It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way (K.Marx, Letter to F.Engels on the Indian Mutiny)
Tuesday, June 16, 2026
"cold insurance" for crops: Researchers unlock "on-demand" climate resilience
Rapidly intensifying global climate instability is causing increasingly erratic temperature fluctuations. When sudden cold snaps strike during a crop's critical flowering window, they trigger irreversible pollen abortion, slashing yields of staple crops by 20% to 60%. Passive defenses offer minimal protection at a high cost, while breeding for continuous cold resistance often backfires by wasting vital energy under normal temperatures. Shifting the breeding paradigm toward "on-demand" climate resilience—maintaining high yields in favorable seasons while securing stable performance under stress—is critical.
In a study published in Nature on June 3, a team led by Prof. XU Cao from the Institute of Genetics and Developmental Biology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences identified RGF as the first small peptide signal that senses cold during pollen development. Researchers uncovered an "on-demand" peptide-receptor-ion channel signaling axis, offering a powerful genetic strategy to shield crops from sudden climate shocks without compromising baseline yields.
By integrating techniques of multi-omics, gene editing, and artificial intelligence, researchers uncovered the RGF gene, which has long been annotated as "function unknown" in tomato genome. It encodes a tiny peptide of just 13 amino acids and remains silent at normal temperatures, preventing unnecessary energy drain. However, upon sudden cold stress, it sharply activates in anther tapetal cells during the tetrad stage of pollen development. This unique expression pattern—silent under normal conditions but activated during stress—explains why this gene has long eluded researchers.
Moreover, researchers found that the cold-induced RGF peptide is recognized by the cell-membrane receptor kinase SlRGFR6 and co-receptor SlSERK. This complex phosphorylates and activates the cyclic nucleotide-gated ion channels SlCNGC16/18, driving a rapid calcium influx. The calcium surge orchestrates the programmed cell death of the anther tapetum, ensuring it degrades on schedule to supply essential nutrients and energy for developing pollen. By preventing cold-induced pollen abortion, this cascade illustrates how plants deploy localized, precise defenses on demand during transient environmental stress.
Multi-year, multi-site field trials demonstrated that moderately activating this cold-induced RGF signaling recovered 33.9% to 52.2% of cold-induced yield losses in tomatoes. This signaling axis is highly conserved across both dicots and monocots. Upregulating RGF in commercial rice cultivars salvaged roughly 18% of yield losses during cold shocks. Currently, researchers are expanding this strategy to soybeans and maize.
Nature reviewers praised the study as "an outstanding achievement and a significant breakthrough in the field of cold tolerance research," noting that it seamlessly connects basic mechanistic insights with real-world agronomic gains.
In order to stabilise global warming at less than 1.5°C in the long term, there is a need not only for a drastic reduction in greenhouse gas emissions but also for technologies to remove and store hundreds of billions of tonnes of carbon dioxide (CO2) from the atmosphere. This is also the underlying basis of the scenarios set out in the latest Assessment Report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
For years, research groups and start-ups have therefore been working on ways to remove CO2 directly from the air – a process known as “direct air capture”. The company Climeworks, which was founded as an ETH spin-off in 2009, is one of the world’s first commercial providers of DAC. To this day, however, the direct removal of CO2 from the air remains an energy-intensive and expensive process.
Porous protein beads bind carbon dioxide
In a study recently published in the journalPNAS, researchers present a promising new approach to DAC. A group led by materials scientist Raffaele Mezzenga, a professor at the Department of Health Sciences and Technology of ETH Zurich, uses whey and by-products from tofu production for CO2 absorption.
Dairy and tofu production generate large quantities of protein-containing solutions, only a small part of which is reprocessed in food production – the remainder goes to waste. From this waste, the researchers isolate proteins that they use to form long, threadlike chains known as amyloid fibrils. They then load these fibrils with potassium hydroxide and process them into beads with a diameter of between half and one centimetre. “The resulting material is like a sponge that can absorb large quantities of CO2 via the potassium hydroxide,” Mezzenga explains.
