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Do Plants Practice Grid Computing? 149

Posted by Hemos from the learning-it-from-our-friends dept.
Roland Piquepaille writes "According to Nature, plants appear to 'think' and seem to optimize their 'breathing' by conducting simple calculations through a distributed computing scheme. "David Peak and co-workers at Utah State University in Logan say that plants may regulate their uptake and loss of gases by 'distributed computation' -- a kind of information processing that involves communication between many interacting units." Nature adds this is similar to signals exchanged by ants to find the best source of food for an ant community. In their paper, the researchers added that their results were "consistent with the proposition that a plant solves its optimal gas exchange problem through an emergent, distributed computation performed by its leaves." This overview contains more details and references. It also includes a picture of the tiny pores on the surface of a cactus leaf, called stomata, which permit the plant to breathe when they're opened."
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Do Plants Practice Grid Computing? More

Do Plants Practice Grid Computing?

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  • Distributed computing plants? (Score:5, Funny)

    by geoffspear ( 692508 ) on Thursday January 22, 2004 @07:30PM (#8060866) Homepage
    Imagine a Beowulf cluster of trees...

  • I'm SURE Plants Practice Grid Computing (Score:5, Funny)

    by deft ( 253558 ) on Thursday January 22, 2004 @07:31PM (#8060874) Homepage
    But they probably call it something else.

  • Do eukaryotic cells practice grid computing? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by hawkfish ( 8978 ) on Thursday January 22, 2004 @07:33PM (#8060903) Homepage
    If one thinks of quantum computing as a kind of parallelism, then maybe so [arizona.edu].

  • Nothing central (Score:3, Insightful)

    by agent dero ( 680753 ) on Thursday January 22, 2004 @07:34PM (#8060920) Homepage
    With no centralized 'nervous system' it's almost a duh.

    But don't think of it as "thinking" the individual cells act on instinct and survival

    • Re:Nothing central (Score:3, Informative)

      by Yunalesca ( 703301 )
      But don't think of it as "thinking" the individual cells act on instinct and survival

      Cells act on their genetic coding. Always. To modify that, you have to override the code either by adding new DNA, taking out DNA, or inserting chemicals that will act on DNA. You can program cells to force them to do things that are counter to their "natural" duties, or to damage themselves. Cells will commit suicide (apoptosis) if they're ordered to die by other cells, or if it's programmed into them from the very

  • Do they call the computing nodes.... (Score:5, Funny)

    by teneighty ( 671401 ) on Thursday January 22, 2004 @07:35PM (#8060930)
    ...leaf nodes?

    Or are they root nodes?

  • Yardwork (Score:5, Funny)

    by Embedded Geek ( 532893 ) on Thursday January 22, 2004 @07:37PM (#8060947) Homepage
    No wonder the damn weeds keep coming back so fast - they must be overclocked.

  • Evolved? (Score:1, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Could someone shed some light on how complex systems like this might have evolved? Especially with species that are dependant on each other... plant pollination for example. It would be extremely unlikely that bees and flowers would have mutated perfectly at the percise exact time in order to make this happen correctly.

    Sometimes the creationists' theory doesn't seem too far off wack.

    • Re:Evolved? (Score:4, Informative)

      by skintigh2 ( 456496 ) on Thursday January 22, 2004 @07:54PM (#8061117)
      Most systems, human or evolutionary, start out simple and end up very complex, sometimes not even resembling what they started out as.

      Like flying. One theory is that bugs first grew wings as solar heaters, as this allowed them to survive colder areas. Mutant larger wings let them glide, gliding led to flight.

      As for polination, I would assume plants started out by using the wind to move the pollen, and then through mutation some attracted bugs which for any number of reasons proved benefitial and made them more fit. Bugs that were benefited by the plants also became more fit as they had a new and stable food source.

