Submitted via IRC for guy_
Plants, like all living things, need nitrogen to build amino acids and other essential biomolecules. Although nitrogen is the most abundant element in air, the molecular form of nitrogen found there is largely unreactive. To become useful to plants, that nitrogen must first be "fixed," or busted out of its molecular form and linked with hydrogen to make ammonia. The plants can then get at it by catalyzing reactions with ammonia.
But plants can't fix nitrogen. Bacteria can.
Some legumes and a few other plants have a symbiotic relationship with certain bacterial species. The plants build specialized structures on their roots called nodules to house and feed the bacteria, which in turn fix nitrogen for the plants and assure them a steady supply of ammonia. Only 10 families of plants have the ability to do this, and even within these families, most genera opt out. Ever since the symbiosis was discovered in 1888, plant geneticists have wondered: why? If you could ensure a steady supply of nitrogen for use, why wouldn't you?
A global consortium of geneticists sequenced and compared the genomes of 37 plants—some symbiotic, some not; some that build nodules, some not; some agriculturally relevant, some not—to try to find out what was going on. The group's genetic analysis of the conundrum was reported in Science.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by anubi on Tuesday May 29 2018, @05:51AM (5 children)
By this time, animal populations had grown sufficiently and had some sort of desire to deliver nitrogen to plants by means of hike of the leg?
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 3, Insightful) by c0lo on Tuesday May 29 2018, @06:46AM (4 children)
No animal can deliver (NH2)2CO by raising the leg if it doesn't ingest at first simple nitrogen compounds (and have their gut flora transform it in protein) or straight aminoacids/proteins from outside.
E.g. [cattlefacts.com.au]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2, Interesting) by anubi on Tuesday May 29 2018, @07:28AM (3 children)
Interesting about the nitrogen decline on the farm. I remember Grandpa importing pretty good quantities of Ammonium Nitrate, Ammonium Sulphate, "SuperPhosphate", and sulphur... yes, pellets of plain old yellow sulphur, to plow into his field. There is even a farm supply store down the street from me which sells 50 pound bags of sulphur for less than $20, and my plants seem to love the stuff. Since I have alkali soil, my understanding is the soil bacteria convert the sulphur into sulphuric acid, which drops the soil pH into the range where the plants can get to the other soil nutrients. I try to run my place around pH 6.2 to 6.5 or so... very slightly acidic.... it was hovering about 8 when I moved in, and nothing seemed to grow worth a hoot. It took several years for the sulphur to work though... don't sprinkle it on, come back in a month and expect it to have done something. And the nitrogen sure helps the compost heap rot faster.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 3, Interesting) by c0lo on Tuesday May 29 2018, @07:49AM (2 children)
Ammonium Sulphate will do turn the acidity quicker than plain sulphur - the ammonium ion gets consumed quick by plants (with lots on strong light, with copious UV like we have in Australia, the ammonium on the top of the soil will be lost by outgasing) letting the sulphate one in the soil to increase the acidity.
As with any "quick" solution, it's pretty easy to overdo it - the loss of ammonium ion is not immediate.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 1) by anubi on Tuesday May 29 2018, @10:09AM (1 child)
One thing I have where I live is "adobe" soil... stuff seems to set up like concrete. Really hard to dig in. Seems like even the earthworms can't work in it unless its been raining for several weeks.
It seems that as I have been slowly increasing soil acidity, this seems to be breaking up, but so far I drop down two inches and again hit really hard soil.
Think if I keep the soil above acidic, it will work its way down so my plants can get a decent rooting? My neighbor recently had a well-drilling outfit come over so he could plant an avocado tree, and he had the well driller sink him a hole to the water table with the intention that if he gets the tree to start its roots straight down, they won't fan so much right below the top, and leave his tree vulnerable to being blown over during Santa Ana wind conditions.
I understand that alkali soil will lock up minerals as insoluble carbonates, but slightly acidic conditions will release the minerals, and will disintegrate the concrete-like structure that makes the soil so inpenetrable.
