Solitary bees are important pollinators and maintain biodiversity in agricultural landscapes, yet their populations are declining due to habitat loss, intensive farming and pesticide use. Organic farming offers a sustainable alternative to conventional systems, benefiting pollinators through reduced chemical inputs and greater habitat diversity. While effects on social bees such as honeybees and bumblebees are well documented, little is known about how farming practices and landscapes influence communities of cavity-nesting solitary bees. We investigated these effects across 17 sites in Germany using standardized cavity nests (“bee hotels”). This approach enabled us to assess number of brood cells, species diversity, the abundance of females and males and the proportion of undeveloped bees, revealing how solitary bee populations respond to different farming systems and landscape features. Landscape composition was analyzed within a 500 m radius to quantify the extent of organic farming and forest cover within the bees’ foraging range. We found that organic farming had a beneficial effect on solitary bee brood cells and female production. Organic landscapes were positively correlated with increase in bee abundance, species richness, and diversity, while forest cover had no strong effects. Still at the landscape level, the abundance of both females and males increased with the extent of organic farming, while at the local scale, the abundance of both sexes was higher in organic farms than in conventional sites. The findings highlight the potential ecological benefit of organic farming in supporting cavity nesting solitary bee populations and underscore its potential to mitigate biodiversity loss in agriculture. • Organic farming enhances cavity-nesting solitary bee communities, increasing abundance, species richness, and diversity across agricultural landscapes. • Both female and male solitary bees respond positively to organic management, with higher abundances at local (farm) and landscape scales. • Landscape-level organic farming extent is a key driver of solitary bee population metrics Forest cover showed no strong influence on cavity-nesting solitary bee abundance or diversity in agricultural settings. • Organic farming has clear potential to mitigate biodiversity loss, supporting solitary bees in intensively managed agroecosystems.

Soil microbes are key drivers of nutrient cycling in terrestrial ecosystems. It is crucial to better understand how soil microbial communities are linked to soil functions to predict the consequences of global climate change. Earlier studies have shown that the resistance and resilience of microbial respiration differed across regional or continental scales, which may be influenced by abiotic and biotic factors. However, the resistance and resilience of microbial respiration at a local scale, such as slope aspect, remain unclear. In this study, we examined the soil microbial community structure using phospholipid fatty acid (PLFA) analysis and the resistance and resilience of soil microbial respiration to drying-rewetting perturbations using soils collected from north- and south-facing slopes in a cool-temperate forest in northern Japan. Our results showed that the fungi-to-bacteria ratio and microbial stress indicators (the ratio of saturated to monounsaturated fatty acids, Sat:Mono) were significantly lower on the north-facing slopes than on the south-facing slopes. The resistance and resilience of microbial respiration were also lower on the north-facing slopes than on the south-facing slopes. Resistance and resilience were significantly related to bacterial biomass and microbial stress indicators, suggesting that the soil bacterial community on north-facing slopes, which is dominated by stress-intolerant bacteria, is more vulnerable to drying and rewetting than that on the south-facing slopes. These results provide insights into how the stability of soil functions can vary at a local scale, highlighting the importance of topography in predicting the consequences of environmental changes. • Slope aspects influence soil microbial community structure in a cool-temperate forest, with north-facing slopes dominated by bacteria and south-facing slopes dominated by fungi. • Slope aspects influence the resistance and resilience of soil microbial respiration to drying-rewetting. • The resistance and resilience of soil microbial respiration were significantly related to specific abiotic factors and indicators of soil microbial community structure.

Market-based instruments such as agricultural carbon credit programs are being encouraged as a way of mitigating climate change, and at the same time, encouraging farm-level sustainability. The review paper consolidates the literature presented throughout the world in agricultural carbon credit initiatives by analysing the expansion of research, theoretical and methodological frameworks, and determining factors that define the participation, result and limitations of the farmers. The systematic literature review was conducted in line with PRISMA, using the Scopus and WoS databases. A multi-stage screening method was used to select seventy-nine peer-reviewed articles published between 2005 and 2025. The Theory-Context-Characteristics-Methodology (TCCM) framework and the Antecedents-Decision-Outcomes (ADO) framework were used together with bibliometric analysis to assess the trends in research, drivers of participation and system-level outcomes. The existing literature is dominated by behavioural and economic theories as compared to institutional and systems-based views that are relatively undeveloped. The involvement of the farmers depends on a mixture of the economic incentives, the institutional trust, policy stability, transaction costs, and social and informational factors and not necessarily on the carbon prices themselves. Even though carbon credit initiatives can create supportive economic, social and environmental impacts, these impacts are extremely contextual and unevenly distributed, hence, skewed against smallholder farmers. Carbon credits can promote climate mitigation in agricultural contexts when entrenched in consistent policy systems and reliable institutional structures. • Since 2020, the research on agricultural carbon credits has increased rapidly. • The further involvement is conditional upon the trust and the policy stability and the cost of the transactions. • Existing studies on carbon credit are dominated by behavioural and economic theories. • Carbon credits have unequal advantages that occur on a local scale. • Inclusive and credible carbon markets require designs at the system level.

