HAPPY EARTH DAY! How Nature Can Make You Kinder, Happier, and More Creative

backpack mountains nature-compressed

By Jill Suttie | Greater Good Magazine

We are spending more time indoors and online. But recent studies suggest that nature can help our brains and bodies to stay healthy.

I’ve been an avid hiker my whole life. From the time I first strapped on a backpack and headed into the Sierra Nevada Mountains, I was hooked on the experience, loving the way being in nature cleared my mind and helped me to feel more grounded and peaceful.

But, even though I’ve always believed that hiking in nature had many psychological benefits, I’ve never had much science to back me up…until now, that is. Scientists are beginning to find evidence that being in nature has a profound impact on our brains and our behavior, helping us to reduce anxiety, brooding and stress, and increase our attention capacity, creativity, and our ability to connect with other people.

“People have been discussing their profound experiences in nature for the last several 100 years—from Thoreau to John Muir to many other writers,” says researcher David Strayer, of the University of Utah. “Now we are seeing changes in the brain and changes in the body that suggest we are physically and mentally more healthy when we are interacting with nature.”

While he and other scientists may believe nature benefits our well-being, we live in a society where people spend more and more time indoors and online—especially children. Findings on how nature improves our brains bring added legitimacy to the call for preserving natural spaces—both urban and wild—and for spending more time in nature in order to lead healthier, happier, and more creative lives.

Here are some of the ways that science is showing how being in nature affects our brains and bodies.

mountain walk

1. Being in nature decreases stress

It’s clear that hiking—and any physical activity—can reduce stress and anxiety. But, there’s something about being in nature that may augment those impacts.

In one recent experiment conducted in Japan, participants were assigned to walk either in a forest or in an urban center (taking walks of equal length and difficulty) while having their heart rate variability, heart rate, and blood pressure measured. The participants also filled out questionnaires about their moods, stress levels, and other psychological measures.

Results showed that those who walked in forests had significantly lower heart rates and higher heart rate variability (indicating more relaxation and less stress), and reported better moods and less anxiety, than those who walked in urban settings. The researchers concluded that there’s something about being in nature that had a beneficial effect on stress reduction, above and beyond what exercise alone might have produced.

In another study, researchers in Finland found that urban dwellers who strolled for as little as 20 minutes through an urban park or woodland reported significantly more stress relief than those who strolled in a city center.

The reasons for this effect are unclear, but scientists believe that we evolved to be more relaxed in natural spaces. In a now-classic laboratory experiment by Roger Ulrich of Texas A&M University and colleagues, participants who first viewed a stress-inducing movie, and were then exposed to color/sound videotapes depicting natural scenes, showed much quicker, more complete recovery from stress than those who’d been exposed to videos of urban settings.

These studies and others provide evidence that being in natural spaces— or even just looking out of a window onto a natural scene—somehow soothes us and relieves stress.

Lake-tree

Mark at Lake Lamond

2. Nature makes you happier and less brooding

I’ve always found that hiking in nature makes me feel happier, and of course, decreased stress may be a big part of the reason why. But, Gregory Bratman, of Stanford University, has found evidence that nature may impact our mood in other ways, too.

In one 2015 study, he and his colleagues randomly assigned 60 participants to a 50-minute walk in either a natural setting (oak woodlands) or an urban setting (along a four-lane road). Before and after the walk, the participants were assessed on their emotional state and on cognitive measures, such as how well they could perform tasks requiring short-term memory. Results showed that those who walked in nature experienced less anxiety, rumination (focused attention on negative aspects of oneself), and negative affect, as well as more positive emotions, in comparison to the urban walkers. They also improved their performance on memory tasks.

In another study, he and his colleagues extended these findings by zeroing in on how walking in nature affects rumination—which has been associated with the onset of depression and anxiety—while also using fMRI technology to look at brain activity. Participants who took a 90-minute walk in either a natural setting or an urban setting had their brains scanned before and after their walks and were surveyed on self-reported rumination levels (as well as other psychological markers). The researchers controlled for many potential factors that might influence rumination or brain activity—for example, physical exertion levels as measured by heart rates and pulmonary functions.

Even so, participants who walked in a natural setting versus an urban setting reported decreased rumination after the walk, and they showed increased activity in the subgenual prefrontal cortex, an area of the brain whose deactivation is affiliated with depression and anxiety—a finding that suggests nature may have important impacts on mood.

Bratman believes results like these need to reach city planners and others whose policies impact our natural spaces. “Ecosystem services are being incorporated into decision making at all levels of public policy, land use planning, and urban design, and it’s very important to be sure to incorporate empirical findings from psychology into these decisions,” he says.

Courtesy of Grand Canyon National Park

3. Nature relieves attention fatigue and increases creativity.

Today, we live with ubiquitous technology designed to constantly pull for our attention. But many scientists believe our brains were not made for this kind of information bombardment, and that it can lead to mental fatigue, overwhelm, and burnout, requiring “attention restoration” to get back to a normal, healthy state.

Strayer is one of those researchers. He believes that being in nature restores depleted attention circuits, which can then help us be more open to creativity and problem-solving.

