Soil security starts here: a framework for the future

Soil is one of the most important resources on the planet. It grows our food, regulates water, supports ecosystems, and stores vast amounts of carbon. But it’s also incredibly complex, and surprisingly poorly understood. In Australia, Prof. Alex McBratney of the University of Sydney and his colleagues are changing that. By working with the Soil Security Assessment Framework, they’ve developed new tools and approaches that are helping to reshape how we measure and manage soil. From identifying similar soils and grouping them into categories, to estimating the monetary value of their ability to support food production, to surveying how people relate to the land beneath their feet, their work is creating a new language for talking about soil. Here, we explore the studies that put the framework into action and show why securing our soils is essential not just for farming and food security, but for ecosystems, economies, and climate resilience too.

Soil sits at the heart of nearly every major challenge humanity faces, from food, water and energy security to climate change, biodiversity loss, human health, and the delivery of vital ecosystem services. But, soil itself is increasingly under threat. As these pressures intensify, soil security has become a global priority in its own right. Yet despite its critical role, there are still gaps in how we understand, study and manage soil. Too often, soil research fails to reach the land managers, policymakers and communities who need it most. At the University of Sydney, Professor Alex McBratney and his colleagues are working to change that. They’re leading the development of the Soil Security Assessment Framework, a new approach that considers not just what soil is, but what it does, how it’s valued, and how it’s governed. By defining five interconnected dimensions of soil security, the team is helping to shape a more strategic, outcome-focused research agenda, designed to translate scientific insight into practical actions.

When we think about science, we often imagine a universal language of knowledge in the form of a shared code of numbers, graphs, and precise words that transcend borders. But what happens when the language of science is not the language of the scientist? This is the challenge explored in a recent study by a group of publication professionals from the pharmaceutical and medical communications industries across the Asia Pacific region. The study looked at how researchers in this region navigate the world of English-language scientific publishing. Their findings remind us that words matter, and the language we use can either invite voices into global conversations and knowledge exchange, or keep them out.

In the 20th century, antibiotics transformed medicine. Infections that once killed millions could be cured with a pill or injection. Surgeries became safer, cancer treatments more effective, and advanced medical interventions, such as organ transplants, became possible, all because doctors could rely on these drugs to control infections. Unfortunately, today, that foundation is crumbling. Bacteria are evolving faster than medicine can keep up. Common antibiotics are failing, and infections that were once easily treatable are becoming deadly again. In 2019 alone, antimicrobial resistance was linked to nearly five million deaths worldwide, making it deadlier than HIV or malaria. The economic cost is equally staggering: the World Bank warns of trillions lost in global productivity and millions pushed into poverty if nothing changes. This crisis, caused by antimicrobial resistance, has been described as a “silent pandemic.” Unlike a sudden outbreak, it spreads quietly, making routine medical care slightly more dangerous each year. Yet amid this grim outlook, new research is opening a window of hope. At the forefront of new innovations in this area are Dr. Kai Hilpert of City St George's, University of London, and his colleagues, who are pioneering an approach that combines biology, chemistry, and artificial intelligence to reinvent how we discover infection-fighting medicines. Their work has been recognised with a prestigious award from the UK’s Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council, BBSRC.

Across North America, the phrase “fuel management” is used almost as often as “climate change” when people talk about wildfires. The idea is simple: forests burn because they are full of fuel, including trees, shrubs, branches, and dried leaves. If you remove some of that material, you make it harder for a wildfire to spread. Provincial governments, towns, and even ski resorts such as Whistler in British Columbia, Canada have invested millions of dollars in “fuel thinning,” which involves sending crews into the woods to cut down trees and haul away brush. While fuel thinning feels like common sense, Dr. Rhonda Millikin, a scientist based in Whistler, and her colleagues have found that what seems like common sense in one type of forest can be dangerously misleading in another. Their research, recently published in the journal Fire, revealed that in Whistler’s coastal rainforests, dense, wet, and shaded ecosystems, fuel thinning often has the opposite effect of what is intended. Instead of making these forests safer, thinning makes them drier, windier, and hotter: exactly the conditions that help wildfires spread.

The way molecules arrange themselves into crystals can affect the stability, safety, and effectiveness of medicines and advanced materials. Dr Ivo Rietveld at the University of Rouen Normandy and his collaborators are developing new benchmark data that help scientists to accurately predict the stability of crystal structures of molecules, helping to reduce risks in drug development and enabling the design of better materials.

When we think of spies and their activities, we imagine trench coats, hidden cameras, and tense exchanges in safehouses. Hollywood has given us the daring adventures of James Bond and Jason Bourne, along with the clever trickery of films such as Argo. But behind the cinematic flair lies a quieter, more subtle reality: espionage often depends less on gadgets, weapons and car chases than on the delicate art of deception, an art rooted in psychology, perception, and human behaviour. This is the world explored by Dr. Rafael Lenzi, in a work developed at the Centre de Recherches Sémiotiques in Limoges, France. His study of Cold War espionage, drawing on declassified CIA manuals and philosophical theories of perception, reveals how deception is not just about tricking the eye, but about shaping the mind. In other words, spying succeeds not when someone fails to see, but when they see exactly what they expect to see, and therefore overlook the trickery in front of them.

Most of us never give much thought to the small artery that runs along the inside of our wrist, the radial artery. You can feel it easily if you press your fingers just below your thumb. Yet in modern medicine, this little vessel has become one of the most important gateways to the heart. Imagine a doctor threading a tiny tube, called a catheter, through the radial artery to reach your heart. This technique, called transradial access, has transformed modern cardiology. By entering through the radial artery, doctors can perform life-saving cardiac procedures with fewer complications, faster recovery, and even lower costs than older methods that went through the leg. Many people can even walk out of the hospital on the same day. Over the past two decades, doctors have increasingly chosen the radial artery as their entry point for procedures like angiography (imaging of the heart’s blood vessels) and angioplasty (opening blocked arteries). But there’s a catch: sometimes the artery rebels. It tightens suddenly, almost like a muscle cramp, gripping the medical instruments and making the doctor’s job harder. This is known as radial artery spasm (or RAS for short). In rare cases, the spasm is so severe that it traps the catheter or damages the artery wall.

Research from Professor John Willoughby and Christian Fignole at American University in Washington DC examines how diverse ownership structures persist in market economies, challenging the assumption that capitalist ownership automatically emerges as the most efficient form. Using economist Henry Hansmann's institutional framework, they argue that while capitalist owners contribute little to enterprise operations, this does not guarantee that worker ownership would become dominant in post-capitalist societies. Their analysis reveals that heterogeneous ownership forms will likely continue to exist due to the varying conditions that exist in different sectors of a market economy.

In the Autumn of 2022, hopeful college students across the United States clicked through the questions on the Common Application, the digital gateway to more than one thousand colleges and universities. For the first time, alongside their grades, essays, and extracurricular lists, applicants had the chance to provide their gender and pronouns. These questions might seem a small detail, tucked between test scores and teacher recommendations, but their impact is enormous. They mark a turning point in higher education, one where students are able to represent themselves more authentically. Thanks to the work of Dr. Genny Beemyn of the University of Massachusetts Amherst and Dr. Abbie Goldberg of Clark University, we now have the first large-scale glimpse into how a new generation of young people is reshaping society’s understanding of gender.