Viruses on plastic pollution may quietly accelerate the spread of antibiotic resistance

Biochar Editorial Office, Shenyang Agricultural University

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Plastisphere viruses: hidden drivers of antibiotic resistance dissemination

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Credit: Xue-Peng Chen, Di Wu & Dong Zhu

Plastic pollution does more than litter landscapes and oceans. According to a new perspective article published in Biocontaminant, viruses living on plastic surfaces may play an underrecognized role in spreading antibiotic resistance, raising concerns for environmental and public health worldwide.

When plastics enter natural environments, they quickly become coated with microbial biofilms known as the plastisphere. These plastic associated communities are already known hotspots for antibiotic resistance genes. The new study highlights that viruses, the most abundant biological entities on Earth, could be key players in moving these resistance genes between microbes.

“Most research has focused on bacteria in the plastisphere, but viruses are everywhere in these communities and interact closely with their hosts,” said corresponding author Dong Zhu of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. “Our work suggests that plastisphere viruses may act as hidden drivers of antibiotic resistance dissemination.”

Viruses can transfer genetic material between bacteria through a process called horizontal gene transfer. In plastisphere biofilms, where microbes are densely packed, viruses may more easily shuttle resistance genes across species, including to potential pathogens. Some viruses also carry auxiliary metabolic genes that can boost bacterial survival under stressful conditions, such as exposure to antibiotics or pollutants, indirectly favoring resistant microbes.

The authors point out that viral behavior appears to differ between environments. In aquatic plastispheres, viruses are more likely to adopt life strategies that promote gene transfer, potentially increasing resistance risks. In soils, viruses may instead limit resistant bacteria by killing their hosts. These contrasting roles highlight the need to consider environmental context when assessing the risks of plastic pollution.

“This perspective emphasizes that antibiotic resistance linked to plastics cannot be fully understood without including viral ecology,” said lead author Xue Peng Chen. “Incorporating viruses into a One Health framework will help us better evaluate the long term consequences of plastic pollution.”

The authors call for future studies to directly measure gene exchange between viruses and bacteria on plastics and to refine methods for detecting virus encoded resistance genes. Such insights could inform environmental monitoring and plastic waste management strategies aimed at reducing antibiotic resistance risks.

 

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Journal reference: Chen XP, Wu D, Zhu D. 2025. Plastisphere viruses: hidden drivers of antibiotic resistance dissemination. Biocontaminant 1: e018  

https://www.maxapress.com/article/doi/10.48130/biocontam-0025-0020  

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About Biocontaminant:
Biocontaminant is a multidisciplinary platform dedicated to advancing fundamental and applied research on biological contaminants across diverse environments and systems. The journal serves as an innovative, efficient, and professional forum for global researchers to disseminate findings in this rapidly evolving field.

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DOI

10.48130/biocontam-0025-0020 

Method of Research

News article

Subject of Research

Not applicable

Article Title

Plastisphere viruses: hidden drivers of antibiotic resistance dissemination

Article Publication Date

11-Dec-2025

Tracing hidden sources of nitrate pollution in rapidly changing rural urban landscapes

Biochar Editorial Office, Shenyang Agricultural University

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Tracing the nitrate source and process in rural-urban ecotone: integrated multi-tracer approach

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Credit: Zihan Zhao, Jiayu Zhao, Sidi Chen, Letian Ning, Zucong Cai & Yanhua Wang

Nitrate pollution has become one of the most widespread water quality challenges in intensively farmed regions around the world, threatening drinking water safety, aquatic ecosystems, and downstream lakes. A new study published in Nitrogen Cycling reveals how human activities in rural urban transition zones are reshaping the nitrogen cycle, allowing nitrate to move through rivers and groundwater and ultimately reach large freshwater lakes.

The research focuses on the rural urban ecotone of the Yangtze River Delta in eastern China, an area where agriculture, aquaculture, and residential development coexist. Using an integrated multi tracer approach, the research team traced nitrate sources and transformation processes across surface water and groundwater systems, offering one of the most detailed pictures to date of how nitrogen pollution travels through complex landscapes.

“Nitrate pollution does not come from a single source, and it does not stay in one place,” said corresponding author Yanhua Wang. “Our goal was to understand not only where nitrate originates, but also how it moves, transforms, and accumulates as water flows from farmland and villages toward major lakes.”

The team combined water chemistry measurements, dual stable isotope analysis, Bayesian mixing models, and a county scale nitrogen cascade model. This approach allowed them to distinguish nitrate derived from manure, chemical fertilizers, aquaculture effluent, soil leaching, and atmospheric deposition. Field samples were collected across multiple seasons from rivers, canals, and groundwater wells in two contrasting river networks upstream of Taihu Lake, one of China’s largest freshwater lakes.

The results show that nitrate contamination was widespread in both surface water and groundwater, often exceeding regional water quality thresholds. In traditional agricultural areas, manure was identified as the dominant source of nitrate, contributing nearly 70 percent of surface water nitrate and about 60 percent of groundwater nitrate across seasons. In more industrialized and aquaculture intensive zones, aquaculture effluent emerged as the main nitrate source during dry and wet seasons, highlighting a pollution pathway that is often underestimated.