“When you use your cell phone to talk, text, shoot photos, or whatever else you can do with your cell phone, you’re tapping the prefrontal cortex and causing reductions in cognitive resources,” he says.

In a 2012 study, he and his colleagues showed that hikers on a four-day backpacking trip could solve significantly more puzzles requiring creativity when compared to a control group of people waiting to take the same hike—in fact, 47 percent more. Although other factors may account for his results—for example, the exercise or the camaraderie of being out together—prior studies have suggested that nature itself may play an important role. One in Psychological Science found that the impact of nature on attention restoration is what accounted for improved scores on cognitive tests for the study participants.

This phenomenon may be due to differences in brain activation when viewing natural scenes versus more built-up scenes—even for those who normally live in an urban environment. In a recent study conducted by Peter Aspinall at Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh, and colleagues, participants who had their brains monitored continuously using mobile electroencephalogram (EEG) while they walked through an urban green space had brain EEG readings indicating lower frustration, engagement, and arousal, and higher meditation levels while in the green area, and higher engagement levels when moving out of the green area. This lower engagement and arousal may be what allows for attention restoration, encouraging a more open, meditative mindset.

It’s this kind of brain activity—sometimes referred to as “the brain default network”—that is tied to creative thinking, says Strayer. He is currently repeating his earlier 2012 study with a new group of hikers and recording their EEG activity and salivary cortisol levels before, during, and after a three-day hike. Early analyses of EEG readings support the theory that hiking in nature seems to rest people’s attention networks and to engage their default networks.

Strayer and colleagues are also specifically looking at the effects of technology by monitoring people’s EEG readings while they walk in an arboretum, either while talking on their cell phone or not. So far, they’ve found that participants with cell phones appear to have EEG readings consistent with attention overload, and can recall only half as many details of the arboretum they just passed through, compared to those who were not on a cell phone.

Though Strayer’s findings are preliminary, they are consistent with other people’s findings on the importance of nature to attention restoration and creativity.

“If you’ve been using your brain to multitask—as most of us do most of the day—and then you set that aside and go on a walk, without all of the gadgets, you’ve let the prefrontal cortex recover,” says Strayer. “And that’s when we see these bursts in creativity, problem-solving, and feelings of well-being.”

William Garrett

4. Nature may help you to be kind and generous

Whenever I go to places like Yosemite or the Big Sur Coast of California, I seem to return to my home life ready to be more kind and generous to those around me—just ask my husband and kids! Now some new studies may shed light on why that is.

In a series of experiments published in 2014, Juyoung Lee, GGSC director Dacher Keltner, and other researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, studied the potential impact of nature on the willingness to be generous, trusting, and helpful toward others, while considering what factors might influence that relationship.

As part of their study, the researchers exposed participants to more or less subjectively beautiful nature scenes (whose beauty levels were rated independently) and then observed how participants behaved playing two economics games—the Dictator Game and the Trust Game—that measure generosity and trust, respectively. After being exposed to the more beautiful nature scenes, participants acted more generously and more trusting in the games than those who saw less beautiful scenes, and the effects appeared to be due to corresponding increases in positive emotion.

In another part of the study, the researchers asked people to fill out a survey about their emotions while sitting at a table where more or less beautiful plants were placed. Afterward, the participants were told that the experiment was over and they could leave, but that if they wanted to they could volunteer to make paper cranes for a relief effort program in Japan. The number of cranes they made (or didn’t make) was used as a measure of their “prosociality” or willingness to help.

Results showed that the presence of more beautiful plants significantly increased the number of cranes made by participants and that this increase was, again, mediated by positive emotion elicited by natural beauty. The researchers concluded that experiencing the beauty of nature increases positive emotion—perhaps by inspiring awe, a feeling akin to wonder, with the sense of being part of something bigger than oneself—which then leads to prosocial behaviors.

Support for this theory comes from an experiment conducted by Paul Piff of the University of California, Irvine, and colleagues, in which participants staring up a grove of very tall trees for as little as one minute experienced measurable increases in awe, and demonstrated more helpful behavior and approached moral dilemmas more ethically, than participants who spent the same amount of time looking up at a high building.

prodigy130

5. Nature makes you “feel more alive”

With all of these benefits to being out in nature, it’s probably no surprise that something about nature makes us feel more alive and vital. Being outdoors gives us energy, makes us happier, helps us to relieve the everyday stresses of our overscheduled lives, opens the door to creativity, and helps us to be kind to others.

No one knows if there is an ideal amount of nature exposure, though Strayer says that longtime backpackers suggest a minimum of three days to really unplug from our everyday lives. Nor can anyone say for sure how nature compares to other forms of stress relief or attention restoration, such as sleep or meditation. Both Strayer and Bratman say we need a lot more careful research to tease out these effects before we come to any definitive conclusions.

Still, the research does suggest there’s something about nature that keeps us psychologically healthy, and that’s good to know…especially since nature is a resource that’s free and that many of us can access by just walking outside our door. Results like these should encourage us as a society to consider more carefully how we preserve our wilderness spaces and our urban parks.

And while the research may not be conclusive, Strayer is optimistic that science will eventually catch up to what people like me have intuited all along—that there’s something about nature that renews us, allowing us to feel better, to think better, and to deepen our understanding of ourselves and others.

