Unforeseen plant phenotypic diversity in a dry and grazed world.

Earth harbours an extraordinary plant phenotypic diversity that is at risk from ongoing global changes. However, it remains unknown how increasing aridity and livestock grazing pressure-two major drivers of global change-shape the trait covariation that underlies plant phenotypic diversity. Here we assessed how covariation among 20 chemical and morphological traits responds to aridity and grazing pressure within global drylands.

Hotspots of biogeochemical activity linked to aridity and plant traits across global drylands.

Perennial plants create productive and biodiverse hotspots, known as fertile islands, beneath their canopies. These hotspots largely determine the structure and functioning of drylands worldwide. Despite their ubiquity, the factors controlling fertile islands under conditions of contrasting grazing by livestock, the most prevalent land use in drylands, remain virtually unknown.

Biocrusts protect the Great Wall of China from erosion.

The Great Wall of China, one of the most emblematic and historical structures built by humankind throughout all of history, is suffering from rain and wind erosion and is largely colonized by biocrusts. However, how biocrusts influence the conservation and longevity of this structure is virtually unknown. Here, we conducted an extensive biocrust survey across the Great Wall and found that biocrusts cover 67% of the studied sections.

Cultivating Resilience in Dryland Soils: An Assisted Migration Approach to Biological Soil Crust Restoration.

Land use practices and climate change have driven substantial soil degradation across global drylands, impacting ecosystem functions and human livelihoods. Biological soil crusts, a common feature of dryland ecosystems, are under extensive exploration for their potential to restore the stability and fertility of degraded soils through the development of inoculants. However, stressful abiotic conditions often result in the failure of inoculation-based restoration in the field and may hinder the long-term success of biocrust restoration efforts.

Mapping biocrust distribution in China's drylands under changing climate.

Biological soil crusts (biocrusts) are widely distributed in global drylands and have multiple significant roles in regulating dryland soil and ecosystem multifunctionality. However, maps of their distribution over large spatial scales are uncommon and sometimes unreliable, because our current remote sensing technology is unable to efficiently discriminate between biocrusts and vascular plants or even bare soil across different ecosystem and soil types. The lack of biocrust spatial data may limit our ability to detect risks to dryland function or key tipping points.

Interim Safety Profile From the Feasibility Study of the BrainGate Neural Interface System.

Background And Objectives: Brain-computer interfaces (BCIs) are being developed to restore mobility, communication, and functional independence to people with paralysis. Though supported by decades of preclinical data, the safety of chronically implanted microelectrode array BCIs in humans is unknown. We report safety results from the prospective, open-label, nonrandomized BrainGate feasibility study (NCT00912041), the largest and longest-running clinical trial of an implanted BCI.

Grazing and ecosystem service delivery in global drylands.

Grazing represents the most extensive use of land worldwide. Yet its impacts on ecosystem services remain uncertain because pervasive interactions between grazing pressure, climate, soil properties, and biodiversity may occur but have never been addressed simultaneously. Using a standardized survey at 98 sites across six continents, we show that interactions between grazing pressure, climate, soil, and biodiversity are critical to explain the delivery of fundamental ecosystem services across drylands worldwide.

Advancing Critical Chemical Processes for a Sustainable Future: Challenges for Industry and the Max Planck-Cardiff Centre on the Fundamentals of Heterogeneous Catalysis (FUNCAT).

Catalysis is involved in around 85 % of manufacturing industry and contributes an estimated 25 % to the global domestic product, with the majority of the processes relying on heterogeneous catalysis. Despite the importance in different global segments, the fundamental understanding of heterogeneously catalysed processes lags substantially behind that achieved in other fields. The newly established Max Planck-Cardiff Centre on the Fundamentals of Heterogeneous Catalysis (FUNCAT) targets innovative concepts that could contribute to the scientific developments needed in the research field to achieve net zero greenhouse gas emissions in the chemical industries.

Soil-atmosphere fluxes of CO, CH, and NO across an experimentally-grown, successional gradient of biocrust community types.

Biological soil crusts (biocrusts) are critical components of dryland and other ecosystems worldwide, and are increasingly recognized as novel model ecosystems from which more general principles of ecology can be elucidated. Biocrusts are often diverse communities, comprised of both eukaryotic and prokaryotic organisms with a range of metabolic lifestyles that enable the fixation of atmospheric carbon and nitrogen. However, how the function of these biocrust communities varies with succession is incompletely characterized, especially in comparison to more familiar terrestrial ecosystem types such as forests.

Methanol synthesis from CO and H using supported Pd alloy catalysts.

