“吸血鬼树”何处吸取养分？盘点2019年最怪异10项科学研究_BEC初级作文

“吸血鬼树”何处吸取养分？盘点2019年最怪异10项科学研究

carnivorous [kɑːˈnɪvərəs]：adj.食肉的；肉食性的

你的舌头能像鼻子一样闻气味

No, this doesn't mean you should stop and lick the flowers — but our senses of taste and smell may be even more entangled than we once thought. In a study published in April, scientists exposed lab-grown human taste cells to odor molecules and found that the cells reacted to scents in the same way that the smell-sensing cells in our nasal passages do. When an odor molecule touched down on one of the taste cells, the chemical plugged into a receptor on the cell's surface. In the body, the interaction between the odor and receptor would normally trigger a chain reaction inside the cell, causing it to shoot off a message to the brain.

不，这并不意味着你应该停下来舔一舔花朵来闻香味——不过，我们的味觉与嗅觉之间的关联可能比我们以前想象的更加复杂。在今年4月发表的一项研究中，科学家把实验室培育的人类味觉细胞暴露在气味分子中，结果发现这些细胞对气味的反应与我们鼻腔中嗅觉细胞的反应一样。当一个气味分子接触到一个味觉细胞时，这种化学物质会进入到细胞表面的受体中。在人体内，气味与受体之间的相互作用通常会触发细胞内的连锁反应，导致细胞向大脑发出信号。

吸血鬼树从邻居那里吸取养分

Deep in a New Zealand forest, an unassuming tree stump clings to the roots of nearby conifers, sucking up their hard-earned water and nutrients. Scientists stumbled upon this botanical vampire while hiking in West Auckland, New Zealand, as they were surrounded by hundreds of kauri trees — a species of conifer that can grow up to 165 feet (50 meters) tall. During the day, the towering trees shuttled water from their roots into their leaves. By night, the squat stump pumped leftover water and nutrients from its neighbors' roots into its own. "Possibly we are not really dealing with trees as individuals, but with the forest as a superorganism," study co-author Sebastian Leuzinger, an associate professor at the Auckland University of Technology in New Zealand, said in a statement.