I know I am a little off topic here, but its farming, and I think you probably have seen stuff like this. Me, I'm running on gut feeling about what to do. I'm ok on book learnin' but sorely lacking in field experience.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 3, Informative) by c0lo on Tuesday May 29 2018, @11:15AM
Same experience with a plot I bought at countryside. About 100 years ago, it used to be eucalyptus forest, then transformed in a grazing plot, but without too many amendments. The base rock is mainly quartz and in my case the pH is already at 6.5.
Without organic matter into the soil, the results will only go that much - see my case above.
And not all salts will be soluble - e.g. hydrated calcium sulphate (gypsum) is very weakly soluble even if its presence will improve a bit the water penetration.
As the pH improves, I'd suggest to try some green manure [wikipedia.org] cultures for a year or two - e.g. lucerne tends to develop deep roots (20 inches is not that unusual) and those will remain as organics in the soil for longer.
This one [wikipedia.org] if you feel the need for some trees around
See what you can find here [uniteddiversity.coop] - this one is a classic [uniteddiversity.coop], this one [uniteddiversity.coop] as well even if a bit outdated (there are some more recent authors that went deeper). See other things to read in the same permaculture folder.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 0, Flamebait) by aristarchus on Tuesday May 29 2018, @06:44AM (9 children)
Kind of like SoylentNews rejecting its most prolific submitters? Some of us are legumes, and some of us are not. If you continue to suppress the aristarchus, this site is doomed. Not a threat, just a fact. Look it up.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Tuesday May 29 2018, @06:53AM (2 children)
Umm... I don't quite feel that S/N needs supplements of nitrogen in the form of piss, magister.
How about a nice course of ethics, part 2 and beyond?
Here, an idea of extension: "relation between society ethics and economy type - a comparison between ethics in capitalism, social democracy and socialism" with an addendum of "Brief guide for the ethics-deficient alt-right and/or neonazi individuals"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 0, Offtopic) by aristarchus on Tuesday May 29 2018, @07:15AM (1 child)
Yes, Padewan, I was just working on the second installment of Ethics for Soylentils. But then my three or four pending submissions (one of them admittedly just whining) were summarily rejected, with this message:
I did not even know that JR had a STEM, or that he was any from of plant life. I will be more careful in the future.
Part two of Ethics for Soylentils is more aimed at the libertarians, making a deontological case for the existence of categorical imperatives, and the utter futility of subjectivist theories of value. Might be fun. We may even make into Hegelian critiques of bourgeoise ethics of "right", if we keep this up. But as it is, I am still being oppressed! Hey! See the violence inherent in the system! I'm being oppressed! You saw JR oppressing me, just then, right? This is what I am on about!
[Book of Monty Python and the Holy Grail,
chapterscene 23, verses 9-25. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eKIyVnoZDdQ [youtube.com] ](Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 29 2018, @08:41PM
To be honest, both of you guys tend to be assholes. Go get a room, or take it outside, or anywhere else but here. None of us is better of with you squabbling on this site.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by janrinok on Tuesday May 29 2018, @07:24AM (2 children)
No matter how much repetitive rubbish you submit, it doesn't make it any more attractive. I've just rejected 5 submissions related to the alt-right because none of them say anything new nor would any of them promote an intelligent and enlightening discussion. Why don't you submit them to a more appropriate site? Your acceptance rate of 7 stories out of 117 submissions should tell you something about the only topic that you seem to be able to write a submission on. We are not ignoring or suppressing the topic - but we have discussed it and there is nothing original in what you are offering.
(Score: 1, Offtopic) by aristarchus on Tuesday May 29 2018, @08:26AM (1 child)
Tell it to the TMB, janrinok. The Broad Brush is coming for SoylentNews. In fact, we are already painted, and only aristarchus is standing up for the side of reason. Continue, if you want to continue to kill the dream that was BuckFeta!
