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Excess nitrogen fertilization in maize production harms the environment and society, yet farmers face yield risks when reducing inputs. Using field trials across the US Corn Belt, this study suggests that nitrogen rates can be reduced by 12–16% with minimal yield risk, reducing emissions and leaching.

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.

Neural crest cells are migratory cells unique to vertebrates. Here they show that NR6A1 is a key regulator of neural crest cell formation and survival by downregulating pluripotency-associated genes, while upregulating neural crest cell specifier genes and epithelial cell to mesenchyme cell transition.

This study provides evidence of a cascading positive tipping point towards electric vehicles, which has occurred or lies within the next few years in lead markets of the EU and China, and potentially the US, and it could spill out into peripheral vehicle marketss across the rest of the world.

The use of antimicrobial agents can exacerbate the proliferation of antimicrobial resistance genes, which can put public health at risk; evaluating this risk requires proper monitoring. An extensive investigation of Australian wastewater reveals a distinct correlation between the type of antimicrobial used and the socioeconomic status of the population.

Animal models of drug use require specialized technical expertise and often differ from how humans consume drugs. Here, the authors establish a robust method which allows mice to self-administer intranasal cocaine, greatly improving face validity and ease of use.

Genome-wide association meta-analysis identifies 58 independent risk loci for major anxiety disorders among individuals of European ancestry and implicates GABAergic signaling as a potential mechanism underlying genetic risk for these disorders.

Man-made ammonia emissions have harmful effects on human health and ecosystems, yet global mitigation strategies remain underexploited. A study now finds that emissions could be halved cost-effectively by 2050 through targeted and prioritized measures, with benefits far outweighing costs.

Opportunities for green hydrogen-based steelmaking arise globally. Without sufficient investments in green steel, the EU loses competitiveness to countries with low-cost renewable energy through the Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism.

The authors analytically determine how neuronal correlations and geometry collectively determine readout generalization across tasks and show how these geometric features follow distinct trajectories over the course of learning.

“Methanol is an ideal feedstock for sustainable biomanufacturing. Here, the authors metabolically engineered a methylotrophic yeast for efficient production of the biodegradable plastic monomer L-lactate, which might support a circular economy.”

The authors conduct a national inventory on individual tree carbon stocks in Rwanda using aerial imagery and deep learning. Most mapped trees are located in farmlands; new methods allow partitioning to any landscape categories, effective planning and optimization of carbon sequestration and the economic benefits of trees.

Oxidative catalytic depolymerization of polystyrene (PS) can produce benzoic acid, but the annual consumption of benzoic acid is ~40 times lower than PS, so benzoic acid should be converted to higher-volume chemicals for the process to be viable. Here, the authors report a hybrid chemical and biological process that uses PS as feedstock for production of adipic acid, a high-volume co-monomer for nylon 6,6, via benzoic acid.

This study develops a plant-level dynamic optimization model outlining India’s coal power phaseout pathways aligned with climate targets. The results show that ambitious goals are more cost-beneficial, and social benefits can enhance the feasibility of the transition.

A model has been developed to identify the least-cost technology pathway for global individual iron and steel plants over 2020–2050 in alignment with national carbon-neutrality targets.

Identifying jets originating from heavy quarks plays a fundamental role in hadronic collider experiments. In this work, the ATLAS Collaboration describes and tests a transformer-based neural network architecture for jet flavour tagging based on low-level input and physics-inspired constraints.

China’s coal-dominated power system is a source of carbon emissions, local air pollution and water stress. This study presents three power system development scenarios that run until 2030 in China, where coal strategies are optimized under current environmental regulations and varying prices for air pollutant emissions and water.

Proving sustainable chemical plastic recycling must rely on realistic feedstocks and sustainability-driven catalyst design. Here, the authors report titania-supported Ru–Ni alloy nanoparticles achieving up to 55% liquid (C6 to C45) products for low-carbon and profitable polyethylene hydrogenolysis and determine a metric for sustainable product distributions.

Impacts from a climate event can cascade through natural, anthropogenic and socio-economic systems. Here the authors assess cascading climate impacts on the EU and identify intervention points for adaptation related to water, livelihoods, agriculture, infrastructure and economy, and violent conflict.

Meeting climate mitigation goals requires the early retirement or retrofitting of fossil fuel power plants, creating financial risks from stranded assets. A study now finds that state-owned companies dominate ownership of these risks, with the top 25 of these companies holding up to US$770 billion under a 1.5 °C scenario.

N¹-Methylpseudouridine enhances the translation of synthetic mRNAs, independently of innate immunity.

Three scientist mothers call for a change in how conference childcare costs are reimbursed, drawing on their personal experiences.

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

MultiSuSiE is an extension of the Sum of Single Effects fine-mapping model that allows causal effect sizes to vary across ancestries. Applying MultiSuSiE to quantitative traits in All of Us identifies fine-mapped variants not implicated by other methods.

As the availability of affordable freshwater in urban settings becomes ever more urgent around the world, this study looks at how an unregulated, informal market meets demands at the expense of groundwater resources.

TIRTL-seq is a high-throughput method for paired T cell receptor sequencing at the cohort scale.

Anglo-Western-dominated food environment research faces transferability challenges for improving dietary health in China and other non-Western countries. Contextualized thinking and approaches are needed to adapt data, measures and theoretical pathways to distinct spatial and sociocultural contexts. Place-specific diet and health issues must be prioritized to advance both local and global food agendas.

Decarbonizing the European ammonia industry: Less stringent emissions caps for electrolytic hydrogen production can significantly reduce costs and land use while still achieving more than 90% reduction in emissions relative to fossil-based hydrogen.

The vulnerability of barley production and beer supply to future weather extremes remains unknown. A study using modelling finds that weather extremes associated with climate change would threaten the availability and economic accessibility of beer.

This Analysis illustrates how nature-positive targets aimed at protecting biodiversity can be achieved at the scale of organizations. A canteen at one UK university college is used as a case study for the application of a four-step participatory approach comprising an estimation of food-related biodiversity impacts; definition of biodiversity targets; assessment of possible interventions; and exploration of different strategies.

Soil acidity constrains agricultural productivity in a large proportion of sub-Saharan Africa’s croplands. This study estimates the location- and crop-specific amounts of lime required to remediate acid soils, taking into account the profitability and returns on investment of liming in the year of application and beyond.