, live hidden


The team of Matthew Klooster has studied the impact of bracts on seed Monotropsis odorata. The bracts of this species of Monotropa dry out and take the color and appearance of the leaves of the litter where the plant grows. A study of reflectance, in other words the ability of a surface to reflect incident light, first showed that the bracts are perfectly blended in the visual spectrum, with the leaf litter, while flowers distinctly off from it.
Secondly, the study of predation by herbivores and fruit production between a control group, which has retained its bracts, and one which all the bracts had been removed showed significant differences. Without bracts, seed Monotropsis odorata has a rate of predation by herbivores than 20 to 27% and fruit production down 7 to 20% average observed in the control group.



The proof is done using a mechanism for disguising a plant to avoid predation. But if the bracts conceal Monotropsis odorata animals, how this plant attracts Does pollinators? Researchers believe it attracts by its smell, it was strong as its name indicates and as suggested by the drones who attended experience.

“Now that we have identified a new mechanism that triggers cell immune response to herpes simplex virus type 1, researchers have moved closer to creating new treatments that can trigger the defense against this virus and others, says it. Even if they might not completely eradicate the herpes simplex virus type 1 among those already infected, new therapies to at least maintain it in its dormant state, “said Michel Desjardins, director of research and professor in Department of Pathology and Cell Biology.