Pollen

It took a few years, but the rare titan arum -- a.k.a. corpse plant -- housed at Cornell University opened into full bloom overnight, sending its famously vile odor wafting through a greenhouse and marking one of the few times that people outside Sumatra have witnessed such an event. Thanks to modern technology, people who could not see the plant in person in the Cornell greenhouse, in Ithaca, N.Y., could view the plant's opening on a live webcam . Early Monday, a steady stream of camera-toting visitors slowly circled the giant plant, which resembles an upside-down maroon-colored flared skirt, with a long, green column -- known as the spadix -- protruding from the center toward the sky. Cornell acquired the plant about 10 years ago, and this marks the first time it has bloomed.

Gesundheit! If it seems to you allergy sufferers that you're reaching for Kleenex and hay fever pills earlier and earlier each spring to ward off sneezing fits, you may be right. A panel of climate scientists and plant physiologists said Tuesday that higher temperatures and carbon dioxide levels are linked to longer and more intense pollen production. "What we're seeing with additional warming and earlier springs is that the trees are flowering earlier and producing more pollen," said Lewis Ziska, a research plant physiologist with the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Though allergy sufferers in some pockets of the country are having a miserable April, experts dispute the notion that trees across the nation are producing record-high amounts of pollen this year. Pollen counts in some regions are certainly nothing to sneeze at -- in Raleigh, N.C., for instance, the state Division of Air Quality counted 3,524 particles per cubic meter of air on April 7, up to three times the volume that's typically seen in the spring. But it's not that trees are producing record amounts of pollen.

Using a variety of techniques, scientists in France have analyzed the "highly fragmented mummified heart" of England's King Richard I, also known as Richard the Lionheart, and discovered that the people who embalmed it, mostly likely cooks, used a combination of earthen and botanical elements -- from mercury to myrtle to frankincense -- to preserve the organ and give it a good smell. Their measurements enhance anthropologists' understanding of medieval burial procedures, the researchers wrote in a report published online Thursday in the journal Scientific Reports . King Richard earned his nickname on the battlefield, as a great warrior in campaigns across Europe and in the Holy Land (famously, he launched the Third Crusade to try to take Jerusalem back from the conqueror Saladin)

In an effort to keep certain crops pure, UCLA researchers have genetically engineered plants so that they destroy their own pollen--the male sex cells. The advance should enable scientists to tailor a variety of important crops that are easier and cheaper to grow because they cannot pollinate on their own, as well as aid in the development of hybrid crops never before possible, experts said.

A mysterious compound found in tap water and some bottled water blocks the germination of plant pollen, and UC Irvine researchers want to know if the unknown agent could have a harmful effect on other organisms. Prof. Franz Hoffmann said Thursday that the effect was produced by treated and untreated tap water from several Orange County wells and repeated with water samples from West Germany.

If you're prone to seasonal allergies, your nose already knows: It's a bad year. Tree pollens are high, grass pollens are high and weed pollens are moderate, but don't get too excited--they're expected to get worse. Factor in the gale-force winds that have been blowing around Southern California this week, and you've got the perfect prescription for itchy eyes, runny nose and scratchy throat. "Winds can easily increase the pollen count fourfold," says Dr.

Spring is in the air. And, sadly for the allergic, so is pollen. So, in a spring rite as certain as tax day, allergist Sheldon Spector's Los Angeles office fills with the sounds of patients sneezing and coughing. "We did have enough rain that I think this is going to be a relatively bad year for a lot of allergy sufferers," said Dr. Spector. "I'm seeing a lot of first-timers." Some allergists say this year's pollen invasion is what they've come to expect.

Just when you thought the aftershocks had subsided, doctors are warning of yet another repercussion of the Northridge earthquake: runny noses, sneezing and coughing. With pollen and mold spore counts running five to eight times higher than normal, the symptoms of hay fever have kept many children and working people at home, school and county health officials reported Thursday.

Sitting in a waiting room full of sniffling and sneezing people, Keith Varga can tell this allergy season is different from most. It's worse. "I've had allergies since I was a child, but they usually don't flare up until mid-March or early April, never this early," said Varga, of Santa Ana. What's producing so many red eyes and itchy noses? A season of sustained rainfall. While the hills may be green and lush, for allergy sufferers, the hills are also alive with pollen and mold spores.

Though the balance of evidence supports the idea that genetically modified foods are safe to eat and don't harm the environment, a few reports have suggested otherwise. Here are three of them. •French scientists reported in September that rats fed a lifelong diet of Roundup-resistant corn developed more tumors and died earlier than rats fed conventional corn. The widely publicized study, published in the journal Food and Chemical Toxicology, was conducted by Gilles-Eric Seralini, the scientific head of an independent institute opposed to genetically modified foods.

