The tiny cosmos of organisms living on a streamer of algae in a river—the algal microbiome—could help scientists learn what turns an environment from healthy to toxic and back again. A multidisciplinary team led by Northern Arizona University has won $3 million from the National Science Foundation to translate the codex contained in the microbiome of common algae into computer algorithms that can predict a wide range of microbial interactions. The team will combine field experiments with high-tech molecular tools and machine learning to unravel the complex interactions among bacteria and algae into a set of predictive rules. The experiments they conduct and computer models they develop will illumine which interactions among micro-organisms have the power to change the health of a river or a human gut.

After the natural warming that followed the last Ice Age, there were repeated periods when masses of icebergs broke off from Antarctica into the Southern Ocean. A new data-model study led by the University of Bonn (Germany) now shows that it took only a decade to initiate this tipping point in the climate system, and that ice mass loss then continued for many centuries. The study has now been published in the journal Nature Communications.

In a new study, published in Nature Communications, researchers outline how they were able to establish a clear pattern between the strength of the monsoon season in Nepal and the amount of landsliding over a 30-year period between 1988 and 2018.

● Climate change and global warming are accelerating crop loss and also the spread of plant diseases ● Bacterial pathogens infections in crop plants are one of the main causes of agricultural yield loss and early detection is crucial to improve plant diseases management ● Using quantitative Raman spectroscopy, an algorithm has been developed to detect and quantify bacterial infection much quicker and earlier than other existing methods ● New method is non-invasive and can be implemented in a portable Raman system to be used on crops in commercial agricultural farms

A consequence of global warming is a greater frequency and intensity of extreme heat events. This extreme heat is associated with a greater risk of adverse cardiovascular incidents, especially for adults with pre-existing cardiovascular diseases. Experts writing in the Canadian Journal of Cardiology, published by Elsevier, discuss how extreme heat affects cardiovascular health, why health professionals should care and what recommendations they can make to minimize consequences.

The contribution of refrigerants to climate change has led to an increasing interest in “passive radiative cooling,” a zero-energy, zero-carbon method of cooling objects under the open sky. But current passive radiative cooling materials and methods are complex and expensive. Now, researchers from UCLA have developed a do-it-yourself radiative cooler made of household materials. Easy to make, reasonably effective, and reproducible, the DIY cooler is proposed as a standard for future devices.