Extreme precipitation events are projected to increase both in frequency and intensity due to climate change. High-resolution climate projections are essential to effectively model the convective phenomena responsible for severe precipitation and to plan any adaptation and mitigation action. Existing numerical methods struggle with either insufficient accuracy in capturing the evolution of convective dynamical systems, due to the low resolution, or are limited by the excessive computational demands required to achieve kilometre-scale resolution. To fill this gap, we propose a novel deep learning regional climate model (RCM) emulator called graph neural networks for climate downscaling (GNN4CD) to estimate high-resolution precipitation. The emulator is innovative in architecture and training strategy, using graph neural networks (GNNs) to learn the downscaling function through a novel hybrid imperfect framework. GNN4CD is initially trained to perform reanalysis to observation downscaling and then used for RCM emulation during the inference phase. The emulator is able to estimate precipitation at very high resolution both in space ($ 3 $km) and time ($ 1 $h), starting from lower-resolution atmospheric data ($ \sim 25 $km). Leveraging the flexibility of GNNs, we tested its spatial transferability in regions unseen during training. The model trained on northern Italy effectively reproduces the precipitation distribution, seasonal diurnal cycles, and spatial patterns of extreme percentiles across all of Italy. When used as an RCM emulator for the historical, mid-century, and end-of-century time slices, GNN4CD shows the remarkable ability to capture the shifts in precipitation distribution, especially in the tail, where changes are most pronounced.

This study explores the development and scale-up of an emerging carbon capture technology using molten carbonate electrolysis, which converts CO2 into high-value graphene nanocarbons (GNCs) and oxygen in a single step, offering a scalable and economically incentivized pathway to address global greenhouse gas emissions. Paths to large-scale carbon capture using molten carbonate electrolysis that splits CO2 into GNCs and O2 are studied and advanced. GNCs include carbon nanotubes, carbon nano-onions and other zero-, one-, two- and three-dimensional graphene nanoallotropes. The CO2 to carbon nanotechnology (C2CNT) carbon capture utilization process directly removes the greenhouse gas CO2 over a wide range of concentrations (from 400 ppm to pure CO2), incentivizing the capture by providing a value-added product. Scale-up of the original lab-scale discovery of the transition metal nucleated electrolytic splitting of CO2 to an industrial process is documented. The scale-up includes a three-order-of-magnitude increase in the size of the electrolysis electrodes, an increase in the individual electrolysis modules to 100-tonne CO2 annually, and a new industrial-scale production extraction unit separating the molten electrolyte from the GNC product. The molten carbonate electrolyte has evolved from costly pure lithium carbonate to multicomponent carbonate electrolytes, predominantly based on 10-fold less expensive strontium carbonate. Other advances include the introduction of a new direct cathode press for separation and extraction of the GNC product, as well as specialized modifications of C2CNT for carbon capture, utilization and storage of industrial processes (Genesis CCUS), direct air capture (Genesis DAC) and the separate recovery of the oxygen product (Genesis O2).

Pelmatozoa is an informal grouping of filter-feeding echinoderms including crinoids, paracrinoids, rhombiferans, and eocrinoids that possess a theca, an erect stalk, and feeding appendages. Although crinoids were major constituents of marine communities with high diversity and abundance throughout the Paleozoic, most other pelmatozoans had relatively low species diversity and/or short temporal durations. It has been proposed that these different diversification trajectories could have resulted from crinoids outcompeting other filter-feeding pelmatozoans during the early Paleozoic, although this hypothesis involving niche overlap has never been formally tested. Here, we tested this hypothesis using the incredibly diverse pelmatozoan fauna of the Late Ordovician (Sandbian) Bromide Formation of Oklahoma, which preserves a rich, ecologically complex fauna that developed as a result of the Great Ordovician Biodiversification Event. We developed a framework to quantitatively characterize pelmatozoan feeding ecology using multivariate analysis of ecomorphological traits and explored niche space occupation and potential competition between crinoids, rhombiferans, paracrinoids, eocrinoids, and diploporans from the Bromide fauna. Results revealed key ecological factors controlling niche differentiation and showed that crinoids, paracrinoids, and rhombiferans occupy nonoverlapping regions of niche space, indicating competition between groups was unlikely. Although the competition hypothesis was not supported, narrow niche space occupation suggests that paracrinoids and rhombiferans were more ecologically limited than crinoids, which might have played a role in their differential diversification dynamics. These results elucidate both the nature of interactions between pelmatozoan taxa and the potential mechanisms driving their evolutionary trajectories, as well as the complexity of ecological communities that arose during the Ordovician radiation.