      • Re:Evolved? (Score:5, Interesting)

        by Junado ( 707870 ) on Thursday January 22, 2004 @08:29PM (#8061450) Homepage
        Actually, the first plants started using water to move their "seeds": it was more like some kind of sperm that male plants would release into water in hope they would reach female ovules. This was the very first method used by plants to reproduce (actually, we, humans, are using this exact same method). Next they used the wind to move their pollen around and finally, as you said, they're using bugs, which are very efficient since they move from plant to plant, carrying the pollen from a plant to the other without much lost.
        • Actually, the first plants started using water to move their "seeds": it was more like some kind of sperm that male plants would release into water in hope they would reach female ovules. This was the very first method used by plants to reproduce (actually, we, humans, are using this exact same method).

          Ohhhhhh... so *that's* why mom said to stay out of the hot tub...

    • Re:Evolved? (Score:5, Informative)

      by bar-agent ( 698856 ) on Thursday January 22, 2004 @08:29PM (#8061451)
      This system under discussion is not especially complex, and has nothing to do with other species or with pollinators.

      The pollination example you gave is similar to the tired creationist argument of the eye, which asserts that the eye is too complex to have evolved piece by piece. This is, of course, incorrect [colorado.edu]. Scientists have determined how the eye could have evolved, and have found examples of each stage.

      Pollinators could have evolved like this (though IANA botanist):
      1. A plant evolves wind-borne pollination.
      2. A flying insect likes the taste of a plant's sugars. It pierces or chews leaves to get to them.
      3. Pollen happens to catch on the insect's hairs. Since the insect likes this plant, it visits many in the area, of both sexes.
      4. The reproductive success of this accidental pollen-spreading is decent enough so that evolution does not favor getting rid of the sweet sugars or developing a repellent for this insect.
      5. In fact, even sweeter sugar accidentally evolves. That plant branch (no pun intended) attracts more insects and becomes more successful.
      6. Since the food is richer at these plants than at other plants, insects that spend time at other plants get less food for the time invested. They are selected against.
      7. Another branch develops a bit of color near the pollen generation sites. The insects are attracted to the color. This branch has more of its pollen collected, compared to other branches. This branch is selected for.
      8. Etc.

      There's no stretch of imagination here. It's a clear progression of small changes, each reinforcing the earlier change.

    • Re:Evolved? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by shokk ( 187512 ) <ernieoporto AT yahoo DOT com> on Thursday January 22, 2004 @09:51PM (#8062125) Homepage Journal
      I wonder if this is really complex at all as far as nature is concerned. We are just at this point in computing without really solving for complex AI, so this must be something similar to reflex or an involuntary response.

      The fact that ants may exhibit the same behavior makes me wonder about their level of awareness: is being vegetative really not as low a state as we believe it, or maybe we give ants too much credit, or maybe this is an example of a hive mind. Or is this something found throughtout most of nature and only where self-awareness/individuality comes in do things behave on their own in a viral devouring nature. Certainly viruses are not complex compared to humans, but as many times as we've heard human intelligence glorified, we have also been compared to ravenous viruses.
    • Nah, it does not speak to creationism at all. Perhaps this function of plants and other functions of other life are the way they are because there was *no other way* to do it. The wheel is round not because we as creators diegned to make it round, but because any other shape would not work as well. Perhaps Thag and Lothar started with a square and realised "hmm, that not roll too well, let's cut off corners". If there was some kind of consciousness behind lifeforms, that consciousness should be fired fo

    • Re:Evolved? (Score:3, Interesting)

      by AlecC ( 512609 )
      The answer is - bit by bit. It is a fallacy to think that systems need to jump from state A to state B without passing through any ointermediate states. Flowers probably originally pollinated by the wind, for their own purpises, and bees originally raided flowers without concern for the flowers need. But the bees accidentally distributed the pollen better than the wind, so flowers that got pollinated by bees did better than those that didn't. An flowers that produced an excesss of sweet sap attracted more b

    • Re:Evolved? (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Scrameustache ( 459504 )
      Tell me, are you the same troll that ask that same question in every single biology-related science thread? Or is there a beowulf clusters of you?

