Transport Pathways of Nitrate in Stormwater Runoff Inferred from High-Frequency Sampling and Stable Water Isotopes.

Storm events can mobilize nitrogen species from landscapes into streams, exacerbating eutrophication and threatening aquatic ecosystems as well as human health. However, the transport pathways and storm responses of different nitrogen forms remain elusive. We used high-frequency chemical and isotopic sampling to partition sources of stormwater runoff and determine transport pathways of multiple nitrogen forms in an agricultural catchment.

Rapid groundwater decline and some cases of recovery in aquifers globally.

Groundwater resources are vital to ecosystems and livelihoods. Excessive groundwater withdrawals can cause groundwater levels to decline, resulting in seawater intrusion, land subsidence, streamflow depletion and wells running dry. However, the global pace and prevalence of local groundwater declines are poorly constrained, because in situ groundwater levels have not been synthesized at the global scale.

Through history to growth dynamics: deciphering the evolution of spatial networks.

Many ramified, network-like patterns in nature, such as river networks or blood vessels, form as a result of unstable growth of moving boundaries in an external diffusive field. Here, we pose the inverse problem for the network growth-can the growth dynamics be inferred from the analysis of the final pattern? We show that by evolving the network backward in time one can not only reconstruct the growth rules but also get an insight into the conditions under which branch splitting occurs. Determining the growth rules from a single snapshot in time is particularly important for growth processes so slow that they cannot be directly observed, such as growth of river networks and deltas or cave passages.

Metabolism and autophagy in plants-a perfect match.

Autophagy is a eukaryotic cellular transport mechanism that delivers intracellular macromolecules, proteins, and even organelles to a lytic organelle (vacuole in yeast and plants/lysosome in animals) for degradation and nutrient recycling. The process is mediated by highly conserved autophagy-related (ATG) proteins. In plants, autophagy maintains cellular homeostasis under favorable conditions, guaranteeing normal plant growth and fitness.