(Score: 2) by takyon on Tuesday May 29 2018, @09:50AM
Running the bulk of your alt-right related submissions would have run the site into the ground a long time ago. Even if we cared about the toxic subject matter, most of them are heavily biased or about worthless attention seekers. We don't need to know what Milo or Lauren are doing week to week.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Wednesday May 30 2018, @01:46AM (2 children)
Doesn't help when your submission carry no link any TFA [soylentnews.org]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by aristarchus on Wednesday May 30 2018, @02:50AM (1 child)
Ouch! How did that happen? Sabotage? or Paranoia? You pick. Re-submitted, not likely to be accepted, since the RDJT is journaling it, since it is the biggest cancellation since "The Apprentice"!!!!!!
(Score: 2) by aristarchus on Wednesday May 30 2018, @02:50AM
OH, and, thanks, c0lo!
(Score: 4, Insightful) by crafoo on Tuesday May 29 2018, @12:00PM (10 children)
No they didn't. Selective pressures over generations made some plants, living in their particular environment, less biologically viable if they maintained their ability to obtain their own nitrogen. The plants themselves did nothing. They either were less successful or not.
No they don't. Selective pressures made some plants develop traits that encouraged bacteria growth among their roots, and in other cases it did not. The plants themselves made no decision. Selective pressures made some things more biologically/reproductively viable for some plants given their environment.
I don't like the way this was written. It encourages an incorrect view of the mechanisms of life.
(Score: 3, Funny) by VLM on Tuesday May 29 2018, @01:14PM (2 children)
It also misses an analogy of the tragedy of the commons where everyone wants fixed nitrogen but it isn't energetically cheap so everyone would prefer someone else fix nitrogen. Luckily for whatever weird reasons some plant species are givers and others are takers. Which anthropomorphizes the whole thing as you dislike, but at least its an interesting analogy they missed.
Fixed nitrogen is such a PITA biochemically. Now you want a really offensive analogy, its energetically expensive to create, valuable, in demand, constantly being traded around, its kinda like a bitcoin currency of plants.
(Score: 3, Funny) by Wootery on Tuesday May 29 2018, @01:20PM (1 child)
So... I should buy, right?
(Score: 2) by VLM on Tuesday May 29 2018, @01:46PM
Totally. Unplug that mining rig, plug in a miniaturized lab-scale Haber process plant, and hodl your nitrogen. Its all an unconstitutional USDA plot, you know.
One of those infinite spare time things, like outta an "Amateur Scientist" column from the 60s, make a tabletop Haber process plant using my metal lathe and milling machine and a lot of guts. Someone had to do it back in the R+D days, obviously...
(Score: 2) by Wootery on Tuesday May 29 2018, @01:16PM
For the reader who already has a reasonable understanding of evolution by natural selection, it's not so bad.
Dawkins wrote about this in The Selfish Gene, and his position was that this sort of imprecise language isn't a problem provided we can always translate our statements back into the precise and correct terminology. The moment you find that you cannot, you know your reasoning has gone astray.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by meustrus on Tuesday May 29 2018, @04:11PM (5 children)
I'd like to support your pedantry, but my eyes nearly rolled into the back of my skull trying to read your corrections. The same thing happens trying to describe how well an organism is adapted to a particular purpose without saying they were "designed" or that they "evolved" for that purpose (neither of which is entirely accurate and both of which are going to unnecessarily turn away part of the audience).
We need better easily understandable language to describe how the plants became adapted to fix nitrogen, stop fixing nitrogen, or any other trait. Preferably, this language would accurately describe adaptation without asserting how it happened.
If there isn't at least one reference or primary source, it's not +1 Informative. Maybe the underused +1 Interesting?
(Score: 3, Informative) by HiThere on Tuesday May 29 2018, @06:32PM (4 children)
Unfortunately, the correct language is mathematical. It would be as friendly to most people as a block of assembler code to an unknown CPU. Even experts have trouble following the feedback loops involved. And even Haldane got things wrong because of that.