      It would be extremely unlikely that bees and flowers would have mutated perfectly at the percise exact time in order to make this happen correctly

      Why would they mutate at the same time, or perfectly?

      Proto-bees used plants as food source, wich had the side effect of helping those very plants reproduce by bringing sexual material from plant to plant. Plants tha

  • Typical (Score:5, Funny)

    by dodgyville ( 660660 ) on Thursday January 22, 2004 @07:44PM (#8061020) Homepage Journal
    I saw the headline to this article "Do plants practice grid computing?" and I thought "AHA! I'll just jump in here, throw in a hillarious line about plants and computers and bingo, easy points."

    Imagine my dismay when I saw that every single message on the thread is a hillarious comment about plants and their computing abilities! Ho ho ho

    You people certainly make it difficult for a person to be an edgy counter-culture warrior, disarming the system with humour.

    Just go back to bashing Microsoft and leave the comedy to me.
  • the ultimate geek ability: find a scifi computer game reference to every Nature story. today: Sid Meyer's Alpha Centauri.

    (k' fungii are not exactly plants, but who cares...)
    • My Thoughts exactly.

      I believe Planet will talk to us if we are willing to listen. These fungal stalks behave as multistate relays: taken together, the neural net connectivity must be staggering. Can a planet be said to have achieved sentience?


      Lady Deirdre Skye
      Arguments in Council
      From a listing of Alpha Centauri Quotes [generationterrorists.com]
      • > Can a planet be said to have achieved sentience?

        Ho-lee shit. I was thinking of this exact same topic last night. I was high. (No, really, I am telling the truth -- stranger than fishin')
  • It's not really a thought process, but more of an automated response. Kinda like a reflex. It doesn't suprise me that plants can communicate, after all, they have had longer to evolve than animals ;). There all sorts of things like this in biology that we have yet to discover.

    Mewyn Dy'ner
    • Interestingly, a plant getting damaged will emit chemicals into the air. When other plants detect these chemicals, they will up their production of insect- and fungi-deterrents.

    • If you RTFA :) it pretty much describes the stomata as cellular automata as in the game of life where they operate by simple rules based on their neighbours. The result is emergent behaviour that is computation. Pretty clever.

      Makes me wonder if forests also act like this as well ... forests are very old, in fact the rainforests of Australia have existed since well before the breakup of Gondwana and are probably 100 million years old and trees do signal one another via chemical messages I recall.

      • Re:Cellular Automata (Score:3, Interesting)

        by Urkki ( 668283 )
        • Makes me wonder if forests also act like this as well ... forests are very old, in fact the rainforests of Australia have existed since well before the breakup of Gondwana and are probably 100 million years old and trees do signal one another via chemical messages I recall.

        Check out Gaia Theory [fsbusiness.co.uk]. And no, it's not some metaphysical or spiritual "Earth has a soul" type crap, but rather something like this tree thing in the article, except on global scale, and across species. The basic idea is that life on

  • What are the fruitful implications for pot growers, I wonder?
  • My folks used to call me little daikon head when I was younger. I used to think that was kind of degrading since the root of the plant was the edible part. I suppose I should take it as a complement now that it's been shown the top part actually may have calculating powers.

  • Stomata? (Score:3, Funny)

    by Agar ( 105254 ) on Thursday January 22, 2004 @08:04PM (#8061228)
    It also includes a picture of the tiny pores on the surface of a cactus leaf, called stomata. . .

    Unless the cactus looks like this [aol.com], then they're called stigmata

    (And no, that's no goatse link and I didn't draw it myself -- found it by googling for images of "cactus cross". Once again the unholy alliance of Google and freakish AOLers is there to support an awful pun.)
    • Here [microscopy-uk.net] the stigamta are the so called "holy wounds" [newadvent.org]

      Seraphim [newadvent.org]

  • SSSSHHHHHH (Score:2, Funny)

    by xaoslaad ( 590527 )
    Don't tell the hippies; then what will they eat and wear? Who wants to see a bunch of filthy, scrawny, naked hippies running about telling everyone to eat dirt.

