Turning biogas waste into a powerful tool for cleaning ammonium pollution
Peer-Reviewed Publication
Updates every hour. Last Updated: 4-Nov-2025 03:11 ET (4-Nov-2025 08:11 GMT/UTC)
A pioneering two-year field study has revealed that biodegradable microplastics, often hailed as eco-friendly alternatives to conventional plastics, are quietly reshaping the chemistry of farmland soils in unexpected and complex ways. Published on August 22, 2025, in Carbon Research as an open-access original article, this research was co-led by Dr. Jie Zhou from the College of Agriculture at Nanjing Agricultural University, China, and Dr. Davey L. Jones from the School of Environmental and Natural Sciences at Bangor University, UK—a powerful Sino-British collaboration bridging soil science, microbiology, and climate resilience. The team investigated how polypropylene (PP)—a common conventional plastic—and polylactic acid (PLA)—a widely used biodegradable plastic—affect soil organic carbon (SOC) in real-world agricultural conditions. Both were added at realistic concentrations (0.2% w/w) to topsoil (0–20 cm), with an unamended plot serving as control. While neither plastic changed the total amount of carbon stored, the story beneath the surface was dramatically different.
Regression analysis is essential in biomedical research for exploring relationships between phenotypic or clinical outcomes and diverse predictors. However, constructing multiple univariate and multivariate models is often hindered by the lack of robust tools for batch regression in R, forcing researchers to rely on custom scripts. To address this gap, we developed bregr, an open-source R package built in the tidyverse style, leveraging the object-oriented programming strategy for enhanced extensibility. bregr streamlines batch processing of diverse regression models, including generalized linear, Cox proportional hazards, and mixed-effects, using native R pipes. It provides tidy outputs, integrated visualization, parallel computing capabilities, and a cohesive workflow, enabling efficient execution of hundreds of models with structured results for downstream analysis. Available on CRAN, bregr enhances efficiency, reproducibility, and scalability in biomedical research and beyond.
Scientists have decoded the molecular pathway behind the striking yellow petals of Camellia nitidissima and applied these insights to boost the nutritional profile of tomatoes.
Researchers from Shandong University and South China University of Technology have developed E2E, an effective and comprehensive R package to simplify the construction of ensemble models for diagnosis and prognosis. The package integrates bagging, stacking, and voting strategies, offering flexible model selection and improved handling of imbalanced data. Validated on TCGA and CHARLS datasets, E2E demonstrates strong performance in both diagnosis and prognosis tasks.
Banana production worldwide is threatened by narrow genetic diversity, pests, diseases, and climate pressures.