The global use of antimicrobial chemicals drastically increased during and after the COVID-19 pandemic owing to heightened awareness of personal and surface hygiene needs. Disinfectants, especially chlorine-based disinfectants (CBDs), were extensively used for surface and equipment decontamination in the domestic, industrial, veterinary and healthcare sectors during the heights of the pandemic. The increased use of disinfectants has resulted in their increased discharge into municipal wastewater systems and surface waters. Our Perspective article considers the One Health challenges associated with the increased discharge of disinfectants into wastewater. One Health is a collaborative approach that ensures the well-being of people, animals and the environment. Wastewater is a common endpoint to the many interactions between people, animals and their environment. The potential One Health challenges and knowledge gaps associated with the constant discharge of low but sublethal concentrations of CBDs into wastewater are discussed. The data gaps point to the risks associated with the unregulated use of CBDs and need for their judicial use.

Many authors have studied the biogeography of the Southern Ocean (SO), defined its limits and proposed their division into biogeographical zones and provinces. In this work we analyse the biogeography of sea slugs in a broad sense (Mollusca, Gastropoda, Heterobranchia) in the different areas and zones of the SO below 41°S. Most of the published scientific publications, databases and technical reports where records of benthic sea slugs appear in the SO have been analysed in addition to our own records, cataloguing a total of 355 different benthic species. The following areas and zones of the SO have been considered: Antarctica (Weddell Sea, West Antarctica, Ross Sea, East Antarctica), the sub-Antarctic zone (Falkland Islands, South Georgia Island, South Orkney Islands, South Sandwich Islands, Bouvet Island, Crozet and Prince Edward islands, Kerguelen Islands, Macquarie Island), southern South America (Patagonia/Magellan), Tasmania and New Zealand (South Island). A presence/absence table for all recorded species in the different zones has been compiled, and the differences and similarities between them have been calculated using the Sorensen index. The best representation has been obtained by classifying the zones into five groups: G1 (the four Antarctic zones, South Georgia Island, South Sandwich Islands, South Orkney Islands), G2 (Kerguelen Islands, Crozet and Prince Edward islands and Macquarie Island), G3 (Falkland Islands and Patagonia/Magellan), G4 (Tasmania and New Zealand’s South Island) and G5 (Bouvet Island). In addition, the concordance between the non-hierarchical classification (K-mean) and the hierarchical classification obtained using the WARD and UPGMA cluster analysis methods has been verified. The representative and distinctive species of each of these groups are indicated. In this work, as regards benthic sea slugs, the biogeographical affinities between the Antarctic zones and some of the sub-Antarctic zones are confirmed, as well as between the fauna of these molluscs in the Patagonian/Magallan zone and the Falkland Islands, while the affinities between the other zones need further confirmation when more species records become available.

The Cambrian Explosion saw the widespread development of mineralized skeletons. At this time, nearly every major animal phylum independently evolved strategies to build skeletons through either agglutination or biomineralization. Although most organisms settled on a single strategy, Salterella Billings, 1865 employed both strategies by secreting a biocalcitic exterior shell that is lined with layers of agglutinated sediments surrounding a central hollow tube. The slightly older fossil, Volborthella Schmidt, 1888, shares a similar construction with agglutinated grains encompassing a central tube but lacks a biomineralized exterior shell. Together these fossils have been grouped in the phylum Agmata Yochelson, 1977, although no phylogenetic relationship has been suggested to link them with the broader metazoan tree, which limits their contribution to our understanding of the evolution of shells in early animals.

To understand their ecology and place them in a phylogenetic context, we investigated Salterella and Volborthella fossils from the Wood Canyon and Harkless formations of Nevada, USA, the Illtyd Formation of Yukon, Canada, and the Shady Formation of Virginia, USA. Thin-section petrography, acid maceration, scanning electron microscopy, energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy, X-ray diffraction, and X-ray tomographic microscopy were used to provide new insights into these enigmatic faunas. First, morphological similarities in the aperture divergence angle and ratio of central tube diameter to agglutinated layer thickness suggest Salterella and Volborthella are related. Second, both fossils exhibit agglutinated grain compositions that are distinctive from their surrounding environments and demonstrate selectivity on the part of their producers. Finally, the calcitic shell composition and simple layers of blocky prismatic shell microstructure in Salterella suggest a possible cnidarian affinity. Together these data point to these organisms being sessile, semi-infaunal filter or deposit feeders and an early experimentation in cnidarian biomineralization chronicling a hypothesized transition from an organic sheath in Volborthella to a biomineralized shell in Salterella.

Morphological characters are central to phylogenetic inference, especially for fossil taxa for which genomic data are unavailable. While Bayesian methods have gained popularity in recent years, they typically assume characters evolve independently, despite known correlations among characters. Here, we assess the impact of character correlation and evolutionary rate heterogeneity on Bayesian phylogenetic inference using extensive simulations of binary characters evolving under independent and correlated models. We find that Bayesian inference assuming character independence accurately recovers tree topologies even when characters are strongly correlated or evolve under heterogeneous rates. However, branch lengths or clock rates tend to be underestimated, particularly under extreme rate heterogeneity. These biases are partially corrected using models that integrate over character-state heterogeneity. Our results demonstrate that Bayesian methods are robust to violations of character independence in topological inference, supporting their continued use in morphological phylogenetics.