Soil microorganisms play fundamental roles in cycling of soil carbon, nitrogen, and other nutrients, yet we have a poor understanding of how soil microbiomes are shaped by their nutritional and physical environment. In this study, we investigated the successional dynamics of a soil microbiome during...

The novel fungal strain, Fusarium sp. DS 682, was isolated from the rhizosphere of the perennial grass, Bouteloua gracilis , at the Konza Prairie Biological Station in Kansas. This fungal strain is common across North American grasslands and is resilient to environmental fluctuations. The draft...

Viral communities detected from three large grassland soil metagenomes with historically different precipitation moisture regimes.

Soil fungi facilitate the translocation of inorganic nutrients from soil minerals to other microorganisms and plants. This ability is particularly advantageous in impoverished soils, because fungal mycelial networks can bridge otherwise spatially disconnected and inaccessible nutrient hotspots...

Understanding molecular-scale factors governing the precipitation of aluminum hydroxides, such as gibbsite, under alkaline conditions is important for the formation of laterite deposits, as well as aluminum processing. However, mechanisms enabling tetrahedral aluminate ions to assemble into...

Understanding the structure and composition of aluminate complexes in extremely alkaline systems such as Bayer liquors has received enormous attention due to their fundamental and industrial importance. However, obtaining direct molecular information of the underlying ion–ion interactions using...

Electrolyte solutions in alkaline nuclear waste contain aluminate, hydroxide, nitrate and nitrite with sodium as the predominant counterion. The salts of these ions are highly soluble, so the liquids are highly concentrated. This study found that there is a substantial incompatibility between the...

The molecular speciation of aluminum (Al3+) in alkaline solutions is fundamental to its precipitation chemistry within a number of industrial applications that include ore refinement and industrial processing of Al wastes. Under these conditions, Al3+ is predominantly Al(OH)4–, while at high [Al3+]...

X-ray, energetic photon, and electron irradiation can ionize and electronically excite target atoms and molecules. These excitations undergo complicated relaxation and energy-transfer processes that ultimately determine the manifold system responses to the deposited excess energy. In weakly bound...

In highly alkaline “water-in-salt” Na2O/Al2O3/H2O solutions where the monomeric Al(OH)4– anion dominates, isolation of transitional species that seed crystallization of sodium aluminate salt hydrates has been challenging. For example, discrimination of dimeric [for example, Al2O(OH)62–] species via...