Hydropower and irrigation are essential for achieving human development objectives and for climate mitigation and adaptation. These sectors depend on the same grey infrastructure, such as dammed reservoirs, which has created negative socio-ecological externalities and sectoral conflicts in the past. Yet, future needs for infrastructure in both sectors and their interdependencies remain unclear. We address this gap by applying datafusion and machine-learning approaches and provide a comprehensive global overview and a new dataset that elucidates the role of existing dams and reservoirs for hydropower and irrigation. We then review projected demands for irrigation storage and hydropower by 2050 and analyze how projected growth aligns with the identified potential for irrigation and hydropower dams. Globally, projections point to an increased demand for hydropower in the order of 400 GW by 2050, which amounts to around 60 % -64 % of the identified potential and around +35 % compared to today. For irrigation, fully leveraging sustainable water resources would require 460 km 3 /yr of stored water, or around +70 % compared to today. Projected demands for hydropower and irrigation are larger than what future grey infrastructure could provide in many regions, especially in Europe, South Asia, and Africa. In such conditions, both sectors will be increasingly in competition for infrastructure. Our findings also highlight the need to study alternative solutions, such as other forms of renewable energy and nature-based solutions for water storage, to meet societal demands while avoiding negative externalities associated with grey water infrastructure.

Around 100 GW of new hydropower projects have been proposed in continental Africa to contribute to meeting future energy demand. Yet, the future expansion of hydropower on the continent faces obstacles due to the impacts of dams on rivers, greenhouse gas emissions from reservoirs and increasingly competitive alternative renewable electricity technologies. Here we propose an integrated approach to include these considerations in energy planning. Compared with planning for least-cost energy systems, capacity expansion strategies balancing environmental and techno-economic objectives increase electricity prices and total discounted costs by at most 1.4% and 0.2%, respectively, while reducing impacts on annual hydropower emissions and river fragmentation by at least 50%. Our results demonstrate that refining techno-economic analysis in light of global and local environmental objectives can help policymakers reduce the river fragmentation and greenhouse gas emissions associated with hydropower development at marginal increases in energy costs.

The development of modern large-scale spectroscopic survey telescopes responds to the urgent demand for spectral information in astronomical research. Tsinghua University has previously proposed a 6.5 m MUltiplexed Survey Telescope consisting of a Ritchey-Chretien configuration and a 1.8 m multi-element wide-field corrector, achieving excellent performance and world-leading survey efficiency. However, an optimized 1.65 m multi-element corrector with five lenses is proposed to overcome the constraints on glass uniformity and verification in fabrication of the previous corrector design. It maintains outstanding image quality, with the 80% enclosed energy diameter not more than 0.559 arcsec within 3 degrees FoV over up to a 55 degrees zenith angle. The optimized optical system does not revise the working mode of the ADC or the curvature of the primary mirror while ensuring the reasonability and accuracy of manufacturing of large corrector elements. It provides a more feasible reference optical design for the MUltiplexed Survey Telescope in subsequent iterations and communications with manufacturers.

Most plant genomes and their regulation remain unknown. We used SPLASH - a new, reference-genome free sequence variation detection algorithm - to analyze transcriptional and post-transcriptional regulation from RNA-seq data. We discovered differential homolog expression during maize pollen development, and imbibition-dependent cryptic splicing in Arabidopsis seeds. SPLASH enables discovery of novel regulatory mechanisms, including differential regulation of genes from hybrid parental haplotypes, without the use of alignment to a reference genome.

The structure of communities is influenced by many ecological and evolutionary processes, but the way these manifest in classic biodiversity patterns often remains unclear. Here we aim to distinguish the ecological footprint of selection-through competition or environmental filtering-from that of neutral processes that are invariant to species identity. We build on existing Massive Eco-evolutionary Synthesis Simulations (MESS), which uses information from three biodiversity axes-species abundances, genetic diversity, and trait variation-to distinguish between mechanistic processes. To correctly detect and characterise competition, we add a new and more realistic form of competition that explicitly compares the traits of each pair of individuals. Our results are qualitatively different to those of previous work in which competition is based on the distance of each individual's trait to the community mean. We find that our new form of competition is easier to identify in empirical data compared to the alternatives. This is especially true when trait data are available and used in the inference procedure. Our findings hint that signatures in empirical data previously attributed to neutrality may in fact be the result of pairwise-acting selective forces. We conclude that gathering more different types of data, together with more advanced mechanistic models and inference as done here, could be the key to unravelling the mechanisms of community assembly and question the relative roles of neutral and selective processes.

Plants have a protective mechanism called non-photochemical quenching to prevent damage caused by excessive sunlight. A critical component of this mechanism is energy-dependent quenching (qE). In Chlamydomonas reinhardtii, the protein expression called light-harvesting complex stress-related protein 3 (LHCSR3) is crucial for the qE mechanism. LHCSR3 expression is observed in various conditions that result in photooxidation, such as exposure to high light or nutrient deprivation, where the amount of captured light surpasses the maximum photosynthetic capacity. Although the role of LHCSR3 has been extensively studied under high light (HL) conditions, its function during nutrient starvation remains unclear. In this study, we demonstrate that LHCSR3 expression can occur under light intensities below saturation without triggering qE, particularly when nutrients are limited. To investigate this, we cultivated C. reinhardtii cells under osmotic stress, which replicates conditions of nutrient scarcity. Furthermore, we examined the photosynthetic membrane complexes of wild-type (WT) and npq4 mutant strains grown under osmotic stress. Our analysis revealed that LHCSR3 expression might modify the interaction between the photosystem II core and its peripheral light-harvesting complex II antennae. This alteration could potentially impede the transfer of excitation energy from the antenna to the reaction center.

Cell polarity is used to guide asymmetric divisions and create morphologically diverse cells. We find that two oppositely oriented cortical polarity domains present during the asymmetric divisions in the Arabidopsis stomatal lineage are reconfigured into polar domains marking ventral (pore -forming) and outward -facing domains of maturing stomatal guard cells. Proteins that define these opposing polarity domains were used as baits in miniTurboID-based proximity labeling. Among differentially enriched proteins, we find kinases, putative microtubule-interacting proteins, and polar SOSEKIs with their effector ANGUSTIFOLIA. Using AI -facilitated protein structure prediction models, we identify potential protein -protein interaction interfaces among them. Functional and localization analyses of the polarity protein OPL2 and its putative interaction partners suggest a positive interaction with mitotic microtubules and a role in cytokinesis. This combination of proteomics and structural modeling with live -cell imaging provides insights into how polarity is rewired in different cell types and cell -cycle stages.

Accurate and continuous maps of maize distribution are essential for food security and sustainable agricultural development. However, there are no continuous national-scale and fine-resolution maize maps and explicit updated information on the spatiotemporal dynamics of maize for most countries. Maize mapping at the national scale is challenging due to the spectral heterogeneity caused by crop growth conditions, cropping patterns, and inter-annual variations. To this end, this study developed a novel crop index-based algorithm for national-scale maize mapping. Compared to other crops, maize is characterized by large-leaf-dominated canopies and high photosynthetic efficiency. Maize shows significant changes in chlorophyll and anthocyanin content. Therefore, a robust maize index was established by exploring the temporal Variation of the Vegetation-Pigment index (VVP) during the growing period. A simple decision rule was coded on the Google Earth Engine (GEE) platform, which was used for maize mapping based on the Sentinel-2 time series in China and the contiguous United States (US) from 2018 to 2022. The national-scale 10 m annual maize maps for China and the contiguous US were developed and in good agreement with the corresponding agricultural statistics data for many years (R-2 > 0.94) and 9,412 reference points (overall accuracy of 90.09 %). Compared with simply applying the vegetation index, the VVP index took account of spectral heterogeneity caused by variations in crop growth conditions, cropping patterns, and inter-annual, and the omission error of maize was reduced by over 20 %. Moreover, the VVP index can significantly improve the spatial transferability of the Random Forest (RF) classifier. The first 10 m annual maize maps for China revealed that the planted area trend decreased and then increased from 2018 to 2022. The year 2020 was the turning point. The maize planted area consisted of 68 % single maize and 32 % double cropping with maize in 2020, with the northern boundary for double cropping with maize in the Yanshan Mountains. The maize planted area in China consistently decreased by 39,352 km(2) (about 9 %) from 2018 to 2020. This is mainly due to the adjustment of the maize-planted structure in the "Sickle Bend" region of China (the "Sickle Bend" policy). However, the maize planted area gradually recovered from 2020 to 2022, primarily concentrated in regions with ever-planted. This study will provide essential information for cropping structure adjustment and related agricultural policy formulation and contribute to sustainable agricultural development by mapping maize from a national to a global scale.

There is increasing evidence that interactions between microbes and their hosts not only play a role in determining health and disease but also in emotions, thought, and behavior. Built environments greatly influence microbiome exposures because of their built - in highly specific microbiomes coproduced with myriad metaorganisms including humans, pets, plants, rodents, and insects. Seemingly static built structures host complex ecologies of microorganisms that are only starting to be mapped. These microbial ecologies of built environments are directly and interdependently affected by social, spatial, and technological norms. Advances in technology have made these organisms visible and forced the scientific community and architects to rethink gene-environment and microbe interactions respectively. Thus, built environment design must consider the microbiome, and research involving host-microbiome interaction must consider the built - environment. This paradigm shift becomes increasingly important as evidence grows that contemporary built environments are steadily reducing the microbial diversity essential for human health, well - being, and resilience while accelerating the symptoms of human chronic diseases including environmental allergies, and other more life - altering diseases. New models of design are required to balance maximizing exposure to microbial diversity while minimizing exposure to human - associated diseases. Sustained trans - disciplinary research across time (evolutionary, historical, and generational) and space (cultural and geographical) is needed to develop experimental design protocols that address multigenerational multispecies health and health equity in built environments.