Iceland has designated the potential collapse of a major Atlantic Ocean current system a national security concern and an existential threat, enabling its government to strategize for worst-case scena...

Plant cells are totipotent, meaning individual cells have the potential to develop into a full organism, a property unique to the zygote for animals. However, in most species for most cells, plant cells are not spontaneously totipotent, since they must be treated with specific hormone combinations to unlock their totipotency. Species within the Kalanchoe genus is unique as they spontaneously develop foliar embryos that are fully realized plantlets with shoot and root from notches along the edges of leaves. We speculate that the progenitor cells that give rise to these foliar embryos are totipotent, and we are using single cell techniques to identify & characterize them. In addition to being a fundamental process for plant biology, we foresee unlocking totipotency has many biotechnological applications, such as faciliating genetic transformation and the development of synthetic organs of biomanufacturing.

One outstanding open problem with high therapeutic value is how to design nucleic acid sequences with specific properties. Even just the 5’ UTR sequence admits 2 × 10120 possibilities, making exhausti...

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As the world grapples with the urgent need to reduce carbon emissions, the aviation industry has come under increasing scrutiny

Drastically reduce emissions first, or carbon dioxide removal will be next to useless.