This AIGFS forecast in the form of a map, for December 10, 2025, shows the heavy precipitation from an atmospheric river hitting the U.S. Pacific Northwest. AI weather models like this one will protect life and property by improving forecast accuracy and timeliness for events such as the catastrophic flooding that impacted the Northwest.

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume 122, Issue 50, December 2025. SignificanceChemical reactions in aqueous microdroplets are known to proceed at remarkably accelerated rates, yet the decisive factors governing these rate enhancements remain elusive. We introduce a droplet-on-demand mass spectrometry platform that ...

Urinary proteins offer multifaceted insights into tissue repair, dysfunction, and renal health, with significant implications for both human and veterinary medicine. However, marine mammal medicine la...

And other links to start your hump day.

Dengue fever is the most common mosquito transmitted viral infection afflicting humans, estimated to generate around 390 million infections each year in over 100 countries. The introduction of the endosymbiotic bacterium Wolbachia into Aedes aegypti mosquitoes has the potential to greatly reduce the public health burden of the disease. This approach requires extensive polymerase chain reaction (PCR) testing of the Wolbachia-infection status of mosquitoes in areas where Wolbachia–A. aegypti are released. Here, we report the first example of small organism mid-infrared spectroscopy where we have applied attenuated total reflection Fourier transform infrared (ATR-FT-IR) spectroscopy and multivariate modeling methods to determine sex, age, and the presence of Wolbachia (wMel strain) in laboratory mosquitoes and sex and age in field mosquitoes. The prediction errors using partial least squares discriminant analysis (PLS-DA) discrimination models for laboratory studies on independent test sets ranged from 0 to 3% for age and sex grading and 3% to 5% for Wolbachia infection diagnosis using dry mosquito abdomens while field study results using an artificial neural network yielded a 10% error. The application of FT-IR analysis is inexpensive, easy to use, and portable and shows significant potential to replace the reliance on more expensive and laborious PCR assays.

Anthropogenic perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) are pervasive contaminants subject to increasingly stringent regulatory thresholds in water resources. Current nonthermal defluorination strategies face critical limitations, including incomplete mineralization, yielding persistent short-chain PFAS byproducts, and residual fluoride ions, thereby hindering compliance with water quality standards. Herein, we demonstrate that wollastonite-bearing microdroplets prioritize defluorination over C–C scission in perfluoroalkyl chains through liquid–solid–gas triple-phase contact electrification. This process results in complete perfluorooctanoic acid mineralization with hardly detectable shorter-chain anionic PFAS byproducts, as confirmed by Fourier transform ion cyclotron resonance mass spectrometry. Microdroplet-mediated weathering of wollastonite triggers the formation of CaF2–SiO2 interfacial structures through Si–F–Ca bonding interactions, thereby enabling fluoride immobilization with negligible leaching. This work reveals that atmospheric clouds containing mineral particles intrinsically exhibit a self-cleansing capacity toward PFAS contaminants, advancing cloud-inspired interfacial engineering for next-generation water purification systems.

Abstract. Since the 1980s, monarch butterfly (Danaus plexippus plexippus) populations across North America have declined by 80%–95%. Although several studi