- Wimbledon’s Grass Leaving Some Players Feeling ‘Bad at Tennis’ The New York Times
- Where Does Liam Broady Beating Casper Ruud Rank Among The Great British Wimbledon Upsets? Last Word On Sports
- ‘I’ve Already Won £80K’- Moments After His Wimbledon Loss, 29YO Home Favorite Liam Broady Makes a Quirky Confession to Calm Her Anxious Mother Down EssentiallySports
- Liam Broady’s Wimbledon run ends on bad day for men’s British tennis beIN SPORTS
- Liam Broady with Another Fairy Tale Run at Wimbledon Last Word On Sports
- View Full Coverage on Google News
Tag Archives: grass
Wimbledon: Demonstrators dragged off after dumping confetti on grass courts to protest fossil fuels – Yahoo Sports
- Wimbledon: Demonstrators dragged off after dumping confetti on grass courts to protest fossil fuels Yahoo Sports
- Just Stop Oil protesters interrupt play at Wimbledon The Times and The Sunday Times
- Controversy Erupts at Wimbledon as ‘Circus’-Like Scenes Unfold as Fans React in Dismay to Protestors Turning Grass to Clay in Bizarre Scenes EssentiallySports
- Just Stop Oil storms Wimbledon court with orange confetti The Telegraph
- Environmental activists disrupt play at Wimbledon during match on Court 18 and get arrested KTVN
- View Full Coverage on Google News
Fake Fires and Cloned Grass: Real Estate Photography Tricks Revealed
A video has revealed the tricks that real estate photographers use to make properties look better than they do in reality.
Guardian Australia picture editor, Carly Earl, went to a property in Sydney and took photos of the same location alongside a professional real estate photographer to show the vast differences the two captured.
In the first example, a photo of a pool was taken in which the real estate photo editors had increased the saturation of the trees and sky “to make it a lot sunnier and vibrant than it actually is.”
“The other thing you’d notice is that it appears to be Photoshopped in the fact that there are no leaves at the bottom of the pool anymore and that definitely makes it feel a lot more inviting,” says Earl.
Fake Fires
In the next example, a shot of a living room is shown where the professional had filled in the shadows as well as shooting on a wider lens to make the room appear larger than it is.
“This is something they generally do in smaller houses to create the feeling of space,” explains Earl.
Perhaps most shockingly, the professional had Photoshopped a fire burning where there was none before.
“In my image, there was definitely not a roaring fire going on at that point, but they add this in order to showcase that warmth and to get that feeling of being snuggly in the lounge room,” explains Earl.
For the exterior shot of the property, the professional had filled in the lawn where it was mainly mud.
“The whole image looks really bright, it looks like there’s grass all up the driveway when we know there actually isn’t,” says Earl.
And like the pool photo, the editors had increased the saturation to make the greens and the sky look extra punchy.
Accurate Information
According to the accompanying article on The Guardian website, fair trading rules in Australia dictate that real estate photographs must convey “accurate information” for the buyer or renter.
An image can mislead if it “leads to a reasonable belief in the existence of a state of affairs that does not, in fact, exist” or by “acts of silence or omission” — like including a picture of a beach view where there is none. The maximum penalty for breaking Australian Consumer Law is $1.1m for a company.
A picture of a burning fireplace where there was none is OK according to Hayden Groves, Real Estate Institute of Australia President, so long as the fireplace can have a fire.
The anonymous photographer who Guardian Australia hired says that she regularly uses two exposures for an outside shot and maybe three or four inside to make a well-balanced composite.
“Lots of places can look really, really shabby. They’re falling apart. But with the right frames and the right lighting, we can take the photos, always,” the photographer adds.
The World’s Largest Plant Is a Self-Cloning Sea Grass in Australia
In Shark Bay, off the westernmost tip of Australia, meadows of sea grass carpet the ocean floor, undulating in the current and being nibbled on by dugongs, cousins of Florida manatees. A new study revealed something unexpected about those sea grasses: Many of them are the same individual plant that has been cloning itself for about 4,500 years.
