It sounds like fiction from “The Lord of the Rings.” An enemy begins attacking a tree. The tree fends it off and sends out a warning message. Nearby trees set up their own defenses. The forest is saved.
But you don’t need a magical Ent from J.R.R. Tolkien’s world to conjure this scene. Real trees on our Earth can communicate and warn each other of danger — and a new study explains how.
“Many people now want less preserved food. They want natural food, which is seen as healthier and better for us,” says Jakobsen. The downside is an increased risk of microbial contamination. But natural “barriers” can curb bacteria from proliferating without using unhealthy chemicals. For example, the team found that when raw fish slices are placed atop vinegar rice—the type of rice normally served with sushi—the bacteria grow more slowly, because they don’t like the acidic environment. And of course, the longer a packed sushi lunch sits on the shelf, the more time these bacteria have to grow.
Ingenious storylines, intriguing suspects, insular British settings and isolated manors recall Christie’s trademarks and display Hannah’s fidelity to her revered predecessor. But allegiance without innovation would qualify as nothing more than facile derivation, and Hannah is too talented, too intelligent and too creative to settle for easy achievement.
“Hercule Poirot’s Silent Night” exemplifies Hannah’s power. Revel in her work, test your own little grey CQ cells and bless the joy to the world that she delivers to devotees of detective whodunits.
Now we are moving beyond Einstein’s equations on cosmology and physics into a new unknown. We must be certain about uncertainty and explore the new. I would give this book to anyone, young and old, interested in thinking, science and literature. His reflections on how Shakespeare and Dante considered first and last things are a joy. His book is a work of literature itself.