PLANT CITY

May 06 2026HEALTH

Breathing in Secondhand Smoke Outside: How Easy Is It to Avoid?

City sidewalks and parks often have special spots where people can light up. These areas are meant to keep smokers away from indoor spaces, but they might not protect everyone nearby. Studies show that secondhand smoke can travel through the air, even outside. Yet most research focuses on how much s

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May 05 2026LIFESTYLE

Easy Snacking: Simple Spiced Nuts and Seeds

Plant-based eating seems like a modern trend, but Linda McCartney was pushing this idea decades ago. Back in the 80s and 90s, finding plant-based ingredients wasn’t as easy as it is today. Now, stores carry more options, and farmers’ markets make fresh, seasonal eating simpler. Nuts and seeds are gr

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Apr 18 2026SCIENCE

Plant Cells Use a Biochemical “Switch” to Decide When to Grow and Flower

Plants face changing weather every day, so they must turn short‑term stress into lasting growth plans. A new idea calls this process an “epigenetic set‑point, ” where the structure of DNA and its associated proteins works like a smart switch. The switch gathers two kinds of signals: the plant’s ener

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Apr 18 2026SCIENCE

Leaves That Leak: How Plants Manage Water When Stomata Shut

Plants close their tiny pores, called stomata, to keep water from escaping during dry spells. Even then, a small amount of moisture still drips out – this is called minimum conductance or gmin. Scientists measured gmin in 101 different plant species, ranging from ferns to flowering trees, and found

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Apr 15 2026SCIENCE

Plant Defender Targeted by Bacterial Trick

Plants rely on surface sensors to spot invading bacteria. One key sensor is called FLS2. The cell keeps the right amount of this protein on its surface by using an internal transport system. A plant protein named PRA1. F3 helps FLS2 reach the surface. When PRA1. F3 works well, many FLS2 molecules a

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Apr 07 2026HEALTH

How Plant Compounds Could Be the Secret to Better Health

Plants contain tiny molecules called saponins that do more than just add a bitter taste to foods like soybeans or ginseng. These compounds have caught scientists' attention because they can tweak a crucial cell signaling system called PI3K/Akt. This system acts like a control panel for how cells han

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Mar 27 2026CRIME

Jersey City Takes Action Against Unlicensed Smoke Shops

City officials in Jersey City have taken decisive steps to curb unlicensed smoke shops that are operating without proper permits. Five businesses were shut down after a coordinated effort by the local police and federal partners, which also led to several arrests. The crackdown followed complaints f

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Feb 17 2026CRIME

New Chicago Dungeon Under Scrutiny

City Hall has moved to pause a business that operates as a “sex dungeon” while officials decide how it fits into the city’s rules. The shutdown comes after a past case involving a woman who ran a high‑end brothel that attracted thousands of clients and earned over a million dollars. That woman, know

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Feb 15 2026SCIENCE

The Secret Language of Plant Immunity

Plants have a clever chemical called salicylic acid that acts like an alarm system when attackers arrive. In the common lab plant Arabidopsis, scientists first mapped out how this alarm works: a special route called the isochorismate pathway makes salicylic acid, proteins named NPR bind to it, an

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Feb 15 2026SCIENCE

Plant Stress Defense: How Tiny Proteins Turn Off Key Enzymes

Plants use a tagging system called ubiquitination to control the life span of many proteins. In the case of phenylpropanoid production, which supplies important compounds like lignin and flavonoids, several enzymes are marked for destruction by this system. F‑box proteins act as the taggers. They

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