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Botanist Stefano Mancuso: “You can anesthetize all plants. It’s extremely exciting’ | plants

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BBorn in Calabria in 1965, Stefano Mancuso is a pioneer in the plant neuroscience movement that seeks to understand “how plants perceive their circumstances and respond in a complex manner to environmental influences.” Michael Pollan New Yorker described him as “a poet-philosopher of the movement determined to give plants the recognition they deserve.” Mancuso teaches at the University of Florence, his alma mater, where he directs the International Plant Neurobiology Laboratory. He has written five bestselling books on plants.

What underlies your love for plants?
I started getting interested in plants at university. One of my tasks while working on my doctoral dissertation was to understand how a root growing in the soil can bypass an obstacle. My idea was to film this movement, but I saw something different: the root changed direction long before it touched the obstacle. He was able to sense the obstacle and find a more comfortable direction. It was my first moment of insight when I began to imagine that plants are intelligent organisms.

You call your field plant neuroscience. This is a provocation?
At first this was not true at all, I began to think that almost all the statements about the brain that I heard were true for plants. A neuron is not a miracle cell, it is a normal cell capable of producing an electrical signal. In plants, almost every cell is capable of doing this. The main difference between animals and plants, in my opinion, is that animals concentrate certain functions inside their organs. As for plants, they spread everything throughout the body, including the intellect. So in the beginning it was not a provocation, but there was a strong resistance among my colleagues to the use of such terminology, and so after that it became a provocation.

What did you hope to achieve with your A new book, tree stories?
What I would like to popularize is, firstly, the many abilities of plants that we usually cannot feel and understand, because they are very different from us. Secondly, when talking about life on this planet, not talking about plants, which make up 87% of life, is nonsense.

You passionately advocate filling cities with trees. Why is it so important?
We produce 75% of our CO₂ in cities, and the best way to remove that CO₂ is to use trees. The closer a tree is to a source of carbon emissions, the better they absorb it. According to our research, we could plant about 200 billion trees in our urban areas. To do this, we really need to imagine a new type of city, completely covered with plants, without any border between nature and the city.

You have a fascinating chapter on a stump that has been supported by neighboring trees for decades. What can people learn from tree communities?
Plants cooperate so incredibly with each other because cooperation is the most efficient way to ensure the survival of species. Misunderstanding the power of community is one of [humanity’s] basic mistakes. At the beginning of the last century, there was a very smart evolutionary biologist, Peter Kropotkin, who said that when there are fewer resources and the environment changes, then cooperation is much more effective. [than competition]. This is an important teaching for us today because we are entering a period of resource depletion and the environment is changing due to global warming.

To what extent can plants communicate with each other? If you have a spectrum with rocks on one end and people on the other, where do the plants sit?
I would say very close to the person. Communication means that you can convey a message and there is something that can receive it, and in this sense, plants are great communicators. If you cannot move, if you are rooted, it is extremely important for you to communicate a lot. We experienced this during self-isolation when we were stuck at home and the internet traffic skyrocketed. Plants are required to communicate a lot, and they use different systems. The most important is the volatiles or chemicals that are emitted into the atmosphere and transferred to other plants. It is an extremely complex form of communication, a kind of vocabulary. Every single molecule means something, and they mix very different molecules together to send a specific message.

The idea that plants are sentient is debatable enough, but you’ve taken it one step further by arguing that plants are conscious to some degree…
Talking about consciousness is incredibly difficult, first of all, because we don’t really know what consciousness is, even in our case. But there is a way to talk about it as a real biological feature: consciousness is something that we all have, except when we are very fast asleep or under anesthesia. My approach to studying consciousness in plants was similar. I started by testing to see if they were sensitive to anesthetics and found that it was possible to anesthetize all plants using the same anesthetics that work on humans. It’s extremely exciting. We thought consciousness was connected to the brain, but I think both consciousness and intelligence are more embodied and connected to the whole body.

So you can put the plan to sleep?
We’re working to see if it’s okay to say so. This is an incredibly difficult task, but we think that before the end of this year we will be able to demonstrate it.

