Production of most major foods involve nitrate and phosphate fertilizers, but excessive fertilizer use is bad for the environment. 

That is why scientists came up with modern technologies that use less fertilizer and, on the other end, fewer pesticides. But some countries or processes like "organic" ban modern products, so their nitrogen runoff is excessive. Perhaps a new form of genetic engineering will be the first product to be allowed under their marketing guidelines since Mutagenesis.  

Climate has always shifted but concerns about faster changes brought on by the modern world have led the authors of a new paper to worry that current high-volume sources of apples could lose their apex status to other areas.

The paper in the pay-to-publish journal Environmental Research Letters analyzed over 40 years of climate conditions they correlate to the growth cycle, bud break to fruit, of apple trees. They sound the alarm that the largest apple-producing counties in the US (Yakima in Washington, Kent in Michigan and Wayne in New York) have already been impacted.

Electric cars and solar and wind energy alternative schemes have a few crippling limitations; low energy densities and unavailability when people need energy most. Batteries could help with that second one except current batteries are legacy technology that are held back by subsidies and mandates, not improved.

Since being discovered in 1993, microRNAs have gone on to win a Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, thanks to private sector uptake with the COVID-19 vaccines that saved the world during the pandemic that emerged from Wuhan, China in early 2020. 

Errors in the manufacture of over 1,000 microRNAs can put us at risk for developmental disorders, cancer, or neurodegenerative disease and a new study looks at a molecular machine called Microprocessor (MP), which trims longer molecules called primary microRNAs (pri-miRNAs) - without cutting other kinds of RNA that resemble pri-miRNAs.

No one likes getting a needle but most want a vaccine. A new paper shows progress for messenger RNA (mRNA), that can be sprayed and inhaled thanks to improved lipid-polymer nanoparticle technology for holding mRNA that is stable when nebulized and successfully delivers aerosols, liquid droplets, in mouse lungs. 

A mouse study means this is only EXPLORATORY but the authors of the paper, including scientists from oRNA Therapeutics (RNA medicine) and Moderna (mRNA medicine), have filed for a patent while they get ready to see about human trials. 

Attorney Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and his US followers over the last 25 years have staunchly opposed vaccines, latching on to any claim that they cause autism or should be available for lawsuits even if they harm no one.

They really won't like a new experimental vaccine for Smallpox and Monkeypox that avoids the side effects of a current live virus version while not needing two doses, as the replication-deficient virus version does. It uses the horsepox virus as a protective agent to confer the safety of a multi-dose vaccine in a single shot.