Seventy percent of soils in Europe are contaminated with pesticides. A Europe-wide study co-led by researchers of the University of Zurich now shows that their effects on soil life are substantial, as pesticides suppress various beneficial soil organisms. To protect soil biodiversity, the findings should be taken into account in current pesticide regulations.
Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), the United Nations Agreement on the High Seas (BBNJ) and the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF) have demonstrated strong commitment by governments and international organizations in recent years to social and environmental equity in ocean-related projects and decisions. However, progress is significantly hampered by a lack of clarity on how to define, measure, and monitor equity.
Who grows our food? This seemingly simple question is getting harder to answer in a world where our food crosses borders to get to our plate.
A major challenge in thermal-management and thermal-insulation technologies, across multiple industries, is the lack of materials that simultaneously offer low thermal conductivity, mechanical robustness, and scalable fabrication routes.
Australian and New Zealand scientists have unearthed the remains of ancient wildlife in a cave near Waitomo on Aotearoa's North Island, the first time a large number of million-year-old fossils have been found—including an ancestor of the large flightless Kākāpō parrot.
Every time a cell divides, it must copy its entire genome so that each daughter cell inherits a complete set of DNA. During that process, enzymes known as polymerases race along the DNA to copy its code and build new strands. To prevent these machines from detaching mid-copy, a clamp-like protein tethers the polymerases to DNA, while another protein, Replication Factor C (RFC), snaps that ring into place.
The cochlea is the spiral-shaped structure within the inner ear responsible for our sense of hearing. To fully understand hearing functions and open the door to new hearing loss treatments, scientists require intricately detailed views of hair cells within the cochlea that allow us to detect the range of sounds around us. University of California San Diego biologists have now leveraged artificial intelligence to create a tool that provides previously unseen 3D views of cochlear hair cells.
Researchers from the Institute of Metal Research (IMR) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences have developed a new ferroelectric ultraviolet photodetector material that overcomes the long-standing performance limitations of conventional photodetectors.
Researchers from the Institute of Metal Research (IMR) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences have stretched a chain of gold atoms by a record-breaking 46%, providing direct evidence of how fundamental metal bonds behave under extreme deformation. This study also reveals how structural changes at the atomic scale influence electrical transport.
After decades of growth, the use of antimicrobials—including antibiotics—in livestock peaked in 2013 and then dropped by nearly a third by 2020, finds a major new study led by UCL researchers. The decline is positive, as overusing antimicrobials in animals can create drug-resistant bacteria, which can lead to human harm. However, despite this trend, the study also found that richer developed countries continue to drive demand for antimicrobial-heavy products by importing large quantities of foods and products from emerging economies that still use farms with high-levels of antimicrobials.
