Search

The environmental impacts of food consumption in the European Union are global. This study estimates the environmental footprints of EU27 household food consumption, simulating the mitigation potential of tax policies and assessing consumption-related welfare costs.

Utilising leading indicators within an adaptive framework can enhance public food price forecasts, which supports more informed budget planning and decision-making. These forecasts also enable reports to explain the drivers of their predictions.

Volatile food prices induce risk and uncertainty, challenging consumers and producers alike. This study uses historical trade policy and price datasets encompassing two recent food crises to investigate the impact that trade policies announced by specific countries may have on global agricultural markets.

Consumption patterns indicate that millets, rice, cassava and tubers are more important than imported wheat for the poorest Nigerians. Policy must reflect this by supporting coarse grain and rice production rather than any trade policy path for dislodging wheat imports.

This study applies a global food and land system modelling framework to quantify the impact of 23 food system measures on 15 outcome indicators related to public health, the environment, social inclusion and the economy—from today until 2050.

Insects are declining in many regions. Here the authors show that arthropod biomass losses in Jena Experiment and Biodiversity Exploratories time series are driven more by species loss than by species identity and abundance declines, and are mitigated by high plant diversity and low land-use intensity.

Municipal solid waste (MSW) could power sustainable aviation fuel (SAF), but costs and technical hurdles such as gasification hinder its adoption. A study now shows that MSW can be turned into SAF with 80–90% lower lifecycle emissions while offering a 16% reduction in aviation greenhouse gas emissions.

This article shows that different oil types are not easily substitutable, raising costs and reducing productivity in refining for the EU market.

Electrification is a promising way to decarbonize the chemical industry but could also have important effects on power systems. Here the authors assess the impact of electrifying the production of methanol and ammonia on the Chinese power system in terms of emissions and potential security risks.

Carbon dioxide removal (CDR) plays an important role in decarbonization pathways to meet climate goals, but some methods are land-intensive. Multimodel analysis reveals conflicts between biodiversity and CDR that are distributed unevenly, and shows that synergies are crucial to meet climate and conservation goals.

Although exporting hydrogen can raise domestic power costs, applying temporal matching with renewables can cut them by 31%, reduce emissions and steer welfare among exporters and consumers, offering a fairer approach to the global hydrogen trade.

The cost of transporting agricultural products from the field to consumers across borders, also known as the landed cost, is highly influenced by trade frictions and regional cost differences. This study estimates this cost—including production, transport and trade components—for six grain commodities across 3,500 administrative regions, revealing large inequalities in access.

Achieving the Paris Agreement’s climate goals depends on safeguarding and monitoring the permanence of forest carbon stocks, as delays in addressing their vulnerability to disturbances drastically increase mitigation costs and efforts.

Carbon sequestration on agricultural land holds great promise for combating climate change. This study estimates the mitigation potential of three sequestration practices—soil carbon enhancement, biochar application on cropland and silvo-pastoral systems—while identifying cost-effective mitigation portfolios.

This study moves beyond technical estimates to assess the deployable rooftop solar potential across 367 Chinese cities, factoring in real-world constraints. The findings offer actionable insights to guide strategic deployment and support China’s ambitious solar energy goals.

EU emissions trading system carbon prices have surged since 2017. Here the authors consider sources of this increase and note that increased foresight driven by stronger commitment to climate targets has played a role. Prices also run the risk of dropping if policy credibility is undermined.

Fishmeal and oil derived from forage fish are critical vulnerabilities for stable aquaculture feed supply. A shortfall impact model and scenario analysis explores options for bridging forage fish deficits with alternative aquaculture feeds.

High shares of variable energy sources will require different operational modes for dispatchable generation. Schill et al. explore the impact of increased wind and solar power on the German electricity system and find that the number of start-ups grows by 81% while its cost increases by 119% by 2030.

Using global data, econometrics and climate science to estimate the damages induced by the emission of one ton of carbon dioxide, climate change is projected to increase electricity spending but reduce overall end-use energy expenditure.

A global network of researchers was formed to investigate the role of human genetics in SARS-CoV-2 infection and COVID-19 severity; this paper reports 13 genome-wide significant loci and potentially actionable mechanisms in response to infection.

In a world of deepening inequalities, climate polices might be feasible in high-income countries only. Here the authors find that overcoming global inequality through sustainable socio-economic development is critical for land-based mitigation in line with the Paris Agreement.

The results obtained by seventy different teams analysing the same functional magnetic resonance imaging dataset show substantial variation, highlighting the influence of analytical choices and the importance of sharing workflows publicly and performing multiple analyses.

