As climate change accelerates the spread of plant diseases worldwide, researchers at the College of Design and Engineering (CDE) at the National University of Singapore have developed a precision-targeted spray that could help crops defend themselves. The new system, called SENDS (short for stomata-targeting engineered nanoparticles), uses microscopic zinc-based particles designed to stick to stomata, the tiny pores on leaves where plants exchange gases and where bacteria often enter to cause infection.

Developed by a team led by Assistant Professor Tedrick Lew from the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at CDE, the particles carry natural antibacterial compounds and release them only where they are needed. In lab tests, plants treated with the spray were 20 times more resistant to infection than those treated with non-targeted formulations. The spray also remained effective even after rainfall and did not interfere with the plant’s natural functions such as photosynthesis.

The study was published in Nature Communications.

Global warming is continuously advancing. How quickly this will happen can now be predicted more accurately than ever before, thanks to a method developed by climate researcher Gottfried Kirchengast and his team at the University of Graz. For the first time, this method enables reliable monitoring of the Paris climate goals and shows that temperatures are rising faster than expected in the latest IPCC report. Based on this, the researchers propose a four-classes assessment scale to quantitatively gauge to what degree the Paris climate goals are being met or missed. "This creates a completely new compliance assessment basis for the political and legal implementation of the agreement", says Kirchengast.

Flooding in coastal communities is happening far more often than previously thought, according to a new study from North Carolina State University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. The study also found major flaws with the widely used approach of using marine water level data to capture instances of flooding.

New research led by the University of Sydney adds to our understanding of how rapidly rising sea levels due to climate change foreshadow the end of the Great Barrier Reef as we know it. The findings suggest the reef can withstand rising sea levels in isolation but is vulnerable to associated environmental stressors arising from global climate change. 

Forest soil stores water, carbon and nutrients for trees and also provides a habitat for living organisms. When managing forests, it is particularly important to work in a way that protects the soil and to correctly assess soil moisture for that purpose. A new study by the University of Göttingen in collaboration with the Czech Mendel University shows that previous methods of moisture measurement are inadequate. Satellite data can help to better understand the soil moisture dynamics of forest soils. This research has implications for best practice in forest management. The findings will help people adapt to a changing climate and to refine and inform prediction models. The results were published in the Journal of Hydrology: Regional Studies.

While scientists have long studied currents of large eddies, the smaller ones — called submesoscale eddies — are notoriously difficult to detect. These currents, which range from several kilometers to 100 kilometers wide, have been the “missing pieces” of the ocean’s puzzle — until now. Using data from the new Surface Water and Ocean Topography (SWOT) satellite, a Texas A&M researcher and his collaborators at JPL, CNES and Caltech finally got a clear view of these hard-to-see currents, and they are a lot stronger than anyone thought.