When the porous beads are exposed to ambient air, the potassium hydroxide reacts with CO2 to form hydrogen carbonate, a salt of carbonic acid. This process removes the CO2 from the air. “In our tests with ambient air, we were able to extract 97 milligrams of CO2 with one gram of material,” explains Zhou Dong, a postdoc in Mezzenga’s group and lead author of the study. This is a very high rate, he says, and 10 to 50 percent greater than the capacity of conventional DAC methods. Dong assumes that, with one kilogram of protein beads, it would theoretically be possible to bind and isolate 100 grams of CO2 per process cycle.
Technique for a circular economy
Conventional DAC methods generally use heat and negative pressure to release the carbon dioxide from the absorption material again. This is necessary in order to then store the CO2 or convert it into other materials, thereby removing it from the atmosphere on a long-term basis. However, this process requires a great deal of energy, which is why DAC generally only makes sense nowadays – in terms of both energy and economics – where large amounts of renewable energy are available.
This is another area in which the researchers in Mezzenga’s team are taking a different approach: in order to release the carbon dioxide from the protein beads again, the beads are alternately sprayed with a mild acid and base for around 10 minutes at room temperature. This breaks the chemical bonds so that the CO2 can be isolated.
The acid, base and beads can then be reused. “The synthetic materials that are used to capture CO2 today decompose quickly,” says Dong. “By contrast, our protein beads remain stable for a long time.” In the lab, the researchers tested 30 cycles of CO2 adsorption and release without observing significant losses of efficiency.
Mezzenga assumes that the material would nevertheless need to be replaced after a few thousand cycles due to a decrease in adsorption capacity. However, the protein beads could then be used as fertiliser in agriculture or converted into biofuel, the researcher explains. The beads are made up entirely of organic material, he says, and are readily degradable – meaning that the system could therefore become part of a circular economy.
“The materials we use for this process are non-toxic and are food-grade,” Mezzenga points out. In a life cycle analysis, the researchers show that their method generates less environmental pollution across the entire life cycle than other DAC methods.
Expected to be cheaper than other capture methods
Further tests are needed to reveal whether the technology is scalable for practical use and the high CO2-absorption capacity will remain intact on a larger scale. For the recently published study, the researchers tested the method in a controlled laboratory environment with a few grams of protein beads, binding and isolating around 50 grams of CO2.
Mezzenga is optimistic. He has been working with amyloid fibrils for nearly 20 years and is well acquainted with the material. In the past, he has used it to develop biodegradable alternatives to plastics as well as techniques for water purification. “We’re confident that the technology is scalable,” he says. According to Mezzenga, the spray system used to separate the CO2 from the protein beads is geared towards existing techniques that are already used in industry. Postdoc Zhou Dong will now further examine the question of scalability.
Although the researchers are yet to make an exact calculation of the costs per captured tonne of CO2, Mezzenga expects them to be significantly lower than with conventional DAC. “Our technology is cheaper and more sustainable because it requires little energy and is based on a widely available waste product,” he says. “That could be a game changer for the future of removing CO2 from the air.”
The parti-coloured bat is one of the species that thrives in structurally diverse forests. On the right, a grey-headed woodpecker at an artificially created deadwood stump.
Credit: Simon Thorn (bat) / Andreas Ebert (woodpecker)
Over the centuries, Europe’s forests have been optimised for timber production. The result is often very orderly, uniform stands lacking old, decaying trees or natural clearings.
This monotony can pose a problem for biodiversity. Researchers from the Biocenter at Julius-Maximilians-Universität Würzburg (JMU) in Bavaria, Germany, together with researchers from the Universities of Marburg and Munich and the Bavarian Forest National Park, have now investigated in the BETA FOR project how targeted interventions to restore a more varied forest structure affect the diversity of bats and birds.
The results have been published in the journal Current Biology. The team led by forest ecologist Professor Jörg Müller shows that when humans create gaps in the forest canopy and leave deadwood lying on the forest floor, this increases the diversity of both species groups at the forest landscape level. However, birds and bats react differently to changes in their habitat.
Birds as homebodies, bats as commuters
Birds behave like homebodies: they occupy fixed territories if they find everything they need there – from nesting sites to food. They benefit when their established forest area has a structure that is as complex as possible, with deadwood and gaps.
Bats, on the other hand, are like commuters: in a single night they cover long distances, visiting various ‘specialist shops’ along the way. Sometimes they hunt insects in a dark, dense corner of the forest; at other times they use light-filled gaps as entry corridors. For them, it is important that the individual sections of forest differ spatially from one another.
