In a paper published in National Science Review, a Chinese team of scientists highlights the discovery of well-preserved blue-stain fungal hyphae within a Jurassic fossil wood from northeastern China, which pushes back the earliest known fossil record of this fungal group by approximately 80 million years. The new finding provides crucial fossil evidence for studying the origin and early evolution of blue-stain fungi and offers fresh insights into understanding the ecological relationships between the blue-stain fungi, plants, and insects during the Jurassic period.

Field and pot fertilization experiments on foxtail millet and common millet further suggest that the millet grain δ¹⁵N values can serve as reliable indicators of manuring practices, and the relationship between manuring levels and the δ¹⁵N values of archaeological millet remains was proposed. The δ¹⁵N values of ancient millet grains suggest widespread and intensive manuring practices in prehistoric North China.

As the planet’s oceans are gradually warmed by the effects of climate change, a huge area in the North Atlantic stands out as an unusual zone of relative cooling. A region that stretches roughly from Greenland to Ireland, counterintuitively dubbed the North Atlantic warming hole, is a conspicuous patch of blue on global climate change maps. Researchers say its temperature contrast could intensify in the decades ahead as shifting climate-driven winds amplify the cooling process in the North Atlantic.

With spring rains, warm-season turfgrasses such as bermudagrass and zoysiagrass are at risk of a fungal disease called large patch that can leave a lawn marked with large brown areas of dead and dying grass. A new article published in the Crop Science journal provides critical knowledge about the disease, which can compromise the health, aesthetics and usability of turfgrass.