“You can’t have centuries of people writing about this and not have something going on,” says Strayer. “If you are constantly on a device or in front of a screen, you’re missing out on something that’s pretty spectacular: the real world.”

Severin Sadjina

Image sources: Peter Morgan, Auyuittuq National Park Tracker Pixel for Entry

About The Author

Jill Suttie, Psy.D., is Greater Good‘s book review editor and a frequent contributor to the magazine.

Read more great articles at Greater Good.

What Causes a Tsunami? An Ocean Scientist Explains the Physics of These Destructive Waves

On Jan. 15, 2022, coastal areas across California were placed under a tsunami warning.
Gado via Getty Images

On Jan. 15, 2022, the Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’apai volcano in Tonga erupted, sending a tsunami racing across the Pacific Ocean in all directions.

As word of the eruption spread, government agencies on surrounding islands and in places as far away as New Zealand, Japan, and even the U.S. West Coast issued tsunami warnings. Only about 12 hours after the initial eruption, tsunami waves a few feet tall hit California shorelines – more than 5,000 miles away from the eruption.

I’m a physical oceanographer who studies waves and turbulent mixing in the ocean. Tsunamis are one of my favorite topics to teach my students because the physics of how they move through oceans is so simple and elegant.

Waves that are a few feet tall hitting a beach in California might not sound like the destructive waves the term calls to mind, nor what you see in footage of tragic tsunamis from the past. But tsunamis are not normal waves, no matter the size. So how are tsunamis different from other ocean waves? What generates them? How do they travel so fast? And why are they so destructive?

A satellite view a large ash cloud and shockwave. — When the Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’apai volcano erupted, it launched ash into the atmosphere, created a powerful shock wave and displaced a huge amount of water, generating a tsunami that raced across the ocean.
Japan Meteorological Agency via WikimediaCommons, CC BY

Deep displacement

Most waves are generated by wind as it blows over the ocean’s surface, transferring energy to and displacing the water. This process creates the waves you see at the beach every day.

Tsunamis are created by an entirely different mechanism. When an underwater earthquake, volcanic eruption or landslide displaces a large amount of water, that energy has to go somewhere – so it generates a series of waves. Unlike wind-driven waves where the energy is confined to the upper layer of the ocean, the energy in a series of tsunami waves extends throughout the entire depth of the ocean. Additionally, a lot more water is displaced than in a wind-driven wave.

Imagine the difference in the waves that are created if you were to blow on the surface of a swimming pool compared to the waves that are created when someone jumps in with a big cannonball dive. The cannonball dive displaces a lot more water than blowing on the surface, so it creates a much bigger set of waves.

Earthquakes can easily move huge amounts of water and cause dangerous tsunamis. Same with large undersea landslides. In the case of the Tonga tsunami, the massive explosion of the volcano displaced the water. Some scientists are speculating that the eruption also caused an undersea landslide that contributed to a large amount of displaced water. Future research will help confirm whether this is true or not.

This simulation from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration shows how tsunami waves propagated away from an earthquake that occurred about 600 miles from Tonga in 2021.

Tsunami waves travel fast

No matter the cause of a tsunami, after the water, is displaced, waves propagate outward in all directions – similarly to when a stone is thrown into a serene pond.

Because the energy in tsunami waves reaches all the way to the bottom of the ocean, the depth of the seafloor is the primary factor that determines how fast they move. Calculating the speed of a tsunami is actually quite simple. You just multiply the depth of the ocean – 13,000 feet (4,000 meters) on average – by gravity and take the square root. Doing this, you get an average speed of about 440 miles per hour (700 kilometers per hour). This is much faster than the speed of typical waves, which can range from about 10 to 30 mph (15 to 50 kph).

This equation is what oceanographers use to estimate when a tsunami will reach faraway shores. The tsunami on Jan. 15 hit Santa Cruz, California, 12 hours and 12 minutes after the initial eruption in Tonga. Santa Cruz is 5,280 miles (8,528 kilometers) from Tonga, which means that the tsunami traveled at 433 mph (697 kph) – nearly identical to the speed estimate calculated using the ocean’s average depth.

A flooded airport runway covered in debris. — Many tsunamis, including the 2011 Tsunami in Japan, move inland and can flood areas far from the coast.
U.S. Air Force photo/Staff Sgt. Samuel Morse via WikimediaCommons

Destruction on land

Tsunamis are rare compared to ubiquitous wind-driven waves, but they are often much more destructive. The 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami killed 225,000 people. More than 20,000 lost their lives in the 2011 Japan tsunami.

What makes tsunamis so much more destructive than normal waves?

An animation showing waves approaching a shoreline. — As waves approach shore, they get pushed upward by the rising seafloor.
Régis Lachaume via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA

In the open ocean, tsunami waves can be small and may even be undetectable by a boat at the surface. But as the tsunami approaches land, the ocean gets progressively shallower and all the wave energy that extended thousands of feet to the bottom of the deep ocean gets compressed. The displaced water needs to go somewhere. The only place to go is up, so the waves get taller and taller as they approach the shore.

