Pathogenic bacteria remain a persistent threat to public health, food supplies, and water systems, particularly as antimicrobial resistance makes infections increasingly difficult to treat. A new review published in Biocontaminant highlights how bacteriophages, viruses that naturally recognize and infect bacteria, could provide the biological foundation for faster and more intelligent pathogen detection technologies.

Agricultural soils are a major source of nitrous oxide, a powerful greenhouse gas produced largely through microbial nitrogen transformations. A new study comparing five representative Chinese farmland soils reveals that the same carbon and nitrogen inputs can produce sharply different emission outcomes depending on soil acidity, nutrient conditions, and microbial function.

By designing computers to behave more like the brain, engineers seek faster, more energy-efficient computing. Most researchers attempt to mimic the cerebrum, which underlies reasoning, memory and language. New device is first to mimic the cerebellum, the brain’s reflex center. Device identified abnormal heartbeats from ECGs within one-fifth of a heartbeat, 98% accuracy and 10,000 times fewer computer operations.

 JMIR Publications released a feature News and Perspectives story on technological advances in oncology.

A new study published in Big Earth Data  introduces the University of Bonn Soil Moisture Data Catalog (UB-SMDC), a standards-compliant metadata portal that centralizes information on publicly available soil moisture content (SMC) datasets and provides a unified platform for efficient data discovery, comparison, and access. Built on the GeoNetwork platform and supported by a controlled metadata taxonomy, the catalog analyzes 373 SMC datasets, facilitating transparent research, cross-dataset integration, and a comprehensive understanding of the global soil moisture data landscape.The data and materials supporting the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request. All metadata records are cataloged and publicly accessible in the UB-SMDC GeoNetwork data portal (https://ubsmdc.sfb1502.de/).