Aquilaria sinensis is a subtropical tree species known for producing agarwood, which is widely used in traditional medicines and renowned for its incense qualities. The Chi-Nan germplasm (CNG), a new chemotype of A. sinensis, has a high capacity for agarwood production and has recently been discovered in the wild, with extensive cultivation through grafting in China. However, the origin and genetic

Bamboo is widely distributed in the tropical, subtropical, and temperate regions worldwide and high productivity of bamboo forests are essential to the livelihoods of people. Small-molecule organic fertilizers, such as sodium gluconate (SG), are known to enhance crop growth and quality, their application in bamboo remains unstudied. Photosynthesis and its products are particularly important for bamboos

Bud sport is a natural phenomenon that provides valuable germplasm resources for crops. In this study, we report the first discovery of a bud sport material in Chinese pepper (Zanthoxylum bungeanum) found in the wild. We compared the physiological indicators of three above-ground tissues (buds, leaves, and stems) of two variants, designated ‘Green branch’ (the typical phenotype, serving as the control)

Castor (Ricinus communis L.) is an important industrial crop for energy oil production. Its pistillate line is critical for heterosis utilization, but its genetic and molecular mechanisms are still poorly understood. In this study, we performed a classical Mendelian genetic analysis on two groups of multi-generation castor populations, revealing that the completely pistillate lines are controlled by

The aim of the work was to evaluate the influence of three selected additives and their proportions on the sorption of ammonia on fly ash based geopolymer composites. The fly ash was alkali activated with a 10 M sodium hydroxide (NaOH) solution. Charred spent coffee grounds were used as an additive at 0.1 %, 1 %, 2 % and 3 % by weight of the dry ingredients. Hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) was used as a foaming

In response to the global anti-plastic movement, cellulose-based materials have gained attention as eco-friendly alternatives to plastics. However, their water and oil resistance often depend on non-biodegradable coatings or harmful fluorinated substances. This study proposes a green and efficient approach combining internal sizing and hot-press molding to produce fully biobased cellulose/chitosan

Drought-related forest mortality or dieback is increasing with climate warming. Previous studies have showed canopy height was one of the most important factors that related to forest survival and growth under drought, but the mechanism of this canopy height-dependency is still unclear. Based on standardized precipitation evapotranspiration index (SPEI) data, gross primary productivity (GPP) data and

Purpose In contemporary agriculture, achieving sustainable food production while preserving the environment is crucial. Traditional uniform rate nitrogen fertilization (URNF) often leads to over- or under-applications of N in fields with negative economic, agronomic and environmental issues. Variable rate nitrogen fertilization (VRNF) has shown promise in optimizing N application by accounting for

Correction to: Nature https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-024-07804-3 Published online 7 August 2024

In episode 3 of 'What's in a name' we look at what can be lost in translation when physicists try and name the unknown.

Letter to the Editor

Snippets from Nature’s past.

Letter to the Editor

Letter to the Editor

Letter to the Editor

The international community has a golden opportunity to start reining in the escalating, mostly ignored global burden of chronic kidney disease.

A trawl of job views and application data suggests jobseekers are looking abroad as the Trump administration’s cuts to science take hold.

‘There are no model countries’ when it comes to creating environments that encourage victims of sexual harassment to come forward, shows a study of one Swedish university.

Geopolitical events must not stall crucial research in the fastest-warming place on Earth.

Computer scientists and bioinformaticians address four key questions to help rookie coders to make the right choice.

A nugget-sized chunk of chicken is the biggest single piece of lab-grown meat to date. Plus, the up-and-coming world of stem-cell therapies and how cuts to US foreign aid could cause millions of deaths by 2040.

In this study, we tested the growth performance of Populus deltoides clones at two different geographic sites in China. Diameter at breast height (DBH) for 37 clones was measured through four consecutive years, and data were subjected to analysis using a linear mixed-effects model with heterogeneous errors. Subsequently, the best linear unbiased prediction (BLUP) values were analyzed with genotype

The thermoplastic starch/poly(butylene adipate-co-terephthalate) (TPS/PBAT) antibacterial active films incorporated with cinnamon essential oil (CEO) were fabricated through extrusion granulation and extrusion casting processes. CEO was introduced at extrusion granulation stage through four different processes: (1) blending CEO with TPS and PBAT (marked as P/T-C-1 film), (2) blending CEO with starch

Fifty years ago, a spacecraft designed and built by young Indian scientists redefined what a low-income country could achieve.