Studying amber obtained from Cretaceous-era deposits, an international team of paleontologists have discovered the oldest known insects engaged in pollination. The 105-million to 110-million-year-old thrips they found are coated in pollen grains that were presumably used to feed the insects' offspring. Thysanopterans, commonly called thrips, are tiny, slender insects with fringed wings -- hence the name, from the Greek thysanos (fringed) and pteron (wing). Thrips are generally considered pests because they eat plant tissues, but some are efficient pollinators for several species of flowering plants.

It took a few years, but the rare titan arum -- a.k.a. corpse plant -- housed at Cornell University opened into full bloom overnight, sending its famously vile odor wafting through a greenhouse and marking one of the few times that people outside Sumatra have witnessed such an event. Thanks to modern technology, people who could not see the plant in person in the Cornell greenhouse, in Ithaca, N.Y., could view the plant's opening on a live webcam . Early Monday, a steady stream of camera-toting visitors slowly circled the giant plant, which resembles an upside-down maroon-colored flared skirt, with a long, green column -- known as the spadix -- protruding from the center toward the sky. Cornell acquired the plant about 10 years ago, and this marks the first time it has bloomed.

The Summer of the Bear A Novel Bella Pollen Atlantic Monthly Press: 441 pp., $24 There's magic at the margins of Bella Pollen's wind-swept novel "The Summer of the Bear"; the kind only a child can see, the kind that turns out to be real. When Nicky Fleming, a British diplomat working in East Germany in 1979 dies, he leaves behind his wife, Letty, and children, Georgie, 17, Alba, 14, and Jamie, 8. Jamie has some kind of learning disability and some kind of gift. On the way to the family's summer house in the Outer Hebrides after his father's death, Jamie leaves hand-drawn maps to the house so that his father can find him. He remembers a grizzly bear he and his father saw at the zoo; he knows that bear has something to do with his father's death and something to do with his young life.

Allergy season is now underway, according to news reports, and as climate change continues, it means that the season of pollen may be lasting longer and longer across different regions of the country. In April so far, many regions of the United States seem to have been spared the respiratory onslaught suffered last year   -- perhaps because of a generally wetter spring season delaying certain tree species’ pollen release. Don’t breathe easy just yet, though -- the San Jose Mercury News reports that, at least in its neck of the woods, pollen season is expected to peak in May. In case you’re wondering how bad your area’s allergy sufferers might have it, the  Asthma and Allergy Foundation of America released the 2011 list of 100 “most challenging” cities to live in with allergies.    Miserable (and inevitable-seeming)

Though allergy sufferers in some pockets of the country are having a miserable April, experts dispute the notion that trees across the nation are producing record-high amounts of pollen this year. Pollen counts in some regions are certainly nothing to sneeze at -- in Raleigh, N.C., for instance, the state Division of Air Quality counted 3,524 particles per cubic meter of air on April 7, up to three times the volume that's typically seen in the spring. But it's not that trees are producing record amounts of pollen.

For Susan Evans, the misery started with a stuffed nose, which then developed into a swollen throat and major sinus headache. "I feel terrible," the housewife said recently between sniffs in the waiting room of her doctor's office in Orange. "It's harder to breathe, I don't sleep well and I don't have my usual energy. My whole lifestyle has slowed down." For Burma Doretti, a retired school bus driver from Anaheim, it began about a week ago with her eyes watering.

Many Southern Californians cheered this season's torrential rains, which ended a seven-year dry spell. But the exceptionally wet season, which has spawned an explosion of plant growth, is drawing anything but applause from allergy sufferers. It is prompting what doctors call "the allergic salute"--more commonly referred to as wiping your runny or itchy nose.

The Nazca people of Peru -- famous for their huge line drawings on an arid plateau that are fully visible only from the air -- set the stage for their demise by deforesting the plain, allowing a huge El Niño-fueled flood to ravage the Ica Valley about AD 500, researchers have found. "They died out because they destroyed their natural ecosystem," said archaeologist Alex J. Chepstow-Lusty of the French Institute of Andean Studies in Lima, coauthor of a paper in the current issue of Latin American Antiquity.

Male cycads, a plant group including firs and pines, actively participate in pollination by insects, researchers reported Friday in the journal Science. The cycads produce cones that open and emit a fragrance that attracts insects called thrips, which enter the cones and become covered with pollen. Then the male cycads heat up -- raising their temperature as much as 25 degrees -- and drive the thrips out.