Green & indigenous News

A study in Nature Geoscience reveals that changes in the West Antarctic Ice Sheet (WAIS) closely tracked marine algae growth in the Southern Ocean over previous glacial cycles, but not in the way scientists expected. The key factor is iron-rich sediments transported by icebergs from West Antarctica.

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Researchers at University of Tsukuba have identified a photophobic response (light avoidance) in the unicellular apusomonad Podomonas kaiyoae. The study provides critical insight into the evolution of complex flagellar and ciliary motility and the evolutionary origins of Opisthokonta, a major eukaryotic group that encompasses animals and fungi.

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Water vapor (H2Ov) is an essential component of Earth's atmosphere, playing critical roles in climate regulation, weather patterns, and the water cycle. Its sources primarily come from natural processes such as ocean evaporation and terrestrial evapotranspiration. However, during the fossil fuels (e.g., coal, petroleum, natural gas) combustion process, in addition to emitting substantial amounts of CO2, they also generate significant amounts of water vapor as a byproduct (combustion-derived water vapor sources: CDWV).

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Researchers led by Assoc. Prof. Dr. Savaş Taşoğlu from the Department of Mechanical Engineering at Koç University have developed a new, open-access and machine learning-assisted design tool aimed at automating microfluidic chip design. The research is published in Science Advances.

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An ongoing string of more than a dozen earthquakes in less than 90 minutes early Monday ended what had been some recent calm from recent weeks of shaking ground in the region, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.

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The International Court of Justice reiterated in 2025 that the 1.5°C limit is the countries' primary agreed target under the Paris Agreement. With record-high global temperatures in recent years, the world is firmly on track to exceed the limit in a decade or less, signaling our entry into an "overshoot" world.

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A study by the Institut Català de Paleontologia Miquel Crusafont (ICP-CERCA) with the involvement of the UAB indicates that between 12.5 and 9 million years ago, in the Vallès-Penedès basin, rainfall was twice as high as it is today, and the climate was subtropical. The research has reconstructed the precipitation and climatic conditions of the past from fossils of small mammals found throughout the area. The research is published in the Journal of Mammalian Evolution.

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A research team from the Aerospace Information Research Institute of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (AIRCAS) has developed a new method combining deep learning with physical radiative transfer modeling to improve the retrieval of atmospheric aerosol properties from complex satellite observations, supporting high-resolution, near-real-time monitoring of haze and dust events. The study was recently published in Journal of Remote Sensing.

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Jatropha curcas is a perennial woody plant species of the Euphorbiaceae family. This drought-resistant shrub is widely recognized for its potential to produce biodiesel and bio-jet fuel on marginal lands, avoiding competition with food production. However, its naturally low seed production has limited its commercial use.

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In a recent study, researchers at the Texas A&M University Health Science Center (Texas A&M Health) identify a novel RNA molecule that plays a crucial role in preserving the integrity of a key cellular structure, the nucleolus . Their findings also suggest this molecule may influence patient survival in certain blood cancers. The work is published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

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Improvements in public health have allowed humankind to survive to older ages than ever before, but, for many people, these added golden years are not spent in good health. Aging is a natural part of life, but it is associated with a greatly increased incidence of most chronic diseases, including various cancers, diabetes, and Alzheimer's disease.

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Removing sheep and other livestock entirely from upland grasslands—a strategy often promoted as a way to boost carbon storage and tackle climate change—may actually reduce the most stable forms of soil carbon, according to new research. The study suggests that while removing livestock from upland grasslands can increase fast-cycling carbon stored in plants and dead vegetation, it can also lead to losses of a more stable form of soil carbon. This long-lived carbon, known as mineral-associated organic carbon (MAOC), is bound to soil minerals and can persist for decades to centuries, making it critical for long-term climate mitigation.

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Deep beneath the Earth's surface, in the pores and crevices of rock, live huge communities of microorganisms. They are invisible to the naked eye—yet they play a central role in the quality of our groundwater and in global cycles of matter. A research team led by Dr. Martin Taubert from the Cluster of Excellence "Balance of the Microverse" at the University of Jena has shown that life in the subsurface follows two fundamentally different strategies—with far-reaching consequences for environmental research and practice.

