A growing surplus of refinery sulfur could find a new use in asphalt production, reducing reliance on petroleum-based bitumen and lowering costs. But a new academic review highlights unanswered questions about emissions, human exposure and long-term health implications, calling for safer formulations and life-cycle assessment of sulfur-modified asphalt.

The interaction between institutional language and real-world carbon outcomes is paramount to achieving climate change mitigation. The language–policy–outcome (LPO) framework employed qualitative ecolinguistic frame analysis to compare carbon governance discourse in China and the United States (California) between 2007 and 2022, advancing a holistic understanding of how carbon governance discourse intermediates among institutional behavior, epistemic culture, and environmental outcomes.

ATP-induced cell death (AICD) is an operational conceptual framework describing the associations between pathological extracellular ATP accumulation, excessive purinergic stimulation, disrupted ATP homeostasis and diverse cell-death outcomes. This review summarizes recent evidence on the molecular mechanisms of AICD, including extracellular ATP–purinergic receptor signaling, ionic and membrane disturbances, inflammasome and caspase activation, mitochondrial dysfunction, redox imbalance, and the context-dependent convergence of these pathways on multiple forms of cell death. The directness and strength of gene-level evidence are also assessed using an ordinal evidence-grading framework that classifies the evidence for the 38 AICD-Core genes as direct experimental, indirect, context-dependent, mechanistically supportive, or currently insufficient. These mechanistic analyses, as well as gene-level analyses, are discussed in relation to the existing datasets in ATPexGen, which contains 38 AICD-Core and 216 AICD-Extended genes and provides a searchable and downloadable resource for the field of AICD research. The review also addresses gaps in current evidence, limitations of curation processes, and priorities for experimental validation and database development moving forward.

A research team has found that drinking water source type helps explain the distribution of antibiotics, antibiotic resistance genes, and resistant bacteria across China's Poyang Lake basin. 

Background: Scabies, caused by the mite Sarcoptes scabiei, affects more than 200 million people at any one time and can be complicated by severe secondary bacterial disease. The same mite causes sarcoptic mange in companion animals, livestock and wildlife. Population-scale nuclear genomic data spanning diverse hosts and geographical regions remain limited.

Methods: We generated whole-genome sequence data for 106 S. scabiei samples and incorporated 19 publicly available datasets from humans, companion animals, livestock and wildlife. After quality filtering, 83 of 125 sample-level datasets were retained. We assessed ancestry, phylogenetic relationships, nucleotide diversity, genetic differentiation, gene-level variation and candidate selection signals.

Results: We identified 1,568,031 filter-passing nuclear variants, including 698,136 single-nucleotide polymorphisms; sample-level heterozygosity estimates ranged from 0.27% to 11%. ADMIXTURE, principal component and phylogenetic analyses supported seven ancestry clusters broadly corresponding to host-associated groups, with pairwise fixation-index estimates ranging from 0.22 to 0.92. Multi-metric analysis identified 1,600 candidate selection blocks – eight hard-sweep, 486 soft-sweep and 1,106 ancient-adaptation blocks – and six conserved low-diversity blocks. Variable genes showed nominal enrichment for DNA repair, cell adhesion and signalling, whereas invariable genes showed nominal enrichment for ribosomal function, oxidative phosphorylation and mitochondrial processes.

Hypoxic-ischemic encephalopathy (HIE) following successful cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) is the principal determinant of patient outcomes after cardiac arrest. We performed a comprehensive analysis of clinical data from 44,535 patients with HIE following CPR between 2020 and 2021 across 31 provinces in China. Notable regional variations in both incidence and mortality rates were observed across China. Mortality was significantly higher among patients with multiple comorbidities, complications, use of invasive interventions, delayed tracheotomy, and blood transfusion.

Traditional air quality models struggle with changing emissions, while pure AI systems operate as opaque "black boxes" that can break the laws of physics. To solve this, researchers developed ProNet, a framework that embeds AI directly into atmospheric equations. Tested across 338 cities, ProNet outperformed experienced human forecasters and accurately predicted extreme events—like severe dust storms—without producing "AI hallucinations." Crucially, it also acts as a scientific diagnostic tool, using routine hourly data to uncover and correct hidden flaws in existing chemical models.