Eukaryotic genomes harbor many forms of variation, including nucleotide diversity and structural polymorphisms, which experience natural selection and contribute to genome evolution and biodiversity. Harnessing this variation for agriculture hinges on our ability to detect, quantify, catalog, and deploy genetic diversity. Here, we explore seven complete genomes of the emerging biofuel crop pennycress (Thlaspi arvense) drawn from across the species' current genetic diversity to catalog variation in genome structure and content. Across this new pangenome resource, we find contrasting evolutionary modes in different genomic zones. Gene-poor, repeat-rich pericentromeric regions experience frequent rearrangements, including repeated centromere repositioning. By contrast, conserved gene-dense chromosome arms maintain large-scale synteny across accessions even in fast-evolving NOD-like receptor immune genes, where microsynteny breaks down across species, but gene cluster positioning macrosynteny is maintained. Our findings highlight that multiple elements of the genome experience dynamic evolution that conserves functional content on the chromosome scale but allows repositioning and presence-absence variation on a local scale. This diversity is invisible to classical reference-based strategies and highlights the strength and utility of pangenomic resources. These results provide a valuable case study of rapid genomic structural evolution within a species and powerful resources for crop development in an emerging biofuel crop.

Satellite-based forest structure metrics as a predictive tool for biodiversity in hyperdiverse tropical forests: A test of the habitat heterogeneity hypothesis in the tropics

• Local and circular initiatives are often small and fragmented. • Little is known about how to effectively scale local circular supply chains. • We present 17 factors for scaling across 8 established amplification processes. • We contribute factors to increase the size and transformative impact of initiatives. The fashion and textiles industry operates a global supply chain that causes harm to the environment, emitting pollution and generating waste across all stages of production, consumption and disposal. The implementation of a local circular economy would reduce impact, shorten import and export distances while retaining the value of materials through practices like reuse and recycling. However, current local and circular initiatives operate in a system that is incomplete to provide sufficient support structures for their operations, meaning they are often small, fragmented, and at risk of cessation. To address this, five focus groups with fashion industry stakeholders were conducted where factors for scaling at a local and national level were discussed. Data analysis revealed 17 factors for scaling, two of which were unique to scaling nationally. These offer ways for local circular clothing supply chains to stabilise, speed up, grow, replicate, transfer, spread, scale up and scale deep. The results provide a new insight on how to increase the scale and transformative impact of local circular initiatives emerging in towns and cities across the UK. The research is useful for the industry and policymakers in informing the development of purposive interventions that seek to step beyond current niche and fragmented solutions and build circular systems that can overtake the current linear, energy intensive, pollutive and waste generating system. Significantly, this will facilitate a shift away from global production and distribution, to grow more locally and systemically robust initiatives at the local and national scale.

Scalable and hardness-tolerant H2O2 electrosynthesis in tap-water-based electrolytes enabled by electrode architecture and reactor engineering.

