At VivaTech in Paris, research center coordinators showcase the advances made at the University of São Paulo in agriculture, climate, energy, computing, artificial intelligence, and health.

In the face of rising urbanization and food insecurity, a new study published in Engineering explores the potential of urban aquaponics to enhance food security and reduce environmental impacts. The research, led by Qiuling Yuan and Fanxin Meng from Beijing Normal University, provides a comprehensive framework for assessing the sustainability of aquaponics systems in urban areas, selecting Beijing as a case study. The findings suggest that urban aquaponics can significantly improve water efficiency and local food self-sufficiency while reducing energy consumption and carbon emissions through optimized strategies.

A new study in Forest Ecosystems reveals how fire history, vegetation type, and soil features jointly influence carbon storage in boreal forests. Researchers in Norway compared pine and spruce forests across regions with different fire legacies, and they found that pine forests store nearly twice as much organic carbon as spruce forests, with charcoal carbon stocks varying by region due to fire frequency, terrain microtopography, and organic layer depth. The study highlights the importance of localized forest management strategies for sustaining carbon storage in the face of climate change.

Laboratory and field experiments have repeatedly demonstrated that modifications to the process of photosynthesis or to the physical characteristics of plants can make crops more resilient to hotter temperatures. Scientists can now alter the abundance or orientation of leaves, change leaf chemistry to improve heat tolerance and adjust key steps in the process of photosynthesis to overcome bottlenecks, researchers report in a new review in the journal Science.

Large yellow croaker is one of the species with the highest production of marine fish culture in China. Germplasm resources are the indispensable material basis for the healthy and sustainable development of large yellow croaker aquaculture industry. It is of great significance to systematically carry out the collection and preservation, identification and evaluation, and germplasm innovation of large yellow croaker germplasm resources.

A new study shows the effectiveness of dairy digesters, which can reduce atmospheric methane emissions from farms by roughly 80 percent, a result that closely matches estimates California state officials have used in their climate planning.