Which species appeared
The Würzburg study shows how diversity increases through gaps in the canopy and deadwood. In the case of bats, an average of two new species were found in more disordered forests. “That sounds like a small number, but it is actually significant because there are only 25 bat species in Germany in total,” says PhD student Clara Wild, the study’s first author.
The more structurally diverse forests attracted species such as the northern bat or the parti-coloured bat, for example. Both otherwise prefer open terrain and are rather rare in dense, uniform forests.
Birds benefited particularly strongly from local interventions, such as artificially created forest gaps with deadwood. In their case, it was primarily so-called functional diversity that increased – that is, species with very distinct lifestyles were added – such as deadwood specialists like various endangered woodpecker species.
The experiment: 234 forest areas in six regions
The researchers conducted the study in six regions in Germany: near Lübeck, in the Saarland, in the University of Würzburg’s forest, near Passau, in the Hunsrück-Hochwald National Park and in the Bavarian Forest National Park.
In total, they studied 234 precisely defined forest plots measuring 50 by 50 metres. There, they deliberately manipulated the forest to create more diverse structures: in some areas they created gaps in the canopy, in others they placed deadwood such as tree stumps or fallen trunks. They then studied how species diversity changed over the following four to seven years.
Acoustic monitoring of calls and songs
To find out which animals live in the forest plots, the researchers used acoustic monitoring. At times when the animals are most active, recorders captured their calls or songs. These invisible spies monitored the forest over a three-month period without the animals being disturbed by human presence. In this way, the research team identified a total of 17 bat and 72 bird species.
“Our results show that we can promote biodiversity even in previous monotonous, species-poor forests,” explains Clara Wild. “Through small interventions that increase structural diversity, we can create valuable niches. This makes the forest more diverse and attracts pest controllers such as birds and bats alike.”
Forestry should have the courage to leave gaps
The new findings provide further guidance for the forestry sector. “A structurally rich forest is much more resilient to climate change thanks to its diversity,” says Jörg Müller. For forestry operations, this means having the courage to leave gaps: “Leaving deadwood in the forest may cost some timber yield in the short term, but it ensures the long-term stability of the entire ecosystem.”
Restoring structural complexity in temperate forests increases bat and bird diversity
A new tool can help protect communities from flooding during rain-on-snow events and optimize reservoir management
DRI’s snowpack runoff decision support tool monitors runoff potential in mountain snowpacks to give water managers and emergency planners unprecedented insight into storm impacts
Anne Heggli dedicated her Ph.D. research to understanding rain-on-snow, including digging snow pits during active storms to track the accumulation of run-off.
Reno, Nev. (June 15, 2026) – While Reno families were celebrating the 1997 New Year, the Truckee River was surging into the city’s downtown streets. A rainstorm was falling on the Sierra Nevada’s deep snowpack, melting it rapidly and creating a hazardous situation for downstream communities. Rain-on-snow storms like this one have been challenging for emergency managers to forecast and prepare for due to limited understanding about how the snowpack responds to rain. A new tool directly addresses this problem by utilizing hourly soil moisture data from the SNOwpack TELemetry Network (SNOTEL) to provide insight into how the snowpack is responding to a storm in near real-time.
The tool is publicly available on DRI’s website at https://snow.dri.edu/snowpackrunoff/ and is paired with a new publication validating its efficacy in Water Resources Research. The study applies the tool to the Upper Carson River watershed, which drains the eastern Sierra Nevada, finding that storms from 2006 to 2022 demonstrate its potential for capturing the timing of runoff. DRI scientist Anne Heggli led the effort with input from partners at the California-Nevada River Forecast Center, the National Weather Service, and the State of Nevada’s Department of Transportation.
“We're trying to shave off uncertainty around how the snowpack responds to rain on snow,” Heggli said. “Most days we don't have rain-on-snow events, but when we do, it can be millions, if not billions, of dollars in damage. We need to be prepared. This tool provides something tangible and useful for forecasters to use.”
“The Snowpack Runoff Decision Support Tool is a great new resource,” said Tim Bardsley, Senior Service Hydrologist at the National Weather Service and Heggli’s collaborator. “It gives me near real-time information on how the snowpack is either mitigating or exacerbating runoff and flood risk leading into and during rain on snow events at a variety of elevations and snowpack conditions. This enhances our forecasting capabilities and strengthens our flood risk communication to our partners.”