    • Don't tell the hippies; then what will they eat and wear? Who wants to see a bunch of filthy, scrawny, naked hippies running about telling everyone to eat dirt.

      Maybe we've finally found a way to make the vegans starve themselves to death...

      Oh wait, logic has no hold over them, dang!

  • Um, ok (Score:5, Insightful)

    by skintigh2 ( 456496 ) on Thursday January 22, 2004 @08:06PM (#8061247)
    So, plant behavior kinda sorta looks similar to what a distributed computing system might look like, therefore plants are distributed computers?

    "I saw a picture of a Mars rock that looked like a human face, therefore there are people living on Mars."

    Or is this just a buzzword-filled way to say the obvious: there is no central brain in a tree; each leaf controls it's own pores and uses chemical signals from surrounding pores and leaves for help. We already knew that trees "communicate" with each other on when it is time to start changing color. Perhaps I should write up that old news and drop in some buzzwords. I can title it "Trees form Beowulf Clusters to incentivize the diversification and downsizing of foliage."

    • Re:Um, ok (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Xzzy ( 111297 ) <sether@@@tru7h...org> on Thursday January 22, 2004 @08:29PM (#8061454) Homepage
      I think it's more a comment on how something humans were all patting themselves on the back for developing, plants have been doing for millions of years.

      That's how I read it anyways.

    • Re:Um, ok (Score:4, Insightful)

      by frobber ( 708393 ) on Thursday January 22, 2004 @08:40PM (#8061558)
      I agree - sounds like the obvious dressed up in trendy jargon.

      From the article [pnas.org] it looks like they're trying to understand how a plant knows how many total pores to have open for breathing, given that each pore only has local information - there's no global sensor telling the pores what to do. They're also interested in why open pores are found in clusters.

      A simple answer might involve the following:
      (1) the pores are simple oscillators locally linked causing local synchrony. Groups of pores tend to be in sync, and the neighbors of the open group are induced to open because they're near the group. Therefore the pores tend to open near the open group, and close in the middle of the group. The result is travelling waves like a rock thrown in a pond. This type of idea was investigated I think first by Turing (of all people) in 1952 (for example) [swintons.net]
      (2) either the intrinsic period of each pore's oscillation or it's duty cycle (how long open compared to how long off) is modulated by the pore's detection of how much the plant needs to breathe locally. The result is oscillations all over the plant of openning and closing pores whose open times are modulated to solve the plant's total breathing needs.

      Anyway, I don't see what's interesting about calling this computation. Air transmits sounds by local interactions of gas particles and the speed of transmission is modulated by density. But I don't see what is gained by claiming that the air is solving a computation to transmit sound at the right speed!

      • Re:Um, ok (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Urkki ( 668283 ) on Thursday January 22, 2004 @09:09PM (#8061770)
        • Anyway, I don't see what's interesting about calling this computation. Air transmits sounds by local interactions of gas particles and the speed of transmission is modulated by density. But I don't see what is gained by claiming that the air is solving a computation to transmit sound at the right speed!

        Well, there is no right speed of sound, and speed of sound is determined very locally, by the interaction of immediatly neighbouring molecules, and stays about the same regardless of conditions a mere hundred molecules away.

        If I understand correctly, the point is that a plant is able to optimize it's gas intake/output without any actual nervous system or central controlling unit, and that for this type of a problem, this might actually be the optimal way of solving the problem.

        And problem it is, for plants. Do it wrong and die (either directly or by being suffocated on more successful plant neighbours). So unlike with sound propagation in air, there is an optimal way to do it, perhaps even several almost optimal ways, so a choice is involved. The plant that is able to choose best wins. (Note: I'm not implying concious choice here, any more than a "choice" made by neural network software is concious).
      • From the article it looks like they're trying to understand how a plant knows how many total pores to have open for breathing, given that each pore only has local information - there's no global sensor telling the pores what to do.