When tsunamis get to shore, they often do not crest and break like a typical ocean wave. Instead, they are more like a large wall of water that can inundate land near the coast. It is as if sea level were to suddenly rise by a few feet or more. This can cause flooding and very strong currents that can easily sweep people, cars and buildings away.

Luckily, tsunamis are rare and not nearly as much of a surprise as they once were. There is now an extensive array of bottom pressure sensors, called DART buoys, that can sense a tsunami wave and allow government agencies to send warnings prior to the arrival of the tsunami.

If you live near a coast – especially on the Pacific Ocean where the vast majority of tsunamis occur – be sure to know your tsunami escape route for getting to higher ground, and listen to tsunami warnings if you receive one.

The eruption of the Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’apai volcano severed the main communication cable that connects the people of Tonga to the rest of the world. While the science of tsunamis can be fascinating, these are serious natural disasters. Only a few deaths have been reported so far from Tonga, but many people are missing and the true extent of the damage from the tsunami is still unknown.

By Sally Warner, Assistant Professor of Climate Science, Brandeis University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Yellowstone Rattled by Swarm of More Than 140 Earthquakes in Past Day, Geologists Say

Grand Prismatic Spring In Yellowstone National Park

By Maddie Capron | phys.org

A swarm of more than 141 earthquakes is rattling Yellowstone National Park, geologists said.

The U.S. Geological Survey said Friday that an ongoing earthquake swarm that began at 5:52 p.m. Thursday is centered beneath Yellowstone Lake. There have been 40 earthquakes bigger than a magnitude 2, and two have been above a 3.0 magnitude, USGS said.

In the past day, there have been 10 earthquakes with a 2.5 magnitude or greater, according to USGS. The largest was a 3.1-magnitude quake that shook beneath Yellowstone Lake at 8:12 a.m. Mountain Time.

The earthquake swarm is nothing to worry about, geologists said.

“Earthquake sequences like these are common and account for roughly 50% of the total seismicity in the Yellowstone region,” USGS said on Twitter. “This swarm is similar to one that occurred in about the same place during December 2020.”

Some people, however, still worry earthquakes in Yellowstone are a sign that the “supervolcano” that lies beneath the park will soon erupt, which could have regional and global consequences.

“Such a giant eruption would have regional effects such as falling ash and short-term (years to decades) changes to global climate,” USGS said on its website. “Those parts of the surrounding states of Montana, Idaho, and Wyoming that are closest to Yellowstone would be affected by pyroclastic flows, while other places in the United States would be impacted by falling ash (the amount of ash would decrease with distance from the eruption site).”

The USGS doesn’t think an eruption at Yellowstone is likely for thousands of years. Even with the current swarm, the alert level at the Yellowstone Volcano Observatory is green, which is normal.

Earthquakes in Yellowstone typically happen in swarms, according to the park. Swarms happen in many places where there is volcanic activity and occur for a number of reasons. The most common is when water gets into faults in the Earth’s crust, according to USGS.

A Volcanic Eruption 39 Million Years Ago Buried a Forest in Peru – Now the Petrified Trees are Revealing South America’s Primeval History

With the evidence uncovered by paleontologists, an artist sketched El Bosque Petrificado Piedra Chamana as it might have looked long before humans. Mariah Slovacek/NPS-GIP

In the hills outside the small village of Sexi, Peru, a fossil forest holds secrets about South America’s past millions of years ago.

When we first visited these petrified trees more than 20 years ago, not much was known about their age or how they came to be preserved. We started by dating the rocks and studying the volcanic processes that preserved the fossils. From there, we began to piece together the story of the forest, starting from the day 39 million years ago when a volcano erupted in northern Peru.

Ash rained down on the forest that day, stripping leaves from the trees. Then flows of ashy material moved through, breaking off the trees and carrying them like logs in a river to the area where they were buried and preserved. Millions of years later, after the modern-day Andes rose and carried the fossils with them, the rocks were exposed to the forces of erosion, and the fossil woods and leaves again saw the light of day.

This petrified forest, El Bosque Perificado Piedra Chamana, is the first fossil forest from the South American tropics to be studied in detail. It is helping paleontologists like us to understand the history of the megadiverse forests of the New World tropics and the past climates and environments of South America.

By examining thin slices of petrified wood under microscopes, we were able to map out the mix of trees that thrived here long before humans existed.

An artist’s illustrations of each of the most common variety of trees found, plus cross-sections of the fossil wood as seen under a microscope

Petrified wood under a microscope

To figure out the types of trees that had been growing in the forest before the eruption, we needed thin samples of the petrified wood that could be studied under a microscope. That was not so easy because of the volume and diversity of fossil wood at the site.

We tried to sample the diversity of the woods by relying on features that could be observed with the naked eye or with small hand-held microscopes, things like the arrangement and width of the vessels that carry water upwards within the tree or the presence of tree rings. Then we cut small blocks from the specimens, and from those, we were able to prepare petrographic thin sections in three planes. Each plane gives us a different view of the tree’s anatomy. They allow us to see many detailed features relating to the vessels, the wood fibers, and the living-tissue component of the wood.

Three magnified cross-sections from a tree fossil

Based on these features, we consulted past studies and used information in wood databases to find out what types of trees were present.

