The genetic 'wiring' that helps a seed to decide on the perfect time to germinate has been revealed by scientists for the first time.

Plant biologists at The University of Nottingham have also discovered that the same mechanism that controls germination is responsible for another important decision in the life cycle of plants — when to start flowering.

Their discovery throws light on the genetic mechanisms that plants use to detect and respond to vital environmental cues and could be a significant step towards the development of new crop species that are resistant to climate change and would help secure future food supplies.

To understand the long-term effects of a prolonged tropical storm in the Panama Canal watershed, Robert Stallard, staff scientist at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute and research hydrologist at the U.S. Geological Survey, and Armando Ubeda, the LightHawk Mesoamerica program manager, organized four flights over the watershed to create a digital map of landslide scars.

Two feet of heavy rain inundated the Panama Canal watershed between Dec. 7 and 10, 2010. Landslides tore down steep slopes, choking rivers with sediment and overwhelming Panama City's water-treatment plant.

Scientists from Queen's and Carleton universities head a national multidisciplinary research team that has uncovered startling new evidence of the destructive impact of global climate change on North America's largest Arctic delta.

"One of the most ominous threats of global warming today is from rising sea levels, which can cause marine waters to inundate the land," says the team's co-leader, Queen's graduate student Joshua Thienpont. "The threat is especially acute in polar regions, where shrinking sea ice increases the risk of storm surges."

What effect does climate change have on our local forests? What types of trees will be suitable for which geographic location? And how great is the pollution level here?

However, while the problem of species extinction caused by habitat loss is not as dire as many conservationists and scientists had believed, the global extinction crisis is real, says Stephen Hubbell, a distinguished professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at UCLA and co-author of the Nature paper.

Plants can overcome their evolutionary legacies to become much better at using biological photosynthesis to produce energy, the kind of energy that can power vehicles in the near future, an all-star collection of biologists, physicists, photochemists, and solar scientists has found.

A U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) workshop that drew a prestigious collection of 18 scientists to compare the efficiency of plants and photovoltaic solar cells led to an important and provocative scholarly article in today's issue of the journal Science.

"This is not a new technique," Hartman said. "But it is a new tool for use in soybean rust resistance breeding, which has typically used phenotyping or visual assessment to measure resistance. We discovered that we can perform more precise and quicker assessments using this molecular technique."

Researchers at the University of Exeter have uncovered a 'missing link' in the fungal tree of life after analysing samples taken from the university's pond.

Their study, published today in Nature, explains the discovery of a hitherto unknown type of fungi which has fundamentally expanded the scientific understanding of this group of organisms.

Fungi are hugely important as they interact with plants and animals, and are the primary way in which biomass, such as dead plants or animals, are broken down and recycled.

But something has changed.