        The point is that there dosn't need to be any kind of global control system or "knowlage". Any more than there needs to be for birds to form flocks or fish to school.

    • Re:Um, ok (Score:5, Insightful)

      by quinkin ( 601839 ) on Thursday January 22, 2004 @10:10PM (#8062248)
      Heh.

      I thought it should have been title "Cellular automatons successfully model yet another cellular matrix feedback system."

      Q.

      • Absolutely right. I'm not sure how they're getting to distributing computing (or grid computing) from cellular automata.

        Distributed computing, as I've seen it defined, requires substantial computation at each node. I've never heard of anyone refer to cellular automata as distributed computing.
  • While we don't necessarily use different parts of the brain for *all* activity, there is certainly redundancy and distribution. Some parts work in conjunction with others, and if certain parts are removed or damaged, the distribution (and therefore redundancy) are able to perform the same functions. I didn't RTFA, but I will now! :)

  • Apparently, there's Unix code in these plants information processing systems.
    • >Apparently, there's Unix code in these plants information processing systems.

      Jan 22, 2003

      FAXED

      Mr. Ponderosa Pine
      Trees, etc.
      [address]

      Dear Mr. Pine:

      SCO holds the rights to the UNIX operating system software originally licensed by AT&T to approximately 6,000 companies and institutions worldwide (the "UNIX Licenses"). The vast majority of UNIX software used in enterprise applications today is a derivative work of the software originally distributed under our UNIX Licenses. Like you, we hav

  • Game of life. (Score:4, Insightful)

    by gmarceau ( 119282 ) <dnys2v4dq1001@sneakemail.com> on Thursday January 22, 2004 @08:16PM (#8061334) Homepage
    The statistics of the size of these patches, and of the waiting times between the appearance of successive patches, are the same as those for a model of cellular automata: The individual leaf stomata [...] respond to what their neighbouring stomata are doing.

    Or, in one word: catuses play the game of life.

  • Of couse plants are a giant supercomputer (Score:4, Funny)

    by quantum bit ( 225091 ) on Thursday January 22, 2004 @08:17PM (#8061354) Journal
    We already knew that. The plants are part of the system that was built by the mice for the purpose of answering the question of life, the universe, and everything.

  • see also: Microbiology (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Harmotech ( 664060 ) on Thursday January 22, 2004 @08:22PM (#8061390) Homepage
    Bacterial colonies will also exhibit a "thinking" behaviour. Individual bacter will respond to stimuli one of two ways: motility toward the stimulus, or a kind of rolling motion which will modify thier direction to move away from the stimulus. This individual action of "thought" utilized by an unfathomable quantity of generations of bacteria has proven its worth. Is this thinking? Maybe, maybe not. This isn't philosophy class... The point is that all forms of life can be divided into discreet units that display often surprising emergent properties when allowed to interact. Cooperation and communication between individual cells (and components of cells) in the human body is the reason you can sit here and read this post...

  • Technologies and how we look at plants (Score:5, Funny)

    by lost in place ( 248578 ) on Thursday January 22, 2004 @08:27PM (#8061439)
    If this story were published in ___ it would be titled ___

    1790: Plants and their Hidden Telegraphs!
    1870: Do Plants Talk to Each Other on Leafy Telephones?
    1962: Plants and their Invisible DEW Lines
    1990: Plants have their Own Secret Internet!
    2004: Do Plants Practice Grid Computing?
    2010: Do Plants Engage in CyberBiphrenistic Nano-Spatulation?

  • Say what? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 22, 2004 @08:53PM (#8061666)
    Are they really sure it should be called a "distributed computing network" and not just a multi-element feedback network?

    While we may be able to identify the various metabolic pathways and processes in all cells, to call them "computers" implies a certain amount of discreteness either in process pathways or elements making it up. Sure, at some level there is quantization (i.e., cellular), but one cannot identify one part and say, "this is the atmospheric pressure sensor", and "this is the hygrometric sensor".

