Two of India’s biggest film stars one an aging icon, the other the heart throb of a younger generation are battling for popular approval, their rivalry revealed by subtle digs. Amitabh Bachchan, 64, has ruled the Indian box office for decades, and Shah Rukh Khan, 41, is the reigning star and possibly Bollywood’s highest-paid actor. While the country’s celebrity-gossip journalists have compared their star power, fan following and box office fortunes, the two actors had refused...

Tree growth in temperate forests is driven by availability of water and not by temperature as previously thought, new research suggests.

In a first study of its kind, scientists looked at the survival mechanisms of cone-bearing trees such as pines and firs, in the harshly dry pre-monsoon seasons of the Santa Catalina Mountains near Tucson, Arizona. The annual Arizona http://www.livescience.com/forcesofnature/060608_ap_monsoon_formation.html season beginning in early July and lasting for about two months normally follows a severe dry spell.

Previous models of typical western or temperate forests consider temperature to be the main driver of respiration and http://www.livescience.com/animalworld/050622_extreme_creature.html, the process by which plants convert sunlight, carbon dioxide, and water into food.

My research indicated that for the semi-arid forest that is not the case. It is driven by when water is available, in that the roots do not freeze and thus as soon as the soil moisture is available, whether winter or summer, they will turn on their photosynthetic processes, said lead study author Constance Brown, a researcher at Indiana University. Conversely, during the pre-monsoon drought period, trees will shut down or severely curtail photosynthesis, she said.

This mechanism is different from cacti, which have adapted to http://www.livescience.com/othernews/060724_mm_cacti_survive.html in hot and arid environments.

The cacti ecosystem is at a much lower elevation, and the question of water- versus temperature-driven is not an issue in their photosynthetic processes, Brown told LiveScience. They only grow up to a certain elevation dictated by temperature and survive by their ability to conserve and utilize water in the semiarid environment.

The data, collected between June 2002 and December 2004, show that the trees in the predominately Douglas fir and pine forest have evolved the ability to shut down to a near-death state during dry spells, then flourish when it rains.

The results of the study will be detailed in the April issue of the Journal of Arid Environments. 2006 LiveScience.com. All rights reserved.

The Tears of the Black Tiger. Directed by Wisit Sasanatieng (Thailand) There may be crazier movies than “The Tears of the Black Tiger,” Wisit Sasanatieng’s Thai cowboy melodrama of betrayal and forbidden love, but I can’t think of any that is quite so mad about its own craziness. What is most startling is not Sasanatieng’s compulsive, fetishistic assembly of bits and pieces of the movie past; this kind of pastiche has, over the past decade and a half, gone from...

NEW YORK: Bid by founding family rejected at Cablevision The Dolan family, which founded Cablevision Systems, has failed in its second attempt to buy the New York cable television company. A panel of directors late Tuesday turned down the family’s sweetened $30-a-share offer, worth $8.9 billion, after a previous effort to buy the company, which also owns the New York Knicks and Madison Square Garden, was dropped in October 2005. The panel’s action is a setback for Charles...

Tree growth in temperate forests is driven by availability of water and not by temperature as previously thought, new research suggests.

In a first study of its kind, scientists looked at the survival mechanisms of cone-bearing trees such as pines and firs, in the harshly dry pre-monsoon seasons of the Santa Catalina Mountains near Tucson, Arizona. The annual Arizona http://www.livescience.com/forcesofnature/060608_ap_monsoon_formation.html season beginning in early July and lasting for about two months normally follows a severe dry spell.

Previous models of typical western or temperate forests consider temperature to be the main driver of respiration and http://www.livescience.com/animalworld/050622_extreme_creature.html, the process by which plants convert sunlight, carbon dioxide, and water into food.

My research indicated that for the semi-arid forest that is not the case. It is driven by when water is available, in that the roots do not freeze and thus as soon as the soil moisture is available, whether winter or summer, they will turn on their photosynthetic processes, said lead study author Constance Brown, a researcher at Indiana University. Conversely, during the pre-monsoon drought period, trees will shut down or severely curtail photosynthesis, she said.

This mechanism is different from cacti, which have adapted to http://www.livescience.com/othernews/060724_mm_cacti_survive.html in hot and arid environments.

The cacti ecosystem is at a much lower elevation, and the question of water- versus temperature-driven is not an issue in their photosynthetic processes, Brown told LiveScience. They only grow up to a certain elevation dictated by temperature and survive by their ability to conserve and utilize water in the semiarid environment.

The data, collected between June 2002 and December 2004, show that the trees in the predominately Douglas fir and pine forest have evolved the ability to shut down to a near-death state during dry spells, then flourish when it rains.

The results of the study will be detailed in the April issue of the Journal of Arid Environments. 2006 LiveScience.com. All rights reserved.

SAO PAULO, Jan. 23 (UPI) — Mitsubishi motor company will debut its new flex-fuel car in Brazil this year, the company said in a statement Monday. The MiEV “flex-fuel” car — a vehicle that can run on either gasoline or a combination of ethanol and petroleum-based fuel — will be available in the United States by 2008, according to the carmakers. The choice of Brazil to launch Mitsubishi’s entry into the flex-fuel race makes sense considering Brazil is the...