Hurricanes have significant consequences for ecosystems, potentially disrupting the carbon cycle at both local and regional scales and releasing carbon back into the atmosphere through storm-associated impacts on vegetation and agricultural areas. The present work analyzes the interactions amongst terrestrial carbon fluxes, rainfall, and land cover for three significant hurricanes: Harvey (Texas), Irma (Florida), and Maria (Puerto Rico). This study utilized net ecosystem exchange (NEE) data derived from the Soil Moisture Active Passive (SMAP) NASA satellite mission, which provides global estimates of soil moisture and carbon flux, and analyzed these data for coastal climate zones during the hurricane season. The results were validated using eddy covariance tower-based in-situ CO 2 flux observations during hurricane landfall. Results showed that southern Texas (Harvey) experienced the highest amount of carbon release (0.33 megatons), followed by Florida (Irma) (0.03 megatons) and Puerto Rico (Maria) (0.02 megatons). The land cover products, such as the National Land Cover Dataset (NLCD) and the Copernicus Global Land Service (CGLS), showed overall reductions in land cover in Florida (-1.02%), Texas (-0.97%), and Puerto Rico (-0.46%). Furthermore, vegetation cover changes were estimated using MODIS-derived enhanced vegetation index (EVI), showing major changes over Puerto Rico (-3.81%) and southeast Texas (-2.94%), while normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) showed more moderate reductions over Puerto Rico (-3.06%), southeast Texas (-1.12%), and Florida (-0.16%). These reductions indicate short-term vegetation stress and decreased photosynthetic activity, which may temporarily reduce carbon uptake, leading affected regions to transition from carbon sinks to temporary carbon sources. These findings highlight hurricanes as significant drivers of short-term carbon emissions and vegetation change. This study enhances understanding of hurricane-associated disturbances in the carbon cycle by examining spatial and temporal variations in carbon fluxes during extreme weather events. • The impacts of hurricanes Harvey, Irma, and Maria (2017) on terrestrial carbon fluxes were assessed. • Carbon release during and after landfall was measured using SMAP-derived NEE and eddy covariance CO 2 flux data. • Hurricane Harvey resulted in the largest carbon emission (0.33 megatons), followed by Irma (0.03 megatons) and Maria (0.02 megatons). • Vegetation loss, derived from MODIS NDVI and land cover change products, was greatest in Texas (6,199.3 km 2 ), then Florida (492.92 km 2 ), and Puerto Rico (14.53 km 2 ). • Vegetation declines led to reduced photosynthetic activity, temporarily turning affected areas from carbon sinks into carbon sources. • Findings highlight hurricanes as significant short-term drivers of carbon emissions and ecosystem disturbance across coastal regions.

SparseXMIL: Leveraging sparse convolutions for context-aware and memory-efficient classification of whole slide images in digital pathology.

The relationship between parental psychological control and adolescent social anxiety: A mediation analysis of self-identity and psychological resilience.

Multiscale controls on thermal spring emergence in France: From national statistics to local scale modelling (Chaudes-Aigues hydrothermal system)

Bumblebees rely on diverse sensory information to locate flowers while foraging. The majority of research exploring the relationship between visual and olfactory floral cues is performed at local spatial scales and applicable to understanding floral selection. Floral-cue use during search remains underexplored. This study investigates how the bumblebee Bombus impatiens uses visual versus olfactory information from flowers across behavioral states and spatial scales. At local spatial scales, non-flying animals in an associative learning paradigm will generalize to either unimodal attribute of a learned color+odor cue with equal likelihood. However, bumblebees flying in a wind tunnel shift cue-use strategy depending on the spatiotemporal scale of cue encounter. When both color and odor cues mimic local/ within patch spatial scale, bumblebees weigh color information of a learned floral-cue more heavily. When cues mimic an intermediate/ between patch spatial scale, bumblebees weigh color and odor information equally, and show the highest response to fully intact multimodal cues. Thus the spatiotemporal scale of sensory information influences how bumblebees utilize multimodal floral cues.

The Hawaiian Islands cause significant disruption to North Pacific oceanic and atmospheric flows creating highly localized spatial variability of ocean conditions on coral reefs. This variability affects climate impacts on these corals but is unresolved in global climate models. Using a dynamically downscaled model to resolve future conditions at high temporal (daily) and spatial (4 km) resolution for the Hawaiian Islands, we investigate projected heat stress and the adaptation rate required for corals to withstand projected end of century warming for three different emission scenarios. In the region, the Island of Hawai'i is projected to experience the greatest heat stress by the end of the century; however, we find that coral adaptation is possible to allow Hawaiian coral to persist in the three emission scenarios. Robust projections of future conditions and required adaptation rates on a local scale are critical for successful management of these crucial ecosystems.

