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Tension wood: A 'muscle' that can both bend and straighten plants
- zekefoppa 1mo agoImo the title here buries the lede: we've known that trees form tension wood in response to external stress. This study claims to find that trees will form it in response only to their own curvature, independent of external factors even including gravity. They compare it to proprioception. That's neat!
- N_Lens 1mo agoLet me take this opportunity to remind HN readers - Posture & Hydration Check!
- emerongi 1mo agoOr: drink when you feel thirsty and change your position when your back gets tired.
- Zarathustra30 1mo agoSome folks' interrupts are buggy, so they resort to polling.
- layla5alive 1mo agoADHD hyperfocus disables most interrupts.. very task efficient, at the expense of all else :/
- namibj 1mo agoYeah but you can train to perceive the threshold of impending over-hydration and adjust your behavior trigger thresholds to bump up against that more than you bump up against clearly perceived acute dehydration ("very much obviously clearly thirsty").
- deleted 1mo ago[deleted]
- culi 1mo agoYes, the science has moved to "drink when you're thirsty" a long time ago and it's annoying how many people believe drinking 3 liters of water per day is a key tenant of human health. (most of) Our bodies are quite good at telling us when we should drink more water. You should never be forcing yourself to drink https://newsnetwork.mayoclinic.org/discussion/mayo-clinic-minute-drink-to-thirst/ https://newsnetwork.mayoclinic.org/discussion/mayo-clinic-mi... https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/313389 https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/313389 All that being said, I'm not sure GP was necessarily endorsing the idea that you should drink a certain amount of water a day. I read it as a suggestion to pull away from the screen and listen to your body
- dyauspitr 1mo agoBut why? unless it’s a copious amount of water like a gallon or more in an hour or two or something insane like that what is the problem with drinking water? I would assume it would just have positive effects.
- culi 1mo ago> "You can become dehydrated if you take in too little. And you can actually cause problems, such as exercise-induced low sodium or hyponatremia, if you take in too much," says Dr. Sara Filmalter, a Mayo Clinic family physician. "So the general rule of thumb at this point among physicians is to drink to thirst."
- chrisweekly 1mo agoI've often read (sorry, no citations handy) that by the time you notice / feel thirst, you've already been dehydrated for some time. And chronic (mild) dehydration is much more common than hyponatremia. I'll always err on the side of drinking water whenever it occurs to me (and deliberately starting my morning with 16-20oz on waking) instead of waiting to feel thirsty.
- namibj 1mo ago
- IAmBroom 1mo agoI had a girlfriend who was chronically underhydrated, and for her a drinking regimen was actually useful. (Unfortunately, she learned this after we broke up... Her dehydration actually reduced her sex drive, because: low lubrication.) I only know one example, however; for most of us drinking enough is pretty easy. As for the other end: one particularly hot summer at Pennsic (two-week camping event), we had people who went to the emergency room for low salt levels due to drinking too much water without electrolytes. Turns out that it IS what your body craves - just not plants, so much.
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- mdp2021 1mo agoYou are reminding to this very community the notion of cybernetics.
- culi 1mo agoTrees "calculate" which branches to drop based on data they gather as they grow. A competent and experienced arborist knows how to read the tree and simply safely cut off the branches that the tree was already intending to drop so that it doesn't fall on your house or whatever. Inexperienced arborists often ignore this key dendrology fact and may totally butcher your tree. In the process they can create an even larger risk of a tree falling over onto your house during a storm It's called cladoptosis (basically self-pruning) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cladoptosis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cladoptosis EDIT: since I'm on the topic of bad tree trimming, NEVER TOP YOUR TREES https://www.arborday.org/tree-resources/dont-top-trees https://www.arborday.org/tree-resources/dont-top-trees
- deleted 1mo ago[deleted]
- vlyan 1mo ago>NEVER TOP YOUR TREES they do it where I live because the branches bang against apartments' windows when it's windy. I don't think there's another low-maintenance solution.
- culi 1mo agoCoppicing or pollarding are both well-historied techniques that can be used to keep trees growing short. They differ significantly from topping and require a lot of expertise. They also have to be started when the tree is young
- ajb 1mo agoThis is often not useful advice, as it is common to acquire responsibility for a tree than has been badly managed. The GP's link actually gives a solution for this case: pruning more accurately over a slightly longer period. More generally, I've found as the maintainer of a building that while mainstream practices (of property generally, not specifically trees) often undershoot good practice, heritage techniques are often impractically expensive, and function more as a status signalling mechanism than really as a way of doing better. Even more generally, economy-wide; there is a tendency to criticise the mainstream but then promote expensive, semi-artisanal products and services, which while better, simply offer an escape valve to pressure for reform. Better techniques can only benefit the populace as a whole if they are cost reduced under the discipline of serving the mass market, not just offered as a premium version for the well-to-do.
- fahrvrgnugen 1mo ago[dead]
- fr2029 1mo ago[dead]
- bookofjoe 1mo agohttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49586189 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49586189
- devhunt-org 1mo agoDoes this mean trees can actually “sense” when they're growing in the wrong direction?
- phyzome 1mo agoI don't know what phys.org's "security check" entails but it froze my browser repeatedly for up to 30 seconds at a time. If that's you as well, here's a different way to read it: https://web.archive.org/web/20260906021625/https://phys.org/news/2026-09-trees-muscle-posture-newly-role.html https://web.archive.org/web/20260906021625/https://phys.org/...