As we learn more about the sophistication and sensitivity of plants, should we think twice before eating them?
This is an interesting question. Many vegans have written to me asking about this. Firstly, I think it’s ethical to eat plants because we are animals, and as animals we can only survive by eating other living organisms – this is a law that we cannot break. Secondly, it is much more ethical to eat a plant than, for example, beef, because to produce a kilogram of beef, you need to kill a ton of plants, so it is much better to eat a kilogram of plants directly. The third point is that it is very difficult for us to imagine ourselves as plants, because for us to be eaten is an ancestral nightmare, while plants evolved to be eaten, this is part of the cycle. The fruit is an organ designed to be eaten by animals.

So fruit is probably the most ethical thing you can eat, even more than, say, cabbage?
Perhaps fruit is the most ethical, but after that you need to defecate on the ground because otherwise you break the cycle.

Tree Stories: How Trees Plant Our World and Link Our Lives published April 20 by Profile Books (£14.99). For support guardians another Observer order a copy at www.guardianbookshop.com. Shipping charges may apply

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EPA workers strike over wages

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“People are choosing not to be part of these changes, the people who are doing it are just doing it to supplement their income and make ends meet,” said Graham Macro, an installation worker at the Environmental Protection Agency and a union representative for Prospect. will also amaze next month.

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10 weird subreddits you need to see

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Joe Fedeva / How to become a geek

Reddit is a huge community of people on thousands of different forums called “subreddits”. Anyone can create their own subreddit, which has led to the formation of some rather…weird groups. We’ve put together ten entertaining subreddits for you to enjoy.

11Foot8

11Foot8 is a subreddit inspired by the railway trestle bridge in Durham, North Carolina. The bridge, as you would expect, has a clearance of 11 feet 8 inches. There are many warning signs, but many trucks still try to pass under it, causing a big disaster. The subreddit also has photos from other low bridges.

R/11ft8

Cats on glass

Cats on glass

The title of this subreddit speaks for itself. It is dedicated to pictures of cats on glass, especially how silly and cute they look from below. This is a fun subreddit for animal lovers.

r/katsonglass

TVs that are too high

TVs that are too high

People can be very picky about how TVs are mounted. You don’t want her to be so tall that you crane your neck to look up. You don’t believe me? There is a whole subreddit dedicated to photos of TVs that are set too high.

p/TVTooHigh

Shower Orange

Shower Orange

Did you know that there are no rules against eating or drinking in the shower? Some foods are better to eat than others, and oranges seem to be at the top of the list, especially if the oranges are was chilled. This subreddit is for people who just love eating oranges in the shower.

r/ShowerOrange

Bread attached to trees

Bread attached to trees

Another self-evident subreddit is literally pictures of bread stapled to trees. Subreddit rules are very clear. It must be bread, it must be food, and it must be wood. And no more than three pieces per tree. Let’s not go crazy guys.

r/BreatStapletoTres

Cats in hats

Cats in hats

You will never guess what this subreddit is about! Dogs in shirts – okay, yes, these are cats in different hats. Sometimes it’s a real hat, sometimes a leaf from a tree or a cardboard box. You never know what you’ll see (but it will be the cat in the hat).

p/CatsWithHats

Owls with cat heads

Owls with cat heads

If you like good Photoshop, you’ll love this subreddit. I had no idea cat heads matched owl bodies so well until I found this subreddit, but it does work, and surprisingly not as creepy as one might expect. Who knew!

p/OwlsWithCatHeads

Beans in things

Beans in things

If you love baked beans, I have a subreddit for you. Beans In Things is dedicated to people who put canned baked beans in things that canned baked beans won’t do. Socks, popsicles, tarts, chocolate bunnies, whatever.

p/BeansInThings

Birds are not real

Birds are not real

Conspiracy theories can be fun to poke fun at, especially the really ridiculous ones. “Birds Are Not Real” is a satirical conspiracy theory claiming that birds are actually drones controlled by the government. This is a fun subreddit that shows how people find “evidence” to support conspiracy theories.

p/BirdsArentReal

Apple seed tea

Apple seed tea

Do you know the classic phrase people say when food is delicious? “Bone Apple Tea!” At least that’s how it might sound. This is a subreddit dedicated to misheard or misspelled words and phrases that make up funny new phrases.

r/BoneAppleTea


With so much frustrating stuff on the internet, it’s great to find communities on Reddit that form around silly, harmless entertainment. Eating an orange in the shower and texting your friends about it is a good time. But when you’re ready to clean up your heinous bean adventures, know how to delete your Reddit history.