Clues in the woods and leaves

Many of the fossil trees have close relatives in the present-day lowland tropical forests of South America.

One has features typical of lianas, which are woody vines. Others appear to have been large canopy trees, including relatives of modern Ceiba. We also found trees well known in South America’s forests like Hura, or sandbox tree; Anacardium, a type of cashew tree; and Ochroma, or balsa. The largest specimen at the Sexi site – a fossil trunk about 2.5 feet (75 cm) in diameter – has features like those of Cynometra, a tree in the legume family.

The discovery of mangrove, Avicennia, was more evidence that the forest was growing at a low elevation near the sea before the Andes rose.

The fossil leaves we found provided another clue to the past. All had smooth edges, rather than the toothed edges or lobes that are more common in the cooler climates of the mid-to-high latitudes, indicating that the forest experienced quite warm conditions. We know the forest was growing at a time in the geologic past when the Earth was much warmer than today.

Although there are many similarities between the petrified forest and present-day Amazonian forests, some of the fossil trees have unusual anatomical features in the South American tropics. One is a species of Dipterocarpaceae, a group that has only one other representative in South America but that is common today in the rainforests of South Asia.

An artist brings the forest to life

Our concept of what this ancient forest was like expanded when we had an opportunity to collaborate with an artist at Florissant Fossil Beds National Monument in Colorado to reconstruct the forest and landscape. Other locations with fossil trees include Florissant, which has giant petrified redwood stumps, and Petrified Forest National Park in Arizona.

Working with the artist, Mariah Slovacek, who is also a paleontologist, made us think critically about many things: What would the forest have looked like? Were the trees evergreen or deciduous? Which were tall and which shorter? What would they have looked like in flower or fruit?

We knew from our investigation that many of the fossil trees were likely to have been growing in a streamside or flooded-forest location, but what about the vegetation growing back from the watercourses on higher ground? Would the hills have been forested or supported drier-adapted vegetation? Mariah researched today’s relatives of the trees we identified for clues to what they might have looked like, such as what shape and color their flowers or fruits might have been.

A large petrified log on open ground with rugged hills in the background

No fossils of mammals, birds, or reptiles from the same time period have been found at the Sexi site, but the ancient forest certainly would have supported a diversity of wildlife. Birds had diversified by that time, and reptiles in the crocodile family had long swum the tropical seas.

Recent paleontological discoveries found that two important groups of animals – monkeys and caviomorph rodents, which include guinea pigs – had arrived on the continent at about the time the fossil forest was growing.

With this information, Mariah was able to populate the ancient forest. The result is a lush, waterside forest of tall flowering trees and woody vines. Birds swoop through the air and crocodile splashes just offshore. You can almost imagine that you were there in the world of 39 million years ago.

This article is republished from The Conversation, a nonprofit news site dedicated to sharing ideas from academic experts. It was written by: Deborah Woodcock, Clark University, and Herb Meyer, National Park Service.

Authors

Deborah Woodcock

Research Scientist, Clark University

Deborah Woodcock has received funding from the American Philosophical Society, the National Science Foundation, and National Geographic.

Herb Meyer

Paleontologist, National Park Service

Herb Meyer has been supported in this project as an employee of the National Park Service, with additional funding provided by The Friends of the Florissant Fossil Beds, the National Science Foundation, and National Geographic.

Couple Discovers Massive, Sprawling ‘Lava Tube’ Cave Underneath Oregon Home

By Elias Marat | The Mind Unleashed

When a realtor warned Suzanne and James Brierley of Bend, Oregon, that their new property had a small cave located somewhere, the couple was hardly concerned.

However, since then the homeowners have discovered that this wasn’t just any cave but was a huge lava tube large enough to stand in, reports KTVZ.

The lava tube takes the form of a small hole in the side of a hill, but once one enters, the lava tube is stunningly huge – with some parts of the cave high enough for the Brierleys to not even be able to reach their ceiling.

Lava tubes are natural formations that are created when flowing lava escapes an underground volcanic vent.

Essentially a cave, these tubes once carried magma from eruptions out to sea before cooling and typically collapsing. However, many old lava tubes remain and are popular with some hikers.

In places like Hawaii’s Big Island, lava tubes are everywhere and are home to species adapted to these unique locations. Native Hawaiians also interred their dead in the caves and used them for spiritual purposes.

However, according to local experts, the sprawling cave underneath the Brierleys’ property – or the huge complex of caves in the area – hasn’t yet been fully explored.

Either way, the couple is now looking to sell the property. Considering that it includes such an alluring find underneath, it’s likely that they’ll have no shortage of prospective buyers.

Speaking to the Water with Pat McCabe

Video Source: UPLIFT

A powerful story about how to tap into the magic and mystery of water from Pat McCabe, a Navajo and Lakota activist.

Chemical Memory in Plants Affects Chances of Offspring Survival

By Science Daily

Researchers at the University of Warwick have uncovered the mechanism that allows plants to pass on their ‘memories’ to offspring, which results in growth and developmental defects.

In order to survive and thrive, plants have the unique capability to sense and remember changes in their environment. This is linked to the chemical modification of DNA and histone proteins, which alters the way in which DNA is packaged within the cell’s nucleus and genes are expressed — a process known as epigenetic regulation.