A number of Pd based materials have been synthesised and evaluated as catalysts for the conversion of carbon dioxide and hydrogen to methanol, a useful platform chemical and hydrogen storage molecule. Monometallic Pd catalysts show poor methanol selectivity, but this is improved through the formation of Pd alloys, with both PdZn and PdGa alloys showing greatly enhanced methanol productivity compared with monometallic Pd/AlO and Pd/TiO catalysts. Catalyst characterisation shows that the 1 : 1 β-PdZn alloy is present in all Zn containing post-reaction samples, including PdZn/GaO, with the PdGa alloy formed for the Pd/GaO sample.

The Catalytic Reactivity of Alloys; Ethanol and Formic Acid Decomposition on Cu-Pd(110).

The effect of alloying Cu and Pd on the reactivity pattern for formic acid and for ethanol has been examined. The electronic structure of the material is strongly affected by the alloying, with the d-band lowered in energy and filled, compared with Pd alone. Hence the reactivity would be expected to be strongly affected by the alloying.

Biocrust impacts on dryland soil water balance: A path toward the whole picture.

As a crucial living feature inhabiting the soil-atmosphere boundary, biocrusts play a vital role in liquid water or vapor transport through surface soil and thus have strong effects on soil water regimes. However, it remains unclear how biocrusts affect annual or multiyear soil water budgets through the regulation of evaporation outputs and non-rainfall water (NRW) or infiltration inputs. Thus, we used automated microlysimeters to continually investigate the differences in evaporation and NRW rates between moss-dominated biocrusts and bare soil at 0-5 cm depth for 2 years.

Habitat Type Affects Elevational Patterns in Ground-dwelling Arthropod Communities.

Understanding factors that drive biodiversity distributions is central in ecology and critical to conservation. Elevational gradients are useful for studying the effects of climate on biodiversity but it can be difficult to disentangle climate effects from resource differences among habitat types. Here we compare elevational patterns and influences of environmental variables on ground-dwelling arthropods in open- and forested-habitats.

Enhanced HO Production via Photocatalytic O Reduction over Structurally-Modified Poly(heptazine imide).

Solar HO produced by O reduction provides a green, efficient, and ecological alternative to the industrial anthraquinone process and H/O direct-synthesis. We report efficient photocatalytic HO production at a rate of 73.4 mM h in the presence of a sacrificial donor on a structurally engineered catalyst, alkali metal-halide modulated poly(heptazine imide) (MX → PHI).

What is a biocrust? A refined, contemporary definition for a broadening research community.

Studies of biological soil crusts (biocrusts) have proliferated over the last few decades. The biocrust literature has broadened, with more studies assessing and describing the function of a variety of biocrust communities in a broad range of biomes and habitats and across a large spectrum of disciplines, and also by the incorporation of biocrusts into global perspectives and biogeochemical models. As the number of biocrust researchers increases, along with the scope of soil communities defined as 'biocrust', it is worth asking whether we all share a clear, universal, and fully articulated definition of what constitutes a biocrust.

Responses of Biocrust and Associated Soil Bacteria to Novel Climates Are Not Tightly Coupled.

Climate change is expanding drylands even as land use practices degrade them. Representing ∼40% of Earth's terrestrial surface, drylands rely on biological soil crusts (biocrusts) for key ecosystem functions including soil stability, biogeochemical cycling, and water capture. Understanding how biocrusts adapt to climate change is critical to understanding how dryland ecosystems will function with altered climate.

The Critical Role of βPdZn Alloy in Pd/ZnO Catalysts for the Hydrogenation of Carbon Dioxide to Methanol.

The rise in atmospheric CO concentration and the concomitant rise in global surface temperature have prompted massive research effort in designing catalytic routes to utilize CO as a feedstock. Prime among these is the hydrogenation of CO to make methanol, which is a key commodity chemical intermediate, a hydrogen storage molecule, and a possible future fuel for transport sectors that cannot be electrified. Pd/ZnO has been identified as an effective candidate as a catalyst for this reaction, yet there has been no attempt to gain a fundamental understanding of how this catalyst works and more importantly to establish specific design criteria for CO hydrogenation catalysts.

Genotypic confirmation of a biased phenotypic sex ratio in a dryland moss using restriction fragment length polymorphisms.

Premise: In dioicous mosses, sex is determined by a single U (female, ♀) or V (male, ♂) chromosome. Although a 1 : 1 sex ratio is expected following meiosis, phenotypic sex ratios based on the production of gametangia are often female-biased. The dryland moss (Pottiaceae) is notable for its low frequency of sex expression and strong phenotypic female bias.

The Role of Metal Nanoparticles in Promoting Photocatalysis by TiO.

In this review, we highlight the role played by metal nanoparticles (NPs) in photocatalytic oxidation with titania as a support. This is presented in two parts, namely, partial photo-oxidation in which an organic sacrificial agent is oxidised in anaerobic conditions to produce hydrogen (photo-reforming), and photo-oxidative mineralisation of organics in aerobic conditions. We present some rules for such reactions that dictate which organic molecules can react readily, and which metals are likely to be useful for such reactions.