Beyond helping emergency managers better alert downstream communities to flooding events, tracking rapid runoff allows water managers to improve reservoir management. When large storms are expected, managers release water from upstream reservoirs to prevent flooding. If the runoff doesn’t materialize, however, that water isn’t available for use during the dry season. By monitoring the snowpack, and not just the subsequent streamflow, water managers have far more data much sooner. This allows them to optimize their decision making process.
“Reducing the uncertainty also allows us to optimize our reservoir operations to keep water up in the mountains, so that water managers are not releasing it down before it is necessary,” Heggli said. “That's really where most of the tool’s value is, because when really big atmospheric rivers come in, everyone just moves into flood operations, but the majority of our rain-on-snow events are more moderate in impact and there is a lot of uncertainty about how the snow will respond.”
he tool, called the Snowpack Runoff Decision Support System, is possible because the Natural Resource Conservation Service added hourly monitoring to the SNOTEL stations beginning in the late 20th century. Although daily data is sufficient for many long-term water planning needs, the hourly data provides insight into the snowpack’s runoff processes like never before. With as much as 75% of the West’s water coming from mountain snowmelt, the breakthrough is critical for understanding every part of the water cycle. Cloud cover obscures satellite views during storms, making surface monitoring stations like SNOTEL the only data available on the condition of the snowpack.
“There's so much that we can continue to learn about these hydrological processes that have real economic and safety impacts on our communities,” Heggli said. “There's a lot more that we can be doing to improve our decision making capacity and power, but we need to be able to access the data from these types of observational monitoring networks. It seems obvious to say that we can’t learn from data if we don’t have it, but with all the excitement about new tools like machine learning and artificial intelligence, we need to remember that the adage of ‘garbage in, garbage out’ gets amplified with these tools.”
“A tool like this is important because it demonstrates the value of high quality, long-term observations from monitoring networks to optimize our systems to balance hazards and resources,” said former DRI scientist Ben Hatchett, who co-authored the new study with Heggli and is now at Colorado State University. “This is especially true when co-developing tools with users. However, it also highlights the ongoing need to assess how new applications of data in frameworks like this ultimately influence the quality of decisions. Going forward, this points to the importance of applying social science to make further progress to ensure tools are not just usable but also operationally-relevant to meet the missions of varied user groups.”
The Snowpack Runoff Decision Support Tool is currently available for the Sierra Nevada region of California and Nevada, including the Truckee and Carson River watersheds. A demo site also allows users to see how the tool makes runoff visible during significant regional rain-on-snow storms such as December 30, 2022 or the winters of 2005 and 2017. Heggli and her colleagues are currently partnering with East Bay Municipal Utility District (EBMUD) and PG&E to expand the tool’s functionality to the Mokelumne River watershed. With additional funding support, the tool could potentially be expanded to all SNOTEL stations across the Western U.S.
Rain-on-snow storms are increasing in frequency, Heggli says, and are expected to increase between 15 and 25% by midcentury. Warming temperatures will continue to shift precipitation from snow to rain, increasing flood hazards for downstream communities. Beyond the Western U.S., these types of storms are also expected to increase in regions like Norway and the Alps.
“As the atmospheric temperature warms, there's more water in the atmosphere, which can cause more extreme events, but we haven't yet warmed enough that snow is impossible,” Heggli said. “You could say that we're approaching a period of peak rain on snow.”
More information: The full study, The Application of a Snowpack Runoff Decision Support system for Rain-on-Snow Events, is available from Water Resources Research at https://
DRI’s Snowpack Runoff Decision Support Tool was made possible with the help of Andy Joros, Research Computing Engineer.
About DRI
We are Nevada’s non-profit research institute, founded in 1959 to empower experts to focus on science that matters. We work with communities across the state — and the world — to address their most pressing scientific questions. We’re proud that our scientists continuously produce solutions that better human and environmental health.
Scientists at DRI are encouraged to follow their research interests across the traditional boundaries of scientific fields, collaborating across DRI and with scientists worldwide. All faculty support their own research through grants, bringing in nearly $5 to the Nevada economy for every $1 of state funds received. With more than 600 scientists, engineers, students, and staff across our Reno and Las Vegas campuses, we conducted more than $59 million in sponsored research focused on improving peoples’ lives in 2025 alone.
