Genetic information is now indispensable for modern plant breeding. Genome sequencing is now much cheaper than it was, but still accounts for a large part of the costs in animal and plant breeding. One trick to reduce these costs is to sequence only a very small and randomly selected part of the genome and to complete the remaining gaps using mathematical and statistical techniques. Researchers at Göttingen University have developed a new approach to do this, as published in PLOS Genetics.

Wearable device alerts users about muscle fatigue by monitoring pH levels of sweat.

In a paper published in National Science Review, an international team of scientists found that China has made a concerted effort to successfully improve water quality of rivers, but water pollution and biodiversity in lakes remain a challenge in the Yangtze River Basin. Comprehensive management of lakes aligned with social and economic development are requested to promote regional sustainable development.

In a paper published in SCIENCE CHINA Earth Sciences, the convection competition between the eyewall and peripheral rainbands, and the separate contributions of direct aerosol-radiation interactions (ARI) and indirect aerosol-cloud interactions (ACI) to the tropical cyclone (TC) Lupit (0920) were simulated, using the Weather Research and Forecasting Model with Chemistry (WRF-Chem), during it approached the Asian continent.

In a paper published in National Science Review, an international team of scientists evaluate scenarios about what is causing methane concentrations to rapidly increase in the atmosphere. By combining new and novel isotopic datasets on methane source ‘signatures’ with simple atmospheric models, they ran thousands of potential emission pathways and isolated those that best matched the observed change of methane isotopes in the atmosphere. Using this approach, the authors found that the methane sources most likely driving the increase are from human activities, including agriculture, landfills and waste management, and from the use of coal, oil and gas. These activities are responsible for more than 80% of the rise of atmospheric methane since 2007. The analysis suggests that wetland emissions have not contributed significantly to increases in atmospheric methane, despite continued warming and climate extremes.

A recent paper published in SCIENCE CHINA Earth Sciences presents an improved pDSSAT model based on the Wang-Engel temperature response function and further analyses the spatiotemporal changes in winter wheat phenology in China from 2000 to 2015 and its climatic drivers.