We developed a two-tiered strategy aiming to identify gut bacteria functionally linked to the development of multiple sclerosis (MS). First, we compared gut microbial profiles in a cohort of 81 monozygotic twins discordant for MS. This approach allowed to minimize confounding effects by genetic and early environmental factors and identified over 50 differently abundant taxa with the majority of increased

The resilience of an ecological community informs us how it will respond to future environmental disturbances. However, the concept is rarely tested in the context of predicting biodiversity change, particularly at broad spatial and taxonomic scales. Here, we show that measures of instability derived from the resilience of the current state of community compositions greatly improve the predictability

Mitigating climate change and social injustice are critical, interwoven challenges. Climate change is driven by grossly unequal contributions to elevated greenhouse gas emissions among individuals, socioeconomic groups, and nations. Yet, its deleterious impacts disproportionately affect poor and less powerful nations, and the poor and the less powerful within each nation. This climate injustice prompts

Twice during the Neoproterozoic Era, Earth experienced runaway ice-albedo catastrophes that resulted in multimillion year, low-latitude glaciations: the Sturtian and Marinoan snowball Earths. In the snowball climate state, CO 2 consumption through silicate weathering collapses, and atmospheric CO 2 accumulates via volcanic outgassing until a sufficiently strong greenhouse causes deglaciation. The duration

Prosody, the musical facet of speech, is pivotal in human communication, and its structure and meaning remain subjects of ongoing research. In this study, we introduce a data-driven model for English prosody, based on large-scale analysis of spontaneous conversations. As a first step, we identify approximately 200 discernible prosodic patterns—which we view as building blocks of the prosodic vocabulary—and

The molecular framework for protometabolism—chemical reactions in a prebiotic environment preceding modern metabolism—has remained unknown in evolutionary biology. Mono-, di-, and tricarboxylic acids that comprise contemporary metabolism, such as the Krebs cycle, are of particular prebiotic relevance and are theorized to predate life on Earth. Researchers have struggled to unravel the molecular origins

Air quality is associated with adverse health outcomes and mortality risk. While most research has focused on the association between air quality estimates and these outcomes, little is known about the presence of air quality monitoring sites across the United States or the place-level characteristics associated with such placements. We classify counties without a monitoring station as air quality

Rapid social–ecological intensification is a recurrent feature of human history. It occurred in different forms and contexts; its outcomes may have been sustainable or transient. Until recently, such intensifications usually accompanied state formation: Consolidation of political power was often coupled with exponential increase in human exploitation of the environment of a given area. Here, we study

United States (US) croplands are ideal recipient environments for solar photovoltaic (PV) energy because they are flat and have a high solar resource. Perceived threats of solar to agriculture have led some stakeholders to suggest that croplands be exclusively used to produce food. However, 12 million hectares of US croplands, an area about the size of New York State, are already dedicated to corn

Biological invasions are profoundly altering Earth’s ecosystems, but generalities about the effects of nonnative species on the diversity and productivity of native communities have been elusive. This lack of generality may reflect the limited spatial and temporal extents of most previous studies. Using >5 million tree measurements across eastern US forests from 1995 to 2023, we quantified temporal

The nature of solid phases and cross-over of order–disorder phase transitions from two-dimensional (2D) layers to three-dimensional (3D) bulk in confined atomic systems remain largely unexplained. To this end, we consider noble gases and aluminum confined between graphene sheets at different pressures and temperatures. Using crystal structure search methods and molecular dynamics based on machine-learned

Rab32 is a small GTPase and molecular switch implicated in vesicular trafficking. Rab32 is also an A-Kinase Anchoring Protein (AKAP), which anchors cAMP-dependent Protein Kinase (PKA) to specific subcellular locations and specifies PKA phosphorylation of nearby substrates. Surprisingly, we found that a form of Rab32 deficient in PKA binding (Rab32 L188P) relocalized away from the Golgi apparatus and

We present a dataset of over 100 K textual descriptions of real-life choice dilemmas, obtained from social media posts and large-scale survey data. Using large language models (LLMs), we extract hundreds of choice attributes at play in these dilemmas and map them onto a common representational space. This representation allows us to quantify the broader themes and specific trade-offs inherent in life

Ketogenesis requires fatty acid flux from intracellular (lipid droplets) and extrahepatic (adipose tissue) lipid stores to hepatocyte mitochondria. However, whether interorganelle contact sites regulate this process is unknown. Recent studies have revealed a role for Calsyntenin-3β (CLSTN3β), an endoplasmic reticulum–lipid droplet contact site protein, in the control of lipid utilization in adipose