Today’s drastic global warming is threatening the agriculture of many valuable crops, including winegrapes. We propose a new approach to selecting winegrape varieties that are adapted to a future warmer environment and enhance the crop’s diversity. This approach may, in turn, prevent losing our favorite vineyards across the world.

Monitoring brain electrical activities helps us discern brain states. But understanding how we sleep is not easy. While deep dreamless sleep brings easily recognized rhythmic electrical waves, light dream sleep shows arrhythmic patterns and looks similar to wakefulness. We discover that the often-ignored background brain ‘noise’ can help distinguish these similar brain states.

Studying the genetic information of exceptionally long-lived people may allow us to uncover the secret of their healthy ageing. Combining data from large genetic studies across different longevity-related features, we discover new genomic regions that may play a key role in a long and healthy life.

Deep-sea mining may soon become a new source of valuable metals, the important components of modern tech. It is becoming commercially viable, but what about its ecological impact? We reveal that deep-sea mining could significantly damage microbes, and it would take decades for microbes to recover their population size and functions.

Born more than ten billion years ago, the early life of our Milky Way galaxy remains mysterious. Recently we discovered the Phoenix Stream, the remnants of a cluster of stars on the verge of destruction. The stars of the Phoenix Stream are old, formed in the first instances of the Galaxy, providing a new window on our Milky Way’s evolution.

The COVID-19 pandemic has been dynamically reshaping our lifestyle and society. Despite huge drops in global pollution as people stayed at home, our study reveals 2020’s initial lockdowns had little effect on the climate. The challenge now is to use this knowledge to create a global green economic recovery, which will help us avoid the most dangerous climate change.