The sea grass — not to be confused with seaweed, which is an algae — is Poseidon’s ribbon weed, or Posidonia australis. Jane Edgeloe, a University of Western Australia Ph.D. candidate and an author of the paper, likens its appearance to a spring onion.
Ms. Edgeloe and her colleagues made their discovery as part of a genetic survey of Posidonia grasses in different areas of Shark Bay, where she SCUBA dived in the shallow waters and pulled up shoots of Posidonia from 10 different meadows. On land, the researchers analyzed and compared the grasses’ DNA.
They published their results Wednesday in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B. It turned out the DNA of many of those seemingly different plants was virtually identical. Elizabeth Sinclair, also of the University of Western Australia and an author of the study, recalled excitement in the lab when she realized: “It’s only one plant.”
While some of Shark Bay’s northern meadows reproduce sexually, the rest of its Posidonia clones itself by creating new shoots that branch off from its root system. Even separate meadows were genetically identical, indicating that they were once connected by now-severed roots. Based on how old the bay is and how quickly sea grasses grow, the researchers surmise that the Shark Bay clone is about 4,500 years old.
In addition to being a clone, the grass seems to be a hybrid of two species and possesses two complete sets of chromosomes, a condition called polyploidy. While polyploidy can be lethal for animal embryos, it can be harmless or even helpful in plants. However, it can result in sterility: Much of the clonal grass does not flower and can only reproduce by continuing to clone itself.
This combination of extra genes and cloning might have been the key to the grass’s survival during a period of ancient climate change: Cloning made reproduction easier because the grass did not have to bother finding a mate. The extra genes could have given the sea grass “the ability to cope with a broad range of conditions, which is a great thing in climate change,” Dr. Sinclair said.
The Shark Bay Posidonia did not just survive this ancient climate shift, it spread. And spread. And spread some more.
Today, it is arguably the world’s largest living organism. Utah’s Pando, a clonal colony of 40,000 aspen trees connected by their roots, is the reigning “largest individual plant,” covering an area bigger than 80 football fields. The Humongous Fungus is even bigger, weaving a web of mycelial tendrils underground and beneath tree bark across 3.5 square miles of Oregon’s Malheur National Forest. By comparison, the Shark Bay clonal sea grass is 77 square miles, about the size of Cincinnati.
While the Shark Bay clone has reached enormous size and age, the question has remained of whether it would be able to withstand modern climate change. Julia Harenčár, a Ph.D. candidate at the University of California, Santa Cruz who was not involved with the study, praised the project for “trying to understand in greater detail why polyploidy has been advantageous at these big environmental flexion points,” which could offer lessons for the climate crisis.
Sea grasses are particularly important to protect, says Marlene Jahnke, a biologist at the University of Gothenburg in Sweden who also was not involved with the study. She added, “they are comparable to coral reefs, really, in the sense that they host a lot of other species,” along with purifying water and storing atmospheric carbon.
While the stakes are high for sea grasses, Dr. Sinclair remains hopeful that the Shark Bay Posidonia will maintain its status as the world’s largest living plant: While it was harmed in a heat wave from 2010 to 2011, “we’ve seen a lot more increase in shoots, a lot more leaf density, so it’s recovering,” she said. “I think this polyploid is actually probably in a pretty good state in terms of persisting.”
Boulder crews contain grass fire in south Boulder – Boulder Daily Camera
Boulder fire crews were able to quickly respond to a fire south of the NCAR Fire burn area and contain it.
Officials said the fire was estimated at about 0.6 acres.
Radio traffic indicated the fire, which was being called the North Shanahan Ridge Fire, had “high spread potential” as it burned through grass at around 4 p.m.
But by 5 p.m, Boulder Fire-Rescue tweeted that the main fire had been extinguished, and crews were working on securing the perimeter of the fire and putting out hot spots.
Boulder Fire-Rescue spokeswoman Marya Washburn confirmed the fire was a new start near the north fork of the Shanahan Trailhead south of the NCAR Fire burn area.
There are no evacuation orders for homes at this time, but officials are closing and evacuating all trails in the area.
Boulder County is currently under a red flag warning due to high winds presenting dangerous fire conditions.
Officials have not yet commented on the possible cause of the fire.
This story will be updated.