Usually, this epigenetic information is reset during sexual reproduction to erase any inappropriate ‘memories’ from being passed on to ensure the offspring grows normally. In the paper, ‘A new role for histone demethylases in the maintenance of plant genome integrity’ published in the journal elife, it was found that some plants were unable to forget this information and passed it on to their offspring, thereby affecting their chances of survival.

The researchers identified two proteins in Thale Cress (Arabidopsis), previously known only to control the initiation and timing of flowering, that are also responsible for controlling ‘plant memory’ through the chemical modification (demethylation) of histone proteins.

They showed that plants unable to reset these chemical marks during sexual reproduction, passed on this ‘memory’ to subsequent generations, resulting in defects in growth and development.

Some of these defects were linked to the activation of selfish DNA elements, also known as ‘jumping genes’ or transposons, thus indicating that the erasure of such ‘memory’ is also critical for maintaining the integrity of plant genomes by silencing transposons.

Prof. Jose Gutierrez-Marcos, a senior author on the paper from the School of Life Sciences at the University of Warwick commented:

“Our study into the proteins that regulate plant memory has shown how important it is for chemical marks to be reset during sexual reproduction in order to avoid offspring inheriting inappropriate ‘memories’ that lead to growth and developmental defects associated with genome instability.

“The next step is to work out how to manipulate such ‘memories’ for plant breeding purposes, so that subsequent generations show greater adaptability to allow them to thrive in a changing environment.”

Story Source:

Materials provided by University of Warwick. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.

Journal Reference:

Javier Antunez-Sanchez, Matthew Naish, Juan Sebastian Ramirez-Prado, Sho Ohno, Ying Huang, Alexander Dawson, Korawit Opassathian, Deborah Manza-Mianza, Federico Ariel, Cecile Raynaud, Anjar Wibowo, Josquin Daron, Minako Ueda, David Latrasse, R Keith Slotkin, Detlef Weigel, Moussa Benhamed, Jose Gutierrez-Marcos. A new role for histone demethylases in the maintenance of plant genome integrity. eLife, 2020; 9 DOI: 10.7554/eLife.58533

The Language of Nature: Plants Communicate With Each Other to Send Alerts About Incoming Pests

By Virgilio Marin | Science.News

When they’re under attack, plants send warning signals, says a recent study published in Current Biology. These signals come in the form of airborne natural chemicals, called volatile organic compounds (VOCs), which alert neighboring plants to a threat.

But this is not merely an altruistic act, suggested researchers. It’s mutually beneficial as the receiving plants also emit these chemical defenses back, which compel the invading pest to leave the area. What’s more, genetically different plants emit VOCs that become more similar when plants are exposed to a threat.

“So, they kind of converge on the same language, or the same warning signs, to share the information freely,” said Andre Kessler, a professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at Cornell University.

Plant communication is mutually beneficial

Goldenrod, a genus of several species of flowering plants in the aster family, is one of the plants known to communicate by releasing VOCs when they’re under attack. But it’s still unclear what drives plants to emit the chemicals. The act might not be intentional at all, a byproduct of leaf damage. On the other hand, it could be purposely done as a matter of survival.

There are two prominent hypotheses for the latter. The kin selection hypothesis states that the emitting plant indirectly benefits from releasing VOCs as genetically related plants in the vicinity have a higher chance of survival. This boosts the reproductive success of its kind. Meanwhile, the mutual benefit hypothesis posits that the emitting plant directly benefits from the signaling as the preemptive chemical defenses launched by all its neighbors, whether of close kin or not, result in a hostile environment that drives the invading pest away.

The researchers wanted to test these hypotheses, and to do so, they experimented on one goldenrod species, Solidago altissima. They grew two sets of plants, one of which descended from goldenrods that were routinely sprayed with insecticides. Then, the plants were exposed to beetles.

Results seemed to support the two hypotheses. The VOCs emitted by the insecticide group induced responses only from genetically identical goldenrods – consistent with the kin selection hypothesis. On the other hand, the VOCs emitted by goldenrods whose predecessors were not sprayed with insecticide induced responses from all the other goldenrod plants near them, including plants that weren’t genetically identical to them – consistent with the mutual benefit hypothesis.

Upon further analysis, the researchers found that the receiving plants gave off the same chemical signals regardless of whether they were genetically identical to the emitter plant or not. In turn, higher amounts of VOCs could benefit plants under attack by providing either a stronger deterrent against an invading insect or a stronger attraction for its natural enemies.

“The exchange of information becomes independent of how closely related the plant is to its neighbor,” said Kessler. He added that the goldenrods went through chemical and metabolic changes in a bid to repel attackers. “It’s very much like our immune system: though plants don’t have antibodies as we have, they can fight back with pretty nasty chemistry.”

However, this “open-channel communication” seemed to occur only among the plants with a history of herbivory – the insecticide group did not display such signal convergence. Instead, they kept a private channel among their closest kin. For this reason, the researchers said that plant-to-plant communication likely evolved out of the threat posed by insect herbivory. (Related: Plants saving plants: A mixture of plant extracts and emulsifiers found to suppress disease-causing fungus.)

