Carbon Sink: Up-And-Coming Forests Replacing Aging Forests of Upper Great Lakes

ScienceDaily (Aug. 10, 2011) The aging forests of the Upper Great Lakes could be considered the baby boomers of the region's ecosystem. The decline of trees in this area is a cause for concern among policymakers and ecologists who wonder whether the end of the forests' most productive years means they will no longer offer the benefits they are known for: cleansed air, fertile soil, filtered water and, most important to climate change analysts, carbon storage that offsets greenhouse gas emissions. A team of ecologists led by Ohio State University researchers says, however, that coming up right underneath the old forests is a new generation of native trees that are younger, more diverse and highly competitive. They represent a vast unknown compared to what ecologists have long theorized about how forests work as carbon sinks, but these researchers expect the next generation to carry on the important work of carbon storage. "There's a conventional theory that aging forests, for a variety of reasons, store less carbon over time. We contend that that may be true in certain systems that are less species-rich. But in our forests in the Midwest, the tree species we will end up with are much different from what we started with," said Peter Curtis, professor and chair of evolution, ecology and organismal biology at Ohio State and a lead investigator on this research. So far, the scientists are finding that the canopy created by the newcomers' leaves use light more efficiently to manufacture carbohydrates and release oxygen through photosynthesis than did the aspen canopy that preceded it. The researchers also are able to use sophisticated instruments to quantify nitrogen cycling in the transitioning forest, and observe that nitrogen losses throughout the system are small even with the death of thousands of trees. As long as nitrogen remains available -- within tree wood and leaves as well as in the soil -- for the trees to renew themselves annually, the forest will continue to function as an effective carbon sink.

Comment: I comment these science issues its all about the nature we need some give importance our environment. I describe this issue, seeds spread easily and that allowed the species to revegetate the deforested areas rapidly, but they do not grow well in shade underneath their own canopies. Because of that weakness, the aspens are being replaced by tree species that were once native to the region but take longer to get established. Illegal logging are now still issue our country that we experience the landslide. Stops cut the trees and observe the importance of Mother Nature

Think Healthy, Eat Healthy: Scientists Show Link Between Attention and Self-Control ScienceDaily (Aug. 10, 2011) You're trying to decide what to eat for dinner. Should it be the chicken and broccoli? The super-sized fast-food burger? Skip it entirely and just get some Rocky Road? Making that choice, it turns out, is a complex neurological exercise. But, according to researchers from the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), it's one that can be influenced by a simple shifting of attention toward the healthy side of life. And that shift may provide strategies to help us all make healthier choices -- not just in terms of the foods we eat, but in other areas, like whether or not we pick up a cigarette. When you decide what to eat, not only does your brain need to figure out how it feels about a food's taste versus its health benefits versus its size or even its packaging, but it needs to decide the importance of each of those attributes relative to the others. And it needs to do all of this more-or-less instantaneously.The new study goes a step further, showing that there seem to be ways to help kickstart the dlPFC through the use of what Hare calls "external cues" that allow us to exhibit more self-control than we might have otherwise. The researchers came to their conclusions based on data from a brainimaging experiment conducted with 33 adult volunteers, none of whom were following a specific diet or trying to lose weight for any reason. Each of the volunteers was shown 180 different food items -- from chips and candy bars to apples and broccoli -- through a set of video goggles while in a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) machine. The hungry subjects -- they were asked to fast for at least three hours prior to the experiment -- were given up to three seconds to respond to each picture with a decision about whether or not they'd want to eat the food shown after the experiment was over. They could either give the food a "strong no," a "no," a "yes," or a "strong yes." Once all of the images had been flipped through, a single food image was chosen at random; if the volunteer had said "yes" or "strong yes" to the idea of eating that food, he or she was served that item. Afterward -- outside the scanner -- the subjects were asked to rate the same foods on both a tastiness scale (very untasty, untasty, tasty, very

tasty) and a healthiness scale (very unhealthy, unhealthy, healthy, very healthy). That way, the researchers were able to associate the choices the subjects made during the brain scan with their stated perceptions of those foods' attributes -- showing that a subject who chose broccoli during the "consider the healthiness" portion of the test might think of it nonetheless as untasty. Things got interesting when the researchers looked at the other three categories, however. Among their findings:

When thinking about healthiness, subjects were less likely to eat unhealthy foods, whether or not they deemed them to be tasty, and more likely to eat healthy-untasty foods. Being asked to think about healthiness led subjects to say "no" to foods more often than they did when asked to make decisions naturally. There were no real differences between the choices made during the "consider the tastiness" and "make decisions naturally" portions of the experiment.

Comment: My comment this issue is that in every we eat the delicious food we cant control or we dont mind if this is nutrition of our health. The scientist study that value for the food that is based more on its health

properties than is the case when the subject's attention is not focused on healthiness. So focusing attention on the health aspects of
foods changes value signals. Eat more and think how you control.

Does Food Act Physiologically Like a 'Drug of Choice' for Some?

ScienceDaily (July 20, 2011) Variety is considered the "spice of life," but does today's unprecedented level of dietary variety help explain skyrocketing rates of obesity? Some researchers think it might. According to ASN Spokesperson Shelley McGuire, PhD: "We've known for years that foods- even eating, itself- can trigger release of various brain chemicals, some of which are also involved in what happens with drug addiction and withdrawal. And, as can happen with substance abusers, tolerance or "habituation" can occur, meaning that repeated use (in this case, exposure to a food) is sometimes accompanied by a lack of response (in this case, disinterest in the food). The results of the study by Epstein and colleagues provides a very interesting new piece to the obesity puzzle by suggesting that meal monotony may actually lead to reduced calorie consumption. The trick will be balancing this concept with the importance of variety to good nutrition." Studies have shown that many people become disinterested in a particular food when they are repeatedly exposed to it. This response, called habituation, can decrease caloric intake in the short-run. Conversely, when presented with a variety of foods, caloric intake can increase. The "food addiction hypothesis" purports that some people may overeat because they are insensitive to the normal habituation response and thus need even more exposure to a food to trigger a disinterest. However, there has been no rigorous research investigating whether healthy-weight and overweight individuals have different habituation responses, and little is known about what patterns of food exposure are most powerful in triggering habituation. To help close these research gaps, researchers studied long-term habituation in obese and nonobese women. Comment: