Efficient nitrogen (N) use in crops is vital for promoting sustainable and profitable agriculture and has significant implications for greenhouse gas (GHG) mitigation. While urease (UI) and nitrification inhibitors (NI) are known to influence N transformations, soil N availability, and N utilization efficiency (NUE) in ammonium sulfate urea (AS-HS), their impacts on the carbon (C) and water cycles are less well understood. To...

The application of digestates supports soil fertility by restoring soil organic matter (SOM) and supplying nitrogen (N). However, their application can increase greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from agriculture. Targeted digestate application to soils where erosion has mixed subsoil into topsoil may reduce emissions, as the lower SOM saturation in this diluted topsoil could enhance stabilization of organic inputs. This study inv...

Motivation Geographic occurrences are essential for biodiversity studies, but publicly available repositories like GBIF often contain errors and biases, especially for taxonomically complex groups like Carex L. (Cyperaceae). This work provides an expert‐curated global dataset of occurrences compiled from different sources to enhance data accuracy and usability. The final dataset includes 384,067 occurrences of 1790 Carex speci...

Nuclear DNA amounts were examined by flow cytometry for 70 genera and 214 species and subspecies taxonomically belonging to the supertribe Poodae of the grass subfamily Pooideae. This supertribe contains most of the grasses distributed in the temperate extratropical regions of the world and is important because of its many cultivated species (e.g., grains) and its prominence as a major component of grasslands. The majority of...

The assessment of persistence (P), bioaccumulation (B), and toxicity (T) of a chemical is a crucial first step at ensuring chemical safety and is a cornerstone of the European Union’s chemicals regulation REACH (Registration, Evaluation, Authorization, and Restriction of Chemicals). Existing methods for PBT assessment are overly complex and cumbersome, have produced incorrect conclusions, and rely heavily on animal-intensive t...

The identification of regulatory challenges for nanotechnology-enabled health products, followed by discussions with the involved stakeholders, is the first step towards a strategic planning of how such challenges can be successfully addressed in the future. In order to better understand whether the identified regulatory needs are sector-specific for health products or might also hinder the progress in other domains, the REFIN...

Climate change impacts on the structure and function of ecosystems will worsen public health issues like allergic diseases. Birch trees ( Betula spp.) are important sources of aeroallergens in Central and Northern Europe. Birches are vulnerable to climate change as these trees are sensitive to increased temperatures and summer droughts. This study aims to examine the effect of climate change on airborne birch pollen concentrat...

Despite successful recanalization of large-vessel occlusions in acute ischemic stroke, individual patients profit to a varying degree. Dynamic susceptibility-weighted perfusion and dynamic T1-weighted contrast-enhanced blood-brain barrier permeability imaging may help to determine secondary stroke injury and predict clinical outcome. We prospectively performed perfusion and permeability imaging in 38 patients within 24 h after...

Argininosuccinate lyase (ASL) is essential for the NO-dependent regulation of tyrosine hydroxylase (TH) and thus for catecholamine production. Using a conditional mouse model with loss of ASL in catecholamine neurons, we demonstrate that ASL is expressed in dopaminergic neurons in the substantia nigra pars compacta, including the ALDH1A1 + subpopulation that is pivotal for the pathogenesis of Parkinson disease (PD). Neuronal l...

Corynebacterium ( C. ) diphtheriae is one of the two etiological pathogens for human diphtheria with significant morbidity and mortality. Recently, members of its biovar Belfanti have been described as two novel species, C. belfantii and C. rouxii . The most important virulence factor and also the premise to cause diphtheria is the isolate’s capacity to encode and express the diphtheria toxin (DT). In contrast to C. ulcerans,...

SARS-CoV-2 has emerged as a previously unknown zoonotic coronavirus that spread worldwide causing a serious pandemic. While reliable nucleic acid–based diagnostic assays were rapidly available, only a limited number of validated serological assays were available in the early phase of the pandemic. Here, we evaluated a novel flow cytometric approach to assess spike-specific antibody responses.HEK 293T cells expressing SARS-CoV-...

Karyotype analyses in species of the family Marantaceae (550 species, 31 genera) were conducted to shed light on the reported strong variation of chromosome number and size and the occurrence of polyploidy. Special attention was paid to the alterations in basic chromosome numbers, karyotypes and ploidy levels. Taxon sampling covered the whole distribution area of Marantaceae in Africa, Asia and America. We applied mitotic chro...