Scienceblogtwo

Researchers from the University of Vienna studied the cries of Asian elephants using an acoustic camera that shows sound pressure. Elephants rarely used their mouths alone to create their low frequency "rumbles," preferring instead to use their trunk or their mouth and trunk together. This is the first study to unequivocally show that a non-human animal can emit calls using both its mouth and its nose. The study was just released in the publication "Animals." The world's longest nasal elongation is found in elephants. Unsurprisingly, when they release their low-frequency, partially infrasonic rumbles via the lengthy trunk, they resound even deeper. Veronika Beeck and Angela Stoeger's team of cognitive biologists from the University of Vienna have recently demonstrated that these vocal tract resonances, commonly known as a nasal pronunciation in human language, are essential for animal communication. The researchers hypothesize that Asian elephants may be abl...

Researchers have used plasma, a fourth state of matter found in the flash of lightning and the dance of auroras, to create a gas that may trigger plant immunity against contagious illnesses. The research was presented on June 24 in PLOS One by the researchers from Tohoku University in Japan. Sugihiro Ando, associate professor in the Graduate School of Agricultural Science at Tohoku University and the paper's lead author, said that chemical pesticides are currently the mainstay of disease prevention in agriculture but that they can contaminate the soil and destroy the ecosystem. "Technologies for preventing plant diseases must be created if we are to create a sustainable agricultural system. Plant immunity is one of the most efficient ways to prevent disease since it makes use of plants' natural resistance and has no effect on the environment." The researchers created dinitrogen pentoxide, a reactive nitrogen species, using their previously created apparatus that creat...