    Is the feedback system in our bodies that regulates heartrate, blood pressure and respiration a discrete computing process easily identified into its component parts? No, it's a bunch of feedback loops at various levels with a few simple inputs that produces a complex state that manifests in a few simple responses.

  • Hell, I knew that... (Score:3, Funny)

    by jak163 ( 666315 ) on Thursday January 22, 2004 @08:58PM (#8061697)
    ...from the naive/evil scientist in Christian Nyby's 1951 The Thing [allmovie.com].

    Other important points:

    Don't sleep with an electric blanket near a frozen alien.
    Vegetables can be preserved by freezing, but not by cooking.
    When isolated in an artic research station, don't feed blood-eating vegetables your reserve plasma supply.

  • Tile the Pore pic for wallpaper. (Score:3, Funny)

    by Linus Sixpack ( 709619 ) on Thursday January 22, 2004 @09:06PM (#8061752) Journal
    The Cactus Pore pic makes funky wallpaper if you set it as a tile.

    ls

  • all we are saaayinggg... (Score:3, Funny)

    by dandelion_wine ( 625330 ) on Thursday January 22, 2004 @09:13PM (#8061798) Journal
    is give peas a chance.

    (uh. that hurt.)
  • http://forums.gardenweb.com/forums/cacti/
  • Wow. Who would have thought we'd see cellular automata in, um, cells.

    OK, I'm being a bit harsh -- this is very cool work. But yes, life does play the game of life. It's called that for a reason.

    --Dan

  • It's Not just buzzwords (Score:3, Insightful)

    by PetoskeyGuy ( 648788 ) on Thursday January 22, 2004 @10:12PM (#8062253)
    I know lots of people will get lost on the fact that they are decribing yet another thing in terms of computers or computation. Yes it's happened before, yes it will happen again. Telephones, Telegraph, Radio, Internet, etc.

    People used to describe atoms in terms of billiard balls, and light in terms of waves or particles. While ultimately not correct, each new model allows you to discover more about the thing your investigating.

    The models are useful until they break down. Even then they are sometimes more useful because you realize that there is something else going on and things are not quite waves, not quite particles, yet each is correct at times.

    Hopefully this will allow a better understanding of how plants work, or even allow us to build better computers by translating the biological model into new computers. Ok, not talking sky-net here, but the sarcasm is a bit high.

  • The Earth is one big supercomputer. Nothing more, nothing less.

  • When I eat a nice pork chop, at least it's dead. When you bite into that apple, it's STILL ALIVE! Can you hear the tiny distributed screams?
  • They didn't happen to be of the family Cannabis sativa did they?

  • ...That's nice and all, but if I can't play games on 'em, what's the point?
    • Plants have been used in all kinds of games throughout the history, such as "hit a ball with a wooden bat and run", "let's hang somebody!" and "hey, try smoking *this*, dude!".

  • Acacia Tree Communication (Score:5, Interesting)

    by handy_vandal ( 606174 ) on Friday January 23, 2004 @12:27AM (#8062977) Homepage Journal
    "Acacia trees produce tannin in their leaves when browsed by animals. The tannin tastes so bad that the animal stops eating this acacia tree. Other acacia trees downwind sense that tannin is being produced. These trees quickly produce tannin, thus discouraging the animals from eating these trees too."

    - Source [birdlife.org.za]

    -kgj
  • Isn't cellular automata named so because it mimics cellular behavior? (well, aside from residing in grid/cells...) Or Conway's game of Life because it resembles lifelike behavior?
  • ...but that's the saddest excuse to link something in nature to computers.