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Cod larvae may enjoy the sound of wind turbines

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This article was originally posted on Hakai magazine, online publication about science and society in coastal ecosystems. Read more stories like this at hakaimagazine.com.

Offshore wind is one of the fastest growing sources of renewable energy, and with its expansion, more attention is being paid to its potential side effects. Alessandro Cresci, a biologist at the Marine Research Institute in Norway, and his team showed that cod larvae are attracted to one of the low-frequency sounds made by wind turbines. a fish that drifts too close.

Kreshi and his colleagues made their discovery during experiments conducted in the deep water of a fjord near the Östevoll research station in Norway. The team placed 89 cod larvae in floating transparent mesh chambers that allowed them to drift naturally, then filmed them exposing half of the fish during a 15-minute test to an underwater sound projector tuned to 100 Hz to simulate a deep hum. with the help of windmills.

Left to their own devices, all cod larvae oriented northwest. Like the closely related haddockCod have an innate sense of direction that helps them swim in the ocean. When the scientists played back the low-frequency sound, the fry still preferred the northwest, but it was weak. Instead, the larvae preferred to point their body in the direction of the sound. Kreshi thinks the larvae may be attracted to 100Hz sound waves because that low frequency is part of the symphony of sounds that are sometimes part of the background noise along coastlines or at the bottom of the ocean where fish would like to settle.

The time-lapse video shows how the bot code orients itself in the direction of a low 100 Hz sound that mimics one of the frequencies emitted by offshore wind turbines. Video courtesy of Alessandro Cresci

As sound waves propagate through water, they compress and expand water molecules along the way. Fish can determine where sound is coming from by detecting changes in the movement of water particles. “In the water,” Kreshi says, “fish are connected to their environment, so all the vibrations of the water molecules are transmitted to the body.”

Like other creatures on land and in the sea, fish use sound to communicate, avoid predators, find prey, and understand the world around them. Sound also helps many sea creatures find the best place to live. In previous studies, scientists have shown that by playing the sounds of a thriving reef next to a degraded reef, they may lead to more fish settling in the area. For many species where they settle as larvae, they tend to be found as adults.

Even if fish larvae are attracted en masse to offshore wind farms, what happens next remains to be seen.

Since fishermen generally cannot work safely near the turbines, offshore wind farms can become pseudo-protected areas where fish populations can increase. But Ella Kim, a PhD student at UC San Diego’s Scripps Institution of Oceanography who studies fish acoustics and was not involved in the study, says things could go the other way.

Kim suggests that even if fish larvae eventually coalesce inside offshore wind farms, the noise from the turbines and the increase in vessel traffic to service the equipment could drown out fish communication. “Once these larvae get there,” says Kim, “they will have such poor hearing that they won’t even be able to hear each other and reproduce?”

Aaron Rice, a bioacousticist at Cornell University in New York who was not involved in the study, says the study is useful because it shows that fish larvae not only can hear sound, but respond to it by orienting themselves to it. However, Rice adds that the underwater noise from real wind turbines is far more complex than the lone 100-Hz sound tested in the study. He says caution should be exercised in reading the results too closely.

In addition to noise pollution, many marine species are also at risk from overfishing, rising ocean temperatures, and other factors. When trying to decide whether offshore wind power is a net benefit or a detriment to marine life, it’s important to keep these other elements in mind, Rice said.

“The more we have an understanding of how offshore wind [power] affects the ocean,” he says, “the better we can respond to changing needs and minimize the impact.”

This article first appeared in Hakai magazine and is published here with permission.

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