The unmet care needs of older adults are rapidly increasing in China. Informal family caregiving is weakened by the migration of the rural labor force to urban areas in search of better income and job opportunities. Formal care services are also insufficient due to insufficient governmental financial support, limited availability of formal caregivers, and challenging economic development conditions. A novelty solution is required to address these issues. This study draws on existing mutual-aid care services for older adults in rural China and proposes a theoretical framework to examine the impact of multidimensional mutual-aid care services. Key areas of focus include service design, delivery, and accessibility, as well as their implications for the social functioning of older adults. The model was tested through a case study in South China, involving exploratory interviews with 40 participants associated with the village's mutual-aid care service system and an analysis of 112 implementation documents from 2000 to 2020. Our findings address significant research gap by emphasizing the importance of understanding the social implications of multidimensional mutual-aid care services in the community. This understanding can facilitate a better alignment of care policies with societal objectives and provide a more informed response to the challenges posed by aging population. We identify four structural dimensions of multidimensional mutual-aid care service including perceptions, regulations, providers and resources, and analyze their differential impacts on socio-cultural, social orientation, social integration and social communicational functions. Based on our findings, we propose four directions to guide future research and encourage discussion on policies aimed at aligning mutual-aid care service development with societal expectations for older adults. This study offers constructive insights, analyzes the delivery and accessibility of social care services, and highlights valuable lessons from China's experiences, setting a modest example of efficient care service implementation on a local scale while maintaining an international perspective.

Pre-stimulus brain states predict and control variability in stimulation responses.

ABSTRACT Participatory Action Research (PAR) has emerged as a strategic research approach in agroecology, integrating scientific and local knowledge to foster the co-creation of context-specific solutions and support socio-environmental transformation. This study presents a bibliometric and systematic review of scientific literature on the application of PAR in agroecological contexts, based on 134 articles indexed in the Web of Science as of October 2024. The bibliometric analysis, conducted using VOSviewer software, mapped co-authorship networks, identified leading journals and authors, tracked publication trends over time, and analyzed the co-occurrence of keywords. The systematic review followed the PRISMA-RR protocol, allowing studies to be classified by territorial impact (global, continental, national, regional, and local) and the social groups involved. Thematic analysis revealed four core categories: (1) knowledge and transdisciplinarity, (2) sustainable agriculture, (3) agroecological transition, and (4) food sovereignty. Findings underscore the prominence of local and regional scales as key spaces for implementing PAR, evidencing the potential attributed in the analyzed literature to PAR as a research approach, methodological, epistemological and political tool in the debate on the construction of fairer and more sustainable agri-food systems.

Assessing and mapping spatial distribution variability of soil reaction (alkalinity and acidity denoted as soil pH) and electrical conductivity (EC) in cultivated areas is crucial for degradation monitoring, precision soil fertility management, and sustainable crop production. The distribution of soil reaction and EC is affected by several factors together with elevation (E), temperature and rainfall. We assessed spatial distribution variability of soil reaction and EC in cultivated areas of 29 states of India, and evaluated the relationship of soil pH and EC with E, average annual maximum temperature (AAMT), and average annual rainfall (AAR). Altogether, 237,496 georeferenced and representative surface (depth of 0 to15cm depth) soil samples were collected, and processed. Subsequently, processed soil samples were analyzed for soil pH and EC. Soil pH varied from 2.80 to 10.2 (mean ± SD 6.98 ± 1.16) with coefficient of variation of 16.64%. Whereas, EC values ranged from 0.01 to 7.75 dS m-1 (mean ± SD 0.31 ± 0.30 dS m-1) with CV of 96.30%. Soil pH was negatively and significantly correlated with E, AAMT, and AAR. Whereas, soil EC was positively and significantly correlated with E, and negatively and significantly correlated with AAMT, and AAR. The semivariogram analysis resulted in exponential best-fitted model both for soil pH and EC with the lowest MSE and RMSE values. Soil pH (nugget / sill ratio 0.35) and EC (nugget / sill ratio 0.57) had moderate spatial dependence. The interpolation maps, developed by ordinary kriging technique, revealed diverse distribution shapes for soil pH and EC in different states, and agro-ecological regions of India. About 9.7, 18.8, and 31.2% area had soil pH of > 4.5 to ≤ 5.5, > 5.5 to ≤ 6.5, and > 6.5 to ≤ 7.5, respectively. Whereas, 34.6 and 5.6% area had pH value of > 7.5 to ≤ 8.5, and > 8.5, respectively. About 93.1 and 6.7% study area had soil EC value of ≤ 0.50, and > 0.50 to ≤ 1.00 dS m-1, respectively. The generated soil pH and EC maps could be used as reference for local and regional scale policy making, and adoption of suitable soil-crop management strategies for effective soil acidity and salinity management in the study area in order to achieve improved soil health, land degradation neutrality, and sustainable crop production.