“Our findings show that manure and aquaculture are major drivers of nitrate pollution, yet they are frequently overlooked compared to chemical fertilizers,” said Wang. “This has important implications for how we design pollution control strategies.”

The study also revealed clear differences in nitrogen transformation processes. Nitrification dominated in agricultural surface waters, especially during dry periods, while denitrification was more pronounced in groundwater, where low oxygen conditions allow microbes to convert nitrate into other nitrogen forms. These underground processes can reduce nitrate concentrations locally, but they may also produce greenhouse gases such as nitrous oxide.

By integrating isotopic evidence with a nitrogen cascade model, the researchers linked observed water pollution to long term changes in land use and agricultural practices. Rapid expansion of aquaculture and commercial crop production has significantly increased nitrogen losses to aquatic systems in some counties, while reductions in cropland area and livestock restructuring have altered nitrogen pathways in others.

“Surface water and groundwater are not separate systems,” Wang explained. “They act together as major transport pathways that deliver nitrogen from land to lakes. Effective water protection must consider both.”

The study underscores the need for coordinated watershed management strategies that address manure application, pond aquaculture, and fragmented cropland management. According to the authors, reducing nitrate pollution in large lakes like Taihu will require integrated solutions that balance agricultural productivity with environmental protection, especially in rapidly urbanizing regions.

This multi tracer framework provides a powerful tool for policymakers and scientists seeking to untangle complex pollution sources and design targeted strategies to protect water resources in agricultural landscapes worldwide.

 

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Journal Reference: Zhao Z, Zhao J, Chen S, Ning L, Cai Z, et al. 2025. Tracing the nitrate source and process in rural-urban ecotone: integrated multi-tracer approach. Nitrogen Cycling 1: e011  

https://www.maxapress.com/article/doi/10.48130/nc-0025-0011  

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About Nitrogen Cycling:
Nitrogen Cycling is a multidisciplinary platform for communicating advances in fundamental and applied research on the nitrogen cycle. It is dedicated to serving as an innovative, efficient, and professional platform for researchers in the field of nitrogen cycling worldwide to deliver findings from this rapidly expanding field of science.

Follow us on Facebook, X, and Bluesky. 

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DOI

10.48130/nc-0025-0011 

Method of Research

Experimental study

Subject of Research

Not applicable

Article Title

Tracing the nitrate source and process in rural-urban ecotone: integrated multi-tracer approach

Article Publication Date

30-Dec-2025

The Teacher’s Burden

by Arkhub Insights / December 30th, 2025

Teachers have always been society’s most underestimated heroes. They carry the emotional, intellectual, and social development of entire generations—yet they work inside systems that often value credentials more than contribution, compliance more than creativity, and paperwork more than human potential.

This essay explores the invisible load teachers carry — a burden that cannot be quantified, standardized, or fully understood by anyone who has never stepped into a classroom with 30 different stories, needs, fears, and possibilities staring back at them.

A great teacher adapts in real time.

They sense confusion before a hand goes up.
They notice the student who suddenly gets quiet.
They see potential before a student recognizes it in themselves.
They adjust lessons on the fly because the textbook hasn’t kept pace with the world.
They bridge emotional, social, and academic gaps no curriculum designer could ever predict.

And while they teach reading, writing, and critical thinking, they also manage the things no job description lists:

• trauma
• instability
• hunger
• exhaustion
• undiagnosed learning challenges
• anxiety
• broken homes
• pressure no child knows how to express

They are part mentor, part counselor, part protector, part improvisational genius — and always, always human.

And through it all, they teach.

Not because the system makes it easy.
But because their calling makes it necessary.

**Here’s the truth systems don’t want to admit:
Teaching is not a process. It is a craft.**

A deeply human, intuitive, emotional craft that cannot be standardized without diminishing its power. Teaching requires patience, improvisation, empathy, humor, discipline, presence, attention, creativity — none of which appear on the institutional spreadsheets used to evaluate performance.

When systems reduce teaching to metrics, teachers become data clerks.
When they reduce creativity to checklists, teachers become script readers.
When they reduce learning to test prep, teachers become compliance officers.

Great teachers did not sign up for that.

They signed up to spark curiosity, expand minds, change trajectories, and help human beings grow.

It is no surprise, then, that teachers are leaving institutions — not because they stopped caring, but because institutions stopped caring about what makes teaching magical.

More and more teachers now teach online, tutor independently, create educational content, host micro-schools, or reach tens of thousands of learners directly through digital platforms. Some reach more students in a single month this way than they did in a year inside a traditional system.

This is not rebellion.
This is rebirth.

A return to the essence of teaching: one human being helping another become more capable than they were the day before.

Great teachers are discovering what systems forgot:

• Human connection matters more than curriculum.
• Adaptation matters more than policy.
• Presence matters more than paperwork.
• Capability matters more than credentials. 

The burden teachers carry is immense.

The expectations are unreasonable.
The support is insufficient.
The emotional load is heavy.

And yet, the impact of their capability is immeasurable — felt across years, generations, and communities.

Ask anyone who became who they are because one teacher saw them, believed in them, or challenged them.

