Today, the most common methods used for medical device sterilisation are by gaseous ethylene oxide and by electron beam or gamma irradiation. With X-ray sterilisation about to enter the market, its material compatibility needs to be assessed at doses typically encountered during a sterilisation...

The literature on the effects of radiation on the properties of various polymers and composites has been briefly reviewed for the purpose of identifying polymeric materials that could be irradiated to improve their performance. Radiation treatment of polymers may lead to cross-linking or chain...

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...

"Deconstructing the Soil Microbiome into Reduced-Complexity Functional Modules" The soil microbiome represents one of the most complex microbial communities on the planet, encompassing thousands of taxa and metabolic pathways, rendering holistic analyses computationally intensive and difficult. Here...

"Visualizing the Hidden Half: Plant-Microbe Interactions in the Rhizosphere" Plant roots and the associated rhizosphere constitute a dynamic environment that fosters numerous intra- and interkingdom interactions, including metabolite exchange between plants and soil mediated by root exudates and the...

Aluminate salts precipitated from caustic alkaline solutions exhibit a correlation between the anionic speciation and the identity of the alkali cation in the precipitate, with the aluminate ions occurring either in monomeric (Al(OH)4–) or dimeric (Al2O(OH)62–) forms. The origin of this correlation...

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...

Crystallization of Al3+-bearing solid phases from highly alkaline Na2O:Al2O3:H2O solutions commonly necessitates an Al3+ coordination change from tetrahedral to octahedral, but intermediate coordination states are often difficult to isolate. Here, a similar Al3+ coordination change process is...

"Moisture modulates soil reservoirs of active DNA and RNA viruses" Soil is known to harbor viruses, but the majority are uncharacterized and their responses to environmental changes are unknown. Here, we used a multi-omics approach (metagenomics, metatranscriptomics and metaproteomics) to detect...