At DRI, science isn’t merely academic — it’s the key to future-proofing our communities and building a better world. For more information, please visit www.dri.edu.
A screenshot from the demo site showing significant snowpack runoff across the Lake Tahoe region during a rain-on-snow event in December 2022.
Credit
DRI
Journal
Water Resources Research
Article Title
The Application of a Snowpack Runoff Decision Support System for Rain-on-Snow Events
SPACE/COSMOS
Galaxy-killing wind discovered in the early universe
Astronomers have discovered a ‘galaxy-killing wind’ that may explain why there are far more massive ‘dead’ galaxies than expected in the early universe.
This wind, powered by cosmic collisions of galaxies, could quickly blow away all the fuel for new stars, leaving the galaxy on the brink of death and helping to solve one of the biggest mysteries in modern astrophysics.
The theory is much simpler than some of the other explanations put forward since 2022, when the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) gave us our first clear glimpse of the early universe. Among them was that dark energy may have been stronger in the early universe than current theories predict, allowing galaxies to grow and die faster.
Researchers behind the new study, published today in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society: Letters, used JWST to show that galaxy-killing winds can be powered by the same intense star-formation that causes galaxies to grow rapidly, explaining why these early galaxies live fast and die young.
“Dense regions of the universe are like very active cities,” said lead author Dr Rebecca Davies, of the Swinburne University of Technology in Melbourne, who carried out the study with Associate Professor Deanne Fisher.
“Galaxies collide and undergo frenzied bursts of star-formation. But when the biggest stars burn out, they explode as supernovae, launching powerful winds that blast away the very gas galaxies need to keep forming stars.”
Galaxy winds have long been considered prime suspects for the deaths of massive galaxies, but observational evidence was lacking.
Using JWST and the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) radio telescope, the Swinburne team imaged a galaxy one billion years after the Big Bang in the midst of a rapid growth spurt.
This galaxy, called CRISTAL-02, is forming stars twice as fast as other similar-sized galaxies. The extremely sensitive observations revealed a huge plume of cold gas extending far away from CRISTAL-02. This plume is almost as long as the galaxy itself, which is a telltale sign that gas is being driven out of the galaxy.
“The galaxy has a powerful wind that is ejecting material twice as fast as the galaxy forms stars,” Dr Davies added.
“If this rapid blowout continues, the galaxy could be dead in less than 50 million years: explaining the origin of the mysterious massive dead galaxies in the early universe.”
CRISTAL-02 is not a single galaxy, but multiple galaxies in the final stages of a cosmic collision. During such collisions, gas funnels towards the galaxy centres, triggering strong bursts of star formation.
Dr Davies believes that other galaxies will likely face a similar fate to CRISTAL-02, undergoing frenzied bursts of star-formation, followed by powerful winds that lead them to their deaths.
“Almost half of early massive galaxies are interacting with other nearby galaxies, suggesting this isn’t a quirk but a widespread cosmic phenomenon,” she said.
“If many early galaxies collide and experience rapid growth, then it may not be surprising that we see so many dead galaxies in the early universe.
“CRISTAL-02 offers a natural solution to the mystery of why these massive galaxies live fast and die young.”
Caption: An artist’s impression of the galaxy CRISTAL-02, with a huge plume of cold gas extending away from it. This plume is almost as long as the galaxy itself, which is a telltale sign that gas is being driven out of the galaxy.
Credit: Joshua Worth via Creative Commons CC-BY license
The Royal Astronomical Society (RAS), founded in 1820, encourages and promotes the study of astronomy, solar-system science, geophysics and closely related branches of science.
The RAS organises scientific meetings, publishes international research journals, recognises outstanding achievements by the award of medals and prizes, maintains an extensive library, supports education through grants and outreach activities and represents UK astronomy nationally and internationally. Its more than 4,000 members (Fellows), a third based overseas, include scientific researchers in universities, observatories and laboratories as well as historians of astronomy and others.
The RAS accepts papers for its journals based on the principle of successful peer review, following which experts on the Editorial Boards accept the papers for publication. The Society issues press releases based on a similar principle, but the organisations and scientists concerned have overall responsibility for their content.