    What really gets me is how they get off calling it a form of "thinking." It's primitave chemical reactions! (Well, so is our brain to an extent, but lets not get into that)

    Anyway, on a more relevant note: Most of the article is just hyped up computer mumbo-jumbo and try to link it with simple common sense about biology - Yes... organisims function through chemical reactions. Now just because something performs chemical reactions doe

  • Global Brain (Score:2, Informative)

    by faggabeefee ( 744515 )
    Howard Bloom's latest, "Global Brain: The Evolution of Mass Mind from the Big Bang to the 21st Century" seems relevant here. I've only just begun reading it, but this article appears to fit right in with Bloom's theories on group evolution, networks within complex adaptive systems in nature, and the possibility of a global massive data-sharing mind. Worth a look--> howardbloom.net [howardbloom.net]

  • Weild the Power! (Score:2, Funny)

    by Bega ( 684994 )
    I can't wait until I'll get my SETI@home calculation cluster. It'll consist of three petunias, eight marijuana plants and a lawn.
  • My knee-jerk reaction to this story is

    well, doh. "Really smart scientists have discovered that living organisms perform the computation of a massively linked network of cells to optimize the (hard) problems of survival and reproduction. Within these cells, hugely complicated molecular mechanisms ensure I/O of signals and transmitters to other linked cells."

    That doesn't occur to me to be a particularly deep insight, given the current knowledge about biology and evolution. Not wanting to take the magic ou


  • No, no, no, Mr. Officer! These 55 marijuana crops in my backyard? They're not for smoking pot, I swear!

    *They're a beowulf cluster, goddamit!* :D

    • Hey, man. It's been a while since I didn't hear your electronic voice on AIM. Guess you've been pretty busy these last days. Hope to see you soon. Biyyyyaaatch. jdifool
      • Oyyyy, beoooootch, got no mail from ya either. Yup, busy, busy: j'mai balade dans la ville, je commence a connaitre comme ma poche maintenant (c'est une grande poche, de 20 millions d'ames). Pis on a un nouveau stagiaire au bureau, les nouvelles tetes, c'est kool. Oue, oue, je retournerai sur gaim, sans pbes, c'est juste que j'essaie de faire un peu moins de net, je commence a craindre pour ma facture tel. Allez beotch, bonne bourre, et vas pas nous choper la grippe aviaire gnieheheheheheheheheheheh

  • A bit about cactus stomata (Score:3, Informative)

    by CactusCritter ( 182409 ) on Friday January 23, 2004 @04:23AM (#8064110)
    The majority of cactus have a metabolic system called CAM (Crasulacea Acid Metabolism). In such plants, the stomata open at night, thus needing only to respond to light and dark, not to each other. There is no phasing of groups of stomata in the plants epidermises. CO2 enters the stomata at night whereupon mailc acid is synthesized. During the day, stomata are closed and photosyntheses is driven by the energy of the malic acid to produce the various sugars and goodies needed to run the plant.

    Only a few very primitive cacti have leaves. The rest grow stems which may be cylindrical or spherical, usually with ribs which facilitate expansion when rains fall.

    Check the current Scientific American for information about how bacteria sense the presence of many of their species in order time release of toxins and other activities. The genes and proteins which control these coordinated activities have been identified.
    • There is one aspect of cactus group phasing whose genetic basis has not been worked out.

      The plants of seemingly any given species of cactus will all bloom concurrently, an obvious necessity for reproduction. This occurs within different populations a great distance apart.

      Seemingly, it has to be dependent on length of day, perhaps temperature range, too. However, the genetics have not yet been determined. Cactus genetic studies seem thus far to be limited to working out the sometimes confusing relationship

  • Clouds (Score:2, Insightful)

    by vikstar ( 615372 )
    This is just another one of those, "Do you see the [insert anything here] in the Clouds?" Humans like to attribute purpose where it doesn't belong. What's the next headline? A particle of sand dropped in water exhibts ability to compute Navier-Stokes equations?
  • for the Humanitarians!

    We can't eat meat because animals are thinking creatures, and it looks like plants now fall into the same category. Which leaves only one source of food that we know does NOT think...
  • Imagine hacking root on that....

    All your rhizomes are belong to us.

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