A new UC Riverside-led study reveals how common small particles produced by nature as well as human activities can transform upon entering plant cells and weaken plants’ ability to turn sunlight into food. The discovery offers a path to control this issue. 

Since the mid-1800s, human activities have rapidly facilitated the spread of rice yellow mottle virus (RYMV), a pathogen that infects rice, far and wide across Africa, according to a new study led by Eugénie Hébrard, at the Institut de Recherche pour le Développement (IRD, France), published June 17, 2025 in the open-access journal PLOS Pathogens.

The global decline of wild bee populations is alarming. Landscapes characterised by intensive agriculture offer hardly any suitable habitats. Isolated local efforts are often not enough to counteract this loss. Now, researchers from the Universities of Göttingen and Halle show that combining certain agricultural and environmental measures at the landscape level can offer more protection for wild bees. Their findings show that organic farming combined with multi-year natural habitats – such as meadows planted with long-lasting, perennial plants – is particularly effective. These two types of habitats together support significantly more wild bees than either does on its own. The results were published in the Journal of Applied Ecology.

Study shows that carbon and nitrogen losses from the soil persist for nearly a decade after burning, and conversion to agriculture causes even more severe impacts.

Mealworms need a minimum level of protein to grow and become a sustainable food source, according to a new study that challenges the myth that insects have superpowers of taking plastic waste and converting it to a nutritionally valuable product.