Photosynthesis

Scientists have successfully produced new, higher-yielding breeds of corn that consistently have faster rates of photosynthesis, the life process that green plants use to make food, the Agriculture Department said. Doyle B. Peters, a research leader in the department's Agricultural Research Service at Urbana, Ill., said the seven-year project, now in its final year, leaves "no doubt that we have bred corn that manufactures its food more efficiently."

Part animal, part plant! This may sound like a tabloid headline, but scientists say that a green sea slug has managed to incorporate enough algae parts to easily live off of sunlight, just as a plant does. Scientists already knew that a few slugs could eat algae but save the algae's chloroplasts from digestion and feed off of their energy. Chloroplasts are where the photosynthesis process of turning light into energy occurs. But this was not a self-sustaining system, since most slugs cannot make their own chlorophyll, a green pigment that fuels the chloroplasts.

Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology say they have used photosynthesis by spinach to create a device that may one day power laptops, mobile phones and more. Such efforts have been unsuccessful in the past because the proteins die in the absence of water, while adding water and salt destroys the electronics.

Normal People Don't Live Like This Dylan Landis Persea: 182 pp., $15 paper The power of a girl -- so large, so threatening that civilizations build their religions and bureaucracies, their rules and regulations, their apples and snakes and burkas around it. Creating a girl on paper, a mere character, could it be anything like raising one? Knowing one? Having once been one? No. No. No. Dylan Landis has a gift for creating characters. Her first book of fiction, "Normal People Don't Live Like This," revolves around Leah Levinson, a teenage girl in 1970s Manhattan, and it is in her character details that the writing comes to life.

The calendar says fall, but it feels like summer this week, with temperatures in the high 80's and 90's--between 10 and 20 degrees warmer than normal. But residents need only look up to see it's autumn. The leaves are just starting to turn, bringing a touch of color to such far-flung places as a tree-lined street in Santa Ana and the country's wild canyons. Orange County is no rival to New England, but the old myth that there are no seasons in Southern California isn't quite true either.

The Times reported that results of experiments in the Antarctic show that photosynthesis has declined 25% in the top 3 feet of the Antarctic Ocean ("Study Is Said to Confirm Fears of Damage From Ozone 'Hole,' " Part I, April 6). Photosynthesis is the start of the earthly food chain. Everything on earth is dependent on it--everything! The decline in photosynthesis is cause by the increased ultraviolet radiation now hitting the Earth, particularly in the Antarctic region. The increased radiation is cause by the loss of ozone in the Earth's upper atmosphere, which absorbs most the the UV radiation.

A government test has determined that a red dye used in many lipsticks is a powerful herbicide capable of killing marijuana plants, prompting some Bush Administration officials to propose using the dye in an airborne offensive against domestic marijuana cultivation.

Training a child to hold a whole cluster of items in his or her memory for even a short time may feel like trying to hold a wave on the sand. But a study published Monday says it's a drill that can yield lasting benefits. Children who've had such training have better abstract reasoning and solve problems more creatively than kids who haven't, the study found. But here's a warning to parents already grooming their young children for entry into elite universities: Don't automatically rush out to enroll your young genius in brain-training summer camp or invest in DVDs promising to deliver high IQs. These drills, the scientists found, pay the greatest dividends for children who actually need them and who find the escalating challenge of the games fun, not frustrating.

University of Illinois researchers have built a molecule that mimics the way plants turn sunlight into electricity. The molecule will not only help scientists understand how plants make food from light but could help develop computers that use light instead of electricity to process information, according to University of Illinois chemist Kenneth Suslick. The molecule is designed to imitate photosynthesis, the complex process plants and some bacteria use to turn sunlight into energy for life.

Normal People Don't Live Like This Dylan Landis Persea: 182 pp., $15 paper The power of a girl -- so large, so threatening that civilizations build their religions and bureaucracies, their rules and regulations, their apples and snakes and burkas around it. Creating a girl on paper, a mere character, could it be anything like raising one? Knowing one? Having once been one? No. No. No. Dylan Landis has a gift for creating characters. Her first book of fiction, "Normal People Don't Live Like This," revolves around Leah Levinson, a teenage girl in 1970s Manhattan, and it is in her character details that the writing comes to life.

Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology say they have used photosynthesis by spinach to create a device that may one day power laptops, mobile phones and more. Such efforts have been unsuccessful in the past because the proteins die in the absence of water, while adding water and salt destroys the electronics.

The calendar says fall, but it feels like summer this week, with temperatures in the high 80's and 90's--between 10 and 20 degrees warmer than normal. But residents need only look up to see it's autumn. The leaves are just starting to turn, bringing a touch of color to such far-flung places as a tree-lined street in Santa Ana and the country's wild canyons. Orange County is no rival to New England, but the old myth that there are no seasons in Southern California isn't quite true either.

University of Illinois researchers have built a molecule that mimics the way plants turn sunlight into electricity. The molecule will not only help scientists understand how plants make food from light but could help develop computers that use light instead of electricity to process information, according to University of Illinois chemist Kenneth Suslick. The molecule is designed to imitate photosynthesis, the complex process plants and some bacteria use to turn sunlight into energy for life.

The Times reported that results of experiments in the Antarctic show that photosynthesis has declined 25% in the top 3 feet of the Antarctic Ocean ("Study Is Said to Confirm Fears of Damage From Ozone 'Hole,' " Part I, April 6). Photosynthesis is the start of the earthly food chain. Everything on earth is dependent on it--everything! The decline in photosynthesis is cause by the increased ultraviolet radiation now hitting the Earth, particularly in the Antarctic region. The increased radiation is cause by the loss of ozone in the Earth's upper atmosphere, which absorbs most the the UV radiation.

Three Americans shared the 1988 Nobel physics prize today for discovering a ghostlike particle in the building blocks of matter, and three West Germans won the chemistry prize for unlocking secrets of photosynthesis, the reaction that nourishes life on earth. The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences awarded the $400,000 physics prize to Leon Lederman, Melvin Schwartz and Jack Steinberger for work on neutrinos--"ghostlike constituents of matter."

After 18 years of work, a UCLA molecular biologist has determined the three-dimensional structure of the world's most common protein--an enzyme that plays a key role in the process by which plants convert carbon dioxide and sunlight into sugars that virtually all living organisms use for energy.

The first time my wife tasted Marcassin Chardonnay, her eyes glowed and she began smiling as if she'd won the lottery -- or signed a big movie deal. I wasn't writing about wine then and had never heard of Marcassin -- the Chardonnay we tasted was a '91, only Marcassin's second vintage -- so I asked the man who brought the bottle to dinner how I could get some. He explained that you had to get on the winemaker's private mailing list and since he'd gotten to know the couple that runs Marcassin, he was able to get us on that list.

Scientists have successfully produced new, higher-yielding breeds of corn that consistently have faster rates of photosynthesis, the life process that green plants use to make food, the Agriculture Department said. Doyle B. Peters, a research leader in the department's Agricultural Research Service at Urbana, Ill., said the seven-year project, now in its final year, leaves "no doubt that we have bred corn that manufactures its food more efficiently."