People tend to think in terms of causal agents. Thinking any other way is more difficult, and leads to more mistakes, even though that's often only approximately correct.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by meustrus on Wednesday May 30 2018, @04:53PM (3 children)
Does that mean that for some definition of "god", talking about adapted traits as "god's design" would actually be the best balance between correctness and effective communicability? Such a god would be based on the whole of the Earth's ecosystem, which is closer to Gaia than Yhwh.
If there isn't at least one reference or primary source, it's not +1 Informative. Maybe the underused +1 Interesting?
(Score: 3, Insightful) by HiThere on Wednesday May 30 2018, @06:19PM (2 children)
No. But it does mean that talking about evolution as design is the easiest way to think about it. You don't need to specify the designer. I suppose you could go all Deist, but that implies a degree of predeterminism that isn't proven correct. (It's one possible interpretation of quantum mechanics, but no more certain than any of the other valid ones.)
In fact, in a sense talking about it as design is correct, but explaining that sense takes a long time, and a lot of closely reasoned argument. And it depends on a particular definition of what it means for something to be designed which allows conscious intent to be absent. So you could say that the industrial pollution in Scotland designed the domination of dark winged moths over light winged moths. This is clearly an unusual meaning of design, so I started off this paragraph with "in a sense".
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by meustrus on Wednesday May 30 2018, @07:33PM (1 child)
I absolutely agree. The #1 problem with so-called "intelligent design", in my opinion, is the "intelligent" part. It implies intent where often there is none, like in your moth example. That further implies that we can understand the outcome by assigning human intelligence and motivation to the designer, which isn't even true if the designer is God. But worst of all, it implies that the actual result is the most correct outcome, with anything else being an unnatural abomination.
Do you have any ideas for how to easily talk about adaptation as "design" while avoiding these problematic implications?
If there isn't at least one reference or primary source, it's not +1 Informative. Maybe the underused +1 Interesting?
(Score: 3, Informative) by HiThere on Thursday May 31 2018, @06:26AM
The only way I can think of that "sort of" works, if you don't want to get verbose about what you mean be design, is the Deist approach. There is an interpretation of quantum mechanics that is consistent with that, but it sure isn't congenial to my thought processes. But when I think about evolution in words, "designed" automatically pops up. Dawkins created the word "designoid" to use in that circumstance, but I can't slip it into my thought processes, even though they (the thoughts) can be translated back into evolutionarily acceptable arguments. (Well, not really, because I don't really have the math, and I doubt that anyone can actually think that way, but close, close.)
Unfortunately, evolution is "best expressed" as a multiplayer game with a very large number of players, partially hidden information, and where the different players get different payoffs in the same situation. Even simplified this math is formidable...and well beyond me. So, for example, you can't really talk about the evolution of an eye as separated from the rest of the circumstances. Even specialists in evolution do, though, because nobody can handle the real math. And there's probably a bit a chaos in there to, so that even slightly different initial conditions would yield a different result, though there are certainly basins of attraction. And that leaves out various truly random occurrences such a mutations, or giant meteor impacts.
So everyone oversimplifies evolution, because there isn't any other way to even try to handle it. When I say "an eye is designed to see with" I'm talking about the same designer that "it's raining" uses as the actor. It's not valid logically, but it's valid linguistically.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 29 2018, @01:29PM
I guess it may be similar to our digestive system. We need guts bacteria, and we harbor them, our guts are adjusted to welcome bacteria, but sometimes, adversarial microbes get inside and make us ill. Symbiosis is not hardwired enough. I guess that plants with nodules can get infected with some kind of pathogens from soil more easily than plants without nodules. If there is large enough nitrate content in the soil, nodules are just a liability, and evolution pressure goes against keeping them.
(Score: 2) by richtopia on Tuesday May 29 2018, @02:22PM
A few gaps to be solved, but from the article it sounds like we identified the gene which enabled plants to fix nitrogen. The next question is it possible to turn it back on? Something cheap that can over winter similar to how farmers will plant fields of Crimson Clover in preparation for the spring.