Ask anyone who was saved by a teacher’s kindness.
Ask anyone whose future changed because one adult refused to give up on them.
Ask anyone whose confidence came from a single sentence spoken at exactly the right moment.

A teacher’s influence is invisible in the moment — and undeniable in hindsight.

Their burden is heavy.
Their capability is extraordinary.
And their impact is eternal.

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Arkhub Insights explores trends in skill/knowledge development and innovation impacting education and businesses. Read other articles by Arkhub Insights, or visit Arkhub Insights's website.

Artificial Intelligence, Global Inequality, and the Colonial Machinery of Capital

Copilot in the Shadow of Empire

by Sammy Attoh / December 30th, 2025

Artificial intelligence is often presented as a universal breakthrough — a tool that will democratize knowledge, expand opportunity, and usher in a new era of human progress. But AI does not emerge in a vacuum. It is built inside a global order shaped by conquest, extraction, and the long shadow of empire. The world into which Copilot is deployed is not neutral terrain; it is a landscape carved by centuries of unequal development.

Copilot becomes not only a technological assistant, but a mirror — revealing the deep inequalities that structure our world. AI does not transcend inequality. AI exposes it.

The child, the circuit, and the colonial wound

Imagine two children born in the same century, under the same sky.

One grows up in an African village where electricity flickers or fails, where nightfall is not a choice but a condition, and where the promises of the “digital age” arrive as distant echoes. The other grows up in a Western city, surrounded by devices, broadband, and an entire ecosystem of artificial intelligence — including Copilot — ready to support learning, creativity, and opportunity.

Between these two children stands a powerful technology. But Copilot does not bridge the divide. It reveals it.

The African child is not “behind.” The African child has been pushed behind — by centuries of colonial plunder, resource theft, structural adjustment, and debt regimes that weakened the very infrastructures AI requires. These are not historical footnotes; they are living conditions. They shape who has access to electricity, who has access to bandwidth, and who is structurally excluded from the digital world.  AI does not possess intention, but it operates inside human systems of intention. It does not decide where electricity flows, which languages dominate, or whose data becomes valuable. It simply amplifies the conditions into which it is placed.

The Western child is not “ahead.” The Western child has been placed ahead — by a global system designed to concentrate wealth, bandwidth, and possibility. The devices on the Western child’s desk are built from minerals mined in the Global South. The broadband that powers their learning is funded by economies that benefited from centuries of extraction. The AI tools they use are trained on data produced overwhelmingly in the Global North.

This is not a digital divide. This is a colonial divide — modernized, electrified, and automated.

Capitalism’s invisible hand on the keyboard

AI is often described as neutral or universal. But neutrality is impossible in a world organized by profit. Every layer of AI — from the minerals in its hardware to the languages in its training data — is shaped by global capitalism.

1. AI depends on unequal infrastructure

AI requires:

• electricity
• broadband
• data centers
• rare minerals
• global supply chains
• linguistic dominance

These are not evenly distributed. They follow the same patterns of extraction and accumulation that have defined global capitalism for centuries. The cobalt that powers batteries is mined in Congo. The servers that run AI models sit in wealthy nations. The languages prioritized by AI systems reflect colonial hierarchies, not global diversity.

2. AI reproduces global hierarchies

AI systems are trained on data produced by a world where:

• the Global South extracts
• the Global North accumulates
• the poor labor
• the rich automate
• the marginalized are surveilled
• the powerful are optimized

AI does not challenge this order. AI accelerates it.

The same forces that once controlled land, labor, and resources now control data, algorithms, and digital infrastructure. The logic has not changed — only the tools have.

3. AI extends the reach of empire

Where colonialism once used force, today it uses:

• patents
• platforms
• algorithms
• data monopolies

AI becomes a new frontier of control — shaping who learns, who works, who is visible, and who remains unseen. Nations without technological sovereignty become dependent on foreign platforms. Communities without connectivity become digitally invisible. Languages without representation become computationally extinct.

AI is not simply a tool. It is a political actor — one that reflects the priorities of those who own it.

Closing

And when Copilot reflects the world, it does not show a neutral landscape. It reveals a global order built on inequality, extraction, and the ruthless logic of profit — a world where technology advances while justice is deferred, and where innovation grows atop the suffering of those rendered invisible.

AI does not liberate the oppressed. AI exposes the oppression — the structural violence, the stolen futures, the engineered scarcity that capitalism normalizes and empire requires.

If AI is ever to serve humanity, then humanity must confront and dismantle the global capitalist order that shapes its reach, its purpose, and its beneficiaries. No algorithm can correct a world designed to concentrate power. No machine can democratize a system built on exclusion.

Until that transformation occurs, AI will remain what it is today: a brilliant light shining on a deeply unjust world — illuminating not our progress, but the wounds we refuse to heal

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Sammy Attoh is a Human Rights Coordinator, poet, and public writer. A member of The Riverside Church in New York City and The New York State Chaplains Group, he advocates for spiritual renewal and systemic justice. Originally from Ghana, his work draws from ancestral wisdom to explore the sacred ties between people, planet, and posterity. Read other articles by Sammy.