News tagged with decomposition
Colorful leaves: New chlorophyll decomposition product found in Norway maple
(PhysOrg.com) -- Autumn is right around the corner in the northern hemisphere and the leaves are beginning to change color. The cause of this wonderful display of reds, yellows, and oranges is the decomposition ...
Oct 10, 2011 |
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Researchers discover two early stages of carbon nanotube growth
Boston College researchers have discovered two early-stage phases of carbon nanotube growth during plasma enhanced chemical vapor deposition, finding a disorderly tangle of tube growth that ultimately yields to orderly rows ...
Nanotechnology / Nanomaterials
Oct 03, 2011 |
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How the N2O greenhouse gas is decomposed
Nitrous oxide (N2O) is a harmful climate gas. Its effect as a greenhouse gas is 300 times stronger than that of carbon dioxide. Nitrous oxide destroys the ozone layer. In industrial agriculture, it is generated ...
Aug 22, 2011 |
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Microbiologist discovers new super-preservative
(PhysOrg.com) -- In one of those freak accidents that sometimes occur in science, where someone is looking at something for one purpose and finds another for it, Dan O'Sullivan has found a use for a byproduct of harmless ...
Aug 17, 2011 |
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Hydrogen may be key to growth of high-quality graphene
A new approach to growing graphene greatly reduces problems that have plagued researchers in the past and clears a path to the crystalline form of graphite's use in sophisticated electronic devices of tomorrow.
Nanotechnology / Nanomaterials
Jul 18, 2011 |
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Green chemistry: Getting nickel back
In Southeast Asia, palm oil is used both as an ingredient for cooking and a raw material for biodiesel production. To stabilize the oil against decomposition, it has to be hydrogenated in the presence of a ...
Jul 07, 2011 |
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Wetlands are bad and good news for Arctic warming: study
(PhysOrg.com) -- Seasonal wetlands in Arctic regions will initially persist longer due to global warming but then shrink as temperatures rise further, according to new study into how climate change will progress this century.
Space & Earth / Earth Sciences
Jun 07, 2011 |
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Simple approach could clean up oil remaining from Exxon Valdez spill
Traces of crude oil that linger on the shores of Alaska's Prince William Sound after the Exxon Valdez oil spill remain highly biodegradable, despite almost 20 years of weathering and decomposition, scientists are reporting ...
Sep 29, 2010 |
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The fungus among us: A new way of decomposing BPA-containing plastic
Just as cooking helps people digest food, pretreating polycarbonate plastic — source of a huge environmental headache because of its bisphenol A (BPA) content — may be the key to disposing of the waste in ...
Jul 28, 2010 |
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Don't Compare Bananas to Pears
(PhysOrg.com) -- Yellow leaves on banana plants give off a blue glow when viewed under UV light. This luminescence comes from decomposition products of chlorophyll, the substance that makes leaves green.
Jun 23, 2010 |
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Keeping nitrogen in the soil and out of the water
(PhysOrg.com) -- Nitrogen is important for optimal crop production, but can be lost to leaching as nitrate. High amounts of nitrate in drinking water can be harmful to people, especially infants and pregnant women. While ...
Jun 11, 2010 |
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Measuring the stability of organic waste
The number of waste treatment facilities using biological processes to biodegrade waste has been increasing over the years. These installations receive municipal and industrial organic wastes with the common main goal of ...
Mar 29, 2010 |
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Advanced Analysis Tools Aim to Reduce Uncertainty in Climate Data
Pacific Northwest National Laboratory researchers have developed a new, advanced data-reduction method -- Stochastic Proper Orthogonal Decomposition -- that will greatly improve the capability to deal with ...
Mar 26, 2010 |
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Novel studies of decomposition shed new light on our earliest fossil ancestry (w/ Video)
Decaying corpses are usually the domain of forensic scientists, but palaeontologists have discovered that studying rotting fish sheds new light on our earliest ancestry.
Other Sciences / Archaeology & Fossils
Jan 31, 2010 |
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The fungus among us: An eco-friendly way of decomposing BPA-containing plastic
Just as cooking helps people digest food, pretreating polycarbonate plastic — source of a huge environmental headache because of its bisphenol A (BPA) content — may be the key to disposing of the waste in ...
Jan 27, 2010 |
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Decomposition
Decomposition (or rotting) is the process by which organic material is broken down into simpler forms of matter. The process is essential for recycling the finite matter that occupies physical space in the biome. Bodies of living organisms begin to decompose shortly after death. Although no two organisms decompose in the same way, they all undergo the same sequential stages of decomposition. The science which studies decomposition is generally referred to as taphonomy from the Greek word taphos, meaning tomb.
One can differentiate abiotic and biotic decomposition or biodegradation. The former one means "degradation of a substance by chemical or physical processes, eg hydrolysis). The latter one means "the metabolic breakdown of materials into simpler components by living organisms", typically by microorganisms.
For more information about Decomposition, read the full article at
Wikipedia.
This text uses material from Wikipedia and is available under the GNU Free Documentation License.