The findings of the study could have practical applications in agriculture. According to Kessler, plant-to-plant interaction has been explored before to find new methods of crop protection. Learning how to use VOCs effectively could help turn on the natural defenses of plants and crops.

Sources include:

ScienceDaily.com

TheScientist.com

Cell.com

A Gift For All of Us: a Falcon In the Garden

A Magical Moment

To see something extraordinary three times is a blessing, and a message, and a gift. An extraordinary thing happened the other day that was such a good sign and omen, that I know you’ll just love it.

When I looked out the front window, I saw a giant falcon fly into our Gravenstein apple tree, and perch on the lowest branch, only a few feet off the ground. This bird looked like a peregrine falcon to me, with distinctive striped/dappled patterns on its golden chest and on both sides, giant yellow-orange talons (that seemed as big as its head) and a beautiful, curved beak. It was watching activity at our neighbor’s house across the street, where tree trimmers had been clearing branches away from overhead electrical lines. There was a pile of branches in front of our neighbor’s driveway–and a mother and her young son had stopped to look at all the branches. The falcon watched all this with great interest, settling into our apple tree where it remained for about 10 minutes or so.

The falcon’s head swiveled around to see me watching it–even though I was inside the house, about ten feet away from the window. I was amazed to see how alert and aware this bird was, and how keen its vision must be. After the falcon had rested in our apple tree for about ten minutes, it flew directly toward me (!!!) and then just up above me, to the right, to sit atop the roof over our front porch! It saw me watching it from a respectful distance inside the house. I could tell it was watching my every move, since any time I made even the slightest movement, the falcon swiveled its head to stare at me intently. The falcon also kept a close eye on our front yard, no doubt aware that we have a gopher who burrows there regularly.

After many minutes of sitting on the porch roof, the falcon flew off toward our backyard. I went to look out the kitchen window, and a few minutes later, the falcon flew right toward me a second time, (!!!) so I got a perfect view of its beautiful golden breast and outstretched wings–and then it flew up over the roof of our house. I returned to the living room, to see if I could spot it in the front yard, but saw no sign of it. I then returned to the kitchen a few minutes later, when I saw the falcon fly directly toward me a third time (!!!)–looking at me as it approached the house, and then landed atop our front porch roof once more.

This falcon was so gorgeous in full flight, and so regal when keeping watch on the yard, but the it’s most remarkable quality was how much love I could palpably feel from being in the presence of this beautiful bird. I was especially overwhelmed with how much love it had shown me by flying directly toward me, while looking me in the eye, THREE times that afternoon. I see a lot of birds in our garden, including crows, bluejays, house finches, and hummingbirds–and in the entire 30 plus years I’ve lived here, yesterday was the first time a bird ever flew directly toward me while looking right at me the whole time. Only one other bird has flown up to a window and peered in at me on the other side, and that was a hummingbird several years ago, who seemed to be saying “Thank you!” to me, for having refilled the nectar in the hummingbird feeder. This summer I’ve also had a few hummingbirds hover close to me, and sometimes fly into a spray of water when I’m watering the yard. All of those moments are memorable, indeed, but this felt truly exceptional.

This bird looked like a young peregrine falcon. Peregrine falcons have been my favorite bird ever since I was a little girl, and saw one in a children’s book. I’d been watching three baby peregrine falcons that hatched this Spring up at the top of UC Berkeley’s campanile tower, where a Cal falcons camera monitor showed livestream video from their nesting box from the time their mother sat on the eggs, to the time the young peregrine’s flight feathers came in, and up until their very first practice flights.

Blessing, Message, and Gift

There was so much love in this bird’s visit that I spent quite a bit of time just soaking it in. This falcon had a truly majestic presence, and in addition to that, it seemed especially attuned with me–the way it flew directly toward me while clearly seeing me (inside my house) three times in a row. I am aware that to see something extraordinary three times is a blessing, and a message, and a gift.

What I’d been doing in the days before the peregrine’s visit was honoring the memory of my dear beloved deceased friend and mentor, the American linguist, Dan “Moonhawk” Alford. Moonhawk often described himself as hanging out

“at the lonely intersection of language, physics, Native America and consciousness,”

and the few precious hours I spent hanging out with him at my first Language of Spirit conference in New Mexico was life-changing for me. Moonhawk has a way of illuminating important ideas, such as how language shapes consciousness, and he has a genius for inspiring people to think differently. Moonhawk pointed out how it might be, for example, that in Nature, “A does not always equal A,” because

“you can never step into the same river twice.”

Such a seemingly simple point gets to the heart of how our western science and logic was constructed with a mechanistic bias, while the natural world is ever-changing, generous, alive and profound.

Another mind-expanding point that Moonhawk made is that our English language is noun-based, which affects our view of the cosmos. Moonhawk pointed out that he’s spent time with Native Americans who could talk for hours, or even for an entire day, without once uttering a single noun. Such a thing is mind-blowing to most westerners, whose thoughts shape the way they think to an extraordinary degree. Even the idea of God is a verb to Native Americans, and this mental conceptualization of reality is so different from typical western reductionist viewpoints, yet such a perfect match for quantum physicists, such as David Bohm, who’d met with Moonhawk and Leroy Little Bear at a special dialogue hosted by the Fetzer Institute in Michigan in 1992.