An analysis of 24,202 critical cases of COVID-19 identifies potentially druggable targets in inflammatory signalling (JAK1), monocyte–macrophage activation and endothelial permeability (PDE4A), immunometabolism (SLC2A5 and AK5), and host factors required for viral entry and replication (TMPRSS2 and RAB2A).

To achieve the climate target of the Paris Agreement substantial emission reductions will be required across economic sectors. Here the authors show that agriculture can make a significant contribution to non-CO₂ mitigation efforts through structural change in the livestock sector and the deployment of technical options.

Reforms of energy markets are necessary to face the low carbon transition but are problematic to measure. New data evaluate implicit taxes and subsidies for gasoline in almost all countries at monthly intervals showing mixed results that highlight the difficulty in implementing effective policy tools.

In Australia, the geographic and relaxed temporal requirements for the use of renewable energy certificates could ensure that hydrogen is produced with minimal greenhouse gas emissions and at a low cost, according to an analysis that employs an energy system model and scenario approach

Governments around the world have pledged to reduce fossil fuel subsidies, yet the actual implementation has not been measured. With a unique dataset and approach, researchers find since 2016 there are more frequent reforms, yet most of them do not survive over 12 months.

Our annual survey highlights startups tackling intractable viruses with new vaccine design, engineering a reliable source of platelets, universalizing cell therapies, improving cancer screening, developing RNA-editing platforms and targeting protein–RNA interactions. Michael Eisenstein, Ken Garber, Caroline Seydel and Laura DeFrancesco report.

Nuclear small modular reactors could help decarbonize industrial heat processes in the United States, but widespread deployment (of up to a thousand reactors) hinges on factory learning, extended tax credits and avoiding cost escalations.

This study finds that decision markets can be a useful tool for selecting studies for replication. For a sample of 26 online experiments published in PNAS selected by a decision market, the authors find replication rates ranging between 54% and 62%.

Mutations in GJB2 cause DFNB1, the most common hereditary deafness. ATAC-seq identification of gene regulatory elements enables targeted GJB2 delivery to cochlear cells, preventing hearing loss in mouse models.

Modelled supply curves show that, with policy reform and technological innovation, the production of food from the sea may increase sustainably, perhaps supplying 25% of the increase in demand for meat products by 2050.

The war on Ukraine has reduced Russia’s ability to export its natural gas, notably to the European market. Under any future strategy, Russia struggles to regain pre-crisis gas export levels, with its success partly contingent on China’s gas supply strategy.

Highly pathogenic avian influenza H5N1 virus has recently caused outbreaks in dairy cattle herds in the United States. Here, the authors describe the clinical features and associated economic impacts of an outbreak at a farm in Ohio between March and April 2024.

Ecosystem accounts quantify trade-offs between the economy and the environment. Here, the authors apply this approach to a regional case study of native forest use to show how it can be used to inform policy about complex land management decisions.

This study presents a protein search framework with conformal prediction, enabling statistically reliable annotation of protein function. The method improves homology search, enzyme classification, and filters proteins for further characterization.

Using multi-ancestry genome-wide association study and fine-mapping, 298 loci and 36 credible genes are identified in the aetiology of bipolar disorder.

Maize production is dependent on Nitrogen fertilizer input. Here, the authors use long-term and short-term experiments to demonstrate that economic and environmental optimum nitrogen fertilization rates have increased between 1991 and 2021.

Regional differences in SARS-CoV-2 variants may affect treatment outcome. Here, the authors show that near-sourced convalescent plasma has higher efficacy, as defined by death within 30 days of transfusion, than plasma sourced more than 150 miles away.

Higher plant diversity in agricultural settings is often associated with lower biomass yield and with lower forage quality. Here, Schaub et al. show positive effects of plant diversity on biomass yield, quality-adjusted yield and revenues in semi-natural grassland across a range of management intensities.

Nature Biotechnology’s annual survey highlights academic startups that are, among other things, designing circular RNA therapeutics, tackling cancer with arenaviruses, creating psychedelics without the trip, editing genes and cells in vivo, harnessing the power of autoantibodies and editing the epigenome.

Information on the degree of processing of food items is key for better consumer choices. GroceryDB is a dataset with more than 50,000 food items sold at major grocery stores in the United States that uses big data to provide information on processing—categorized by store, food category and price range.

Carbon pricing can alter income distribution. With a focus on Bangladesh, India, Indonesia, Pakistan, Philippines, Thailand, Turkey and Vietnam, this study compares four types of carbon pricing schemes and finds substantial variation in distributional effects across policy designs and countries.

To enable net-negative CO₂ emissions, the repayment of previously accrued carbon debt by establishing the responsibility for the net removal of CO₂ by carbon-emitting parties through carbon removal obligations is necessary.