Homicide is a leading cause of death in many countries, and growing evidence suggests that short-term variations in ambient temperature, especially high temperatures, might be associated with higher risk of homicide. Latin America is the most violent region in the world, yet knowledge about the linkages between ambient temperature and homicide mortality in the region remains limited. We conducted a case time series design using conditional quasi-Poisson and distributed lag non-linear models to estimate short-term associations (0-7 lag days) between daily mean temperature and homicide deaths in 307 cities in seven Latin American countries from 2000 to 2019. During this period 1,193,110 homicide deaths were reported. Our findings showed that high temperatures were associated with an increased risk of homicide mortality. The excess fraction of homicide deaths attributable to extreme heat (≥95th percentile of temperature) was 0.61% (95% CI: 0.51, 0.72%). The stratification analysis indicated minimal heterogeneity across sex, and age group categories. There was no evidence that associations were modified by city-level educational attainment or city Gross Domestic Product per capita. Our study highlights the association between high temperatures and increased homicide mortality risk. This represents a pressing concern given global environmental temperature trend and the already high burden of homicide mortality in Latin America. More attention at the local, regional and continental scales is needed to incorporate environmental concerns into homicide prevention strategies.

Several restoration practices are used to mitigate and compensate for the negative effects of large-scale forestry on biodiversity in temperate and boreal forests. A comprehensive synthesis of the benefits of these practices across taxa is missing. We conducted a systematic review and meta-analysis on this topic. We identified 93 relevant studies in which the effects of partial harvest, thinning, understory removal, prescribed burning, deadwood addition, or a combination of these were examined. Overall, restoration practices had a positive effect on richness and abundance of forest species, though effects varied among practices and taxa. The most consistent positive responses were found for plants and flying invertebrates. For other taxa, the response was not statistically significant, and in several cases, there were also negative responses. For instance, thinning and understory removal negatively affected birds, and prescribed burning had negative effects on bryophytes and lichens. Effects of restoration practices often became more positive over time, but 83% of data points were from within 10years since the start of restoration, meaning the long-term impacts of restoration practices remain to be explored. Because different restoration practices benefit different taxa, promoting forest biodiversity requires a variety of restoration practices applied across forest landscapes. So far, evaluations have been done only at local scales, and evaluations of effects on landscape-scale biodiversity are needed.

Polyelectrolyte multilayer (PEM) films with controllable surface morphology, formed by layer-by-layer (LbL) assembly, are widely used in energy, water, sensors, electronics, and biomedical applications. Self-wrinkling behavior could give rise to diverse micro- or nanoscale patterns in these PEM films in response to various stimuli, thereby enabling the desired functionalities. Disordered hyperuniformity (DHU) is a recently discovered exotic state of matter that demonstrates disorder on a local scale but uniformity in long-range order. It has been found that the DHU states of solid 2D materials and high-entropy alloys often possess significantly lower energy than other disorder models and can lead to unique electronic and thermal transport properties. Nevertheless, a surface with DHU-like nanostructures in PEM films has never been reported before. Herein, we present a straightforward method for generating DHU-like nanotopographic patterns in PEM films. Using polyelectrolyte solutions of branched poly(ethylenimine) (BPEI) and alginate (ALG), the resultant LbL films showed tunable nanodot and nanopore-like topographies on the surface, depending on the pH of the solutions and the number of layers. The experimental results demonstrated that the pH of the terminal solution during the LbL process played a dominant role in determining the nanostructures of the final film, which is due to the different degrees of ionization of polyelectrolyte chains under different pH environments. Notably, the nanostructures with DHU-like characteristics were observed on the film surface within a narrow pH range for BPEI and ALG. Benefiting from the DHU "phase diagram" based on the autocovariance function analysis, the nanofilms with specific surface characteristics and desired functionalities can be created. Moreover, the nano- or microfeatures on the surface could be retained by introducing SiO2 nanoparticles into the PEM matrix, indicating the possibility of manufacturing functional nanocomposite-incorporated films.