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Viruses attack nearly every living organism on Earth. To do so, they rely on highly specialized proteins that recognize and bind to receptors on the surface of target cells, a molecular arms race that drives constant evolution. Now, a new study published in Nature Communications, led by Prof. Asaf Levy of the Faculty of Agriculture, Food and Environment at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, reveals just how far this evolutionary creativity can go.

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In efforts to better understand how soybean plants capture and use light, researchers at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign investigated how leaf size and shape affect light distribution within the crop canopy. Using controlled genetic approaches, the team altered soybean leaf shape and found that narrower leaves can improve how efficiently plants use available light.

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Flying is really hard work. Compared to walking, swimming, or running, flying is the form of movement that takes the most energy and requires the most calories. That means that birds have had to evolve specialized ways to be really efficient at finding and digesting their food.

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Major soy traders operating in Brazil announced in early January that they would abandon one of the world’s most successful zero-deforestation agreements, known as the soy moratorium. As a result, deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon may increase by up to 30% by 2045, according to the Amazon Environmental Research Institute (IPAM), pushing the rainforest toward the much-feared tipping point. The coup de grâce to the 20-year-long soy moratorium, under which companies voluntarily agreed to ban soy grown in areas deforested after 2008, came from the Brazilian Association of Vegetable Oil Industries(Abiove). Representing some of the world’s largest soy traders, like Cargill, Bunge, Amaggi and ADM, the trade association announced in a statement on Jan. 5 that it “began negotiations to withdraw from the Soy Moratorium Commitment Agreement.” Brazil is the world’s largest soy exporter, and Abiove’s members account for nearly 45% of these shipments, according to 2022 data from commodity supply-chain watchdog Trase. The decision followed a new law in Mato Grosso state, Brazil’s largest soy producer. The legislation, which went into effect Jan. 1, allows the state government to suspend tax breaks to companies adopting environmental criteria beyond those required by Brazilian law, such as the soy moratorium. In Brazil, deforestation is permitted under rules for each biome — 20% for properties in the Amazon, 65-80% in the Cerrado, and so on. This means that a farmer who deforested their land after 2008 couldn’t sell soy to moratorium members even when complying with Brazilian deforestation laws. “Abiove understands that…This article was originally published on Mongabay

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An international research team headed by scientists from Nanyang Technological University, Singapore and the Center for Structural Systems Biology and Bernhard-Nocht Institute for Tropical Medicine in Germany has revealed fresh insights into the dynamic network of protein interactions that govern the biology of the malaria parasite. Published in Nature Microbiology, the findings could pave the way for novel treatments of malaria.

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Prior to the establishment of the Environmental Protection Agency in 1970, Americans lived in communities awash with lead from industrial sources, paint, water supply pipes and, most significantly, tailpipe emissions. A dangerous neurotoxin that accumulates in human tissues and is linked to developmental deficits in children, environmental lead levels have come way down in the years since, and so have human exposures.

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Some tropical land regions may warm more dramatically than previously predicted, as climate change progresses, according to a new CU Boulder study that looks millions of years into Earth's past. Using lake sediments from the Colombian Andes, researchers reveal that when the planet warmed millions of years ago under carbon dioxide levels similar to today's, tropical land heated up nearly twice as much as the ocean.

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A research team from the Max Planck Institute for Chemical Ecology has shown in a new study that ants returning from habitats affected by air pollution are attacked when they re-enter the colony. The cause: air pollution, especially ozone, changes the colony-specific odor profile of the animals.

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A research group has revealed through seismic wave analysis that the oceanic plate beneath the Ontong Java Plateau—the world's largest oceanic plateau—was extensively altered by massive volcanic activity during its formation. The study is published in Geophysical Research Letters.

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Despite its deadly impacts, the recent winter storm that battered much of the United States was not historically exceptional, official data showed Monday.

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A University of Missouri researcher is pioneering an innovative solution to remove tiny bits of plastic pollution from our water. Mizzou's Susie Dai recently applied a revolutionary strain of algae toward capturing and removing harmful microplastics from polluted water. Driven by a mission to improve the world for both wildlife and humans, Dai also aims to repurpose the collected microplastics into safe, bioplastic products such as composite plastic films.

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Water powers our lives. It feeds our crops, keeps factories running, generates electricity, and fills our taps. But until now, no one had a clear, national picture of how much water we're using—and for what.

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