I’d been reading Moonhawk’s articles on his website, after having watched a DVD documentary film honoring him and physicist David Bohm and Blackfoot indian Leroy Little Bear, called “The Language of Spirituality” this weekend. I’d been talking with Moonhawk in my heart for the past several days–hearing his jokes, witticisms, and responses in my heart–so it feels right that Moonhawk’s spirit is so with me. And indeed the peregrine falcon’s visit was a blessing, a message, and a gift.

As always, I encourage us all to keep asking my favorite question, “How good can it get?”

I invite you to watch the companion video to this blog post at:

___________________________

Cynthia Sue Larson is the best-selling author of six books, including Quantum Jumps. Cynthia has a degree in physics from UC Berkeley, an MBA degree, a Doctor of Divinity, and a second degree black belt in Kuk Sool Won. Cynthia is the founder of RealityShifters, and is president of the International Mandela Effect Conference. Cynthia hosts “Living the Quantum Dream” on the DreamVisions7 radio network, and has been featured in numerous shows including Gaia, the History Channel, Coast to Coast AM, One World with Deepak Chopra, and BBC. Cynthia reminds us to ask in every situation, “How good can it get?” Subscribe to her free monthly ezine at:

http://www.RealityShifters.com

RealityShifters®

Collecting Clean Water From Air, Inspired By Desert Life

New studies show options for gathering water from fog, condensation

By Laura Arenschield, Ohio State University

Humans can get by in the most basic of shelters, can scratch together a meal from the most humble of ingredients. But we can’t survive without clean water. And in places where water is scarce—the world’s deserts, for example—getting water to people requires feats of engineering and irrigation that can be cumbersome and expensive.

A pair of new studies from researchers at Ohio State University offers a possible solution, inspired by nature.

“We thought: ‘How can we gather water from the ambient air around us?’” said Bharat Bhushan, Ohio Eminent Scholar and Howard D. Winbigler Professor of mechanical engineering at Ohio State. “And so, we looked to the things in nature that already do that: the cactus, the beetle, desert grasses.”

Their findings were published Dec. 24 in the journal Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society. The works were co-authored with Ohio State Ph.D. student Dev Gurera and with Ohio State engineering researcher Dong Song.

Bhushan’s work focuses on finding nature-inspired solutions to societal problems. In this case, his research team looked to the desert to find a life that survives despite limited access to water.

The cactus, beetle and desert grasses all collect water condensed from nighttime fog, gathering droplets from the air and filtering them to roots or reservoirs, providing enough hydration to survive.

Drops of water collect on wax-free, water-repellant bumps on a beetle’s back, then slide toward the beetle’s mouth on the flat surface between the bumps. Desert grasses collect water at their tips, then channel the water toward their root systems via channels in each blade. A cactus collects water on its barbed tips before guiding droplets down conical spines to the base of the plant.

Bhushan’s team studied each of these living things and realized they could build a similar—albeit larger—system to allow humans to pull water from nighttime fog or condensation.

They started studying the ways by which different surfaces might collect water, and which surfaces might be the most efficient. Using 3D printers, they built surfaces with bumps and barbs, then created enclosed, foggy environments using a commercial humidifier to see which system gathered the most water.

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Incredible, Surprising Photos of Tribe Living in Jungle in Total Isolation

By Alexa Erickson | Collective Evolution

It’s so easy to get caught up in what we that we often forget there are so many different types of realities happening throughout the world, some of which we could have never fathomed to be true.

While many of us buzz around in our cars, on our phones, in and out of offices, and relax at restaurants, in our homes in cul-de-sacs or nestled among a big city, hitting the gym, trendy outfits, or enjoying our eco-friendly flair, there are parts of the world where such modern life is completely non-existent — to the point where it feels more surreal, more like a movie set than anything else.

But every now and then, we are reminded that life exists outside of our bubble. Aerial photographs of an isolated tribe in the Brazilian rainforest are one of the most recent examples, as they expose a look at a Neolithic way of life that has all but vanished from Earth’s existence.

Brazilian photographer Ricardo Stuckert took high-resolution images, which show a colorful yet discreet indigenous community living in total isolation within the Amazon jungle.

“I felt like I was a painter in the last century,” Stuckert said to National Geographic of his reaction to spotting the natives. “To think that in the 21st century, there are still people who have no contact with civilization, living as their ancestors did 20,000 years ago—it’s a powerful emotion.”

The photos, which were taken near Brazil’s border with Peru, are revolutionary in the sense that, because they are so close-up, they reveal specific information about the Indians that had largely gone unnoticed by experts before, like the emphasis on body paint and their haircuts.

“We thought they all cut their hair in the same way,” noted José Carlos Meirelles, an expert on Brazil’s indigenous tribes. “Not true. You can see they have many different styles. Some look very punk.”

The tribe became the subject of global conversation back in 2008, when agents from Brazil’s indigenous affairs agency, Fundação Nacional do Índio (FUNAI) published images of the tribesmen covered in red body paint shooting arrows at their hovering airplane. Since then, the tribe has reportedly moved several times. According to Meirelles, they move locations every four years.

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