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The development of functional neural circuits in the central nervous system (CNS) requires the production of sufficient numbers of various types of neurons and glial cells, such as astrocytes and oligodendrocytes, at the appropriate periods and regions. Hence, severe neuronal loss of the circuits can cause neurodegenerative diseases such as Huntington’s disease (HD), Parkinson’s disease (PD), Alzheimer’s disease (AD), and Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS). Treatment of such neurodegenerative diseases caused by neuronal loss includes some strategies of cell therapy employing stem cells (such as neural progenitor cells (NPCs)) and gene therapy through cell fate conversion. In this report, we review how bHLH acts as a regulator in neuronal differentiation, reprogramming, and cell fate determination. Moreover, several different researchers are conducting studies to determine the importance of bHLH factors to direct neuronal and glial cell fate specification and differentiation. Therefore, we also investigated the limitations and future directions of conversion or transdifferentiation using bHLH factors.

In the crystallisation of nanomaterials, an assembly-based mechanism termed ‘oriented attachment’ (OA) has recently been recognised as an alternative mechanism of crystal growth that cannot be explained by the classical theory. However, attachment alignment during OA is not currently tuneable because its mechanism is poorly understood. Here, we identify the crystallographic disorder-order transitions in the OA of magnetite (Fe 3 O 4 ) mesocrystals depending on the types of organic surface ligands on the building blocks, which produce different grain structures. We find that alignment variations induced by different surface ligands are guided by surface energy anisotropy reduction and surface deformation. Further, we determine the effects of alignment-dependent magnetic interactions between building blocks on the global magnetic properties of mesocrystals and their chains. These results revisit the driving force of OA and provide an approach for chemically controlling the crystallographic order in colloidal nanocrystalline materials directly related to grain engineering. Oriented attachment is a non-classical growth mechanism of nanomaterials that can lead to tunable properties and functionalities. Here the authors show that the crystallographic alignment between magnetite mesocrystal building-blocks can be tuned by the surface ligands, influencing the resulting magnetic properties.

Acute neuroinflammation rapidly activates brain immune responses, but its lasting effects on microglia are unclear. Using systemic LPS administration and LCMV-Armstrong infection, we found that blood–brain barrier disruption and cytokine shifts resolved within 30 days, yet microglial recovery was incomplete—marked by persistent numerical loss and an IFN-γ–low phenotype in the LPS model and reduced relative abundance in the LCMV model. Single-cell RNA sequencing revealed sustained transcriptional alterations, including disease-associated microglia (DAM) features and a distinct recovery-biased population. These acute signatures overlapped with profiles from Alzheimer’s model mice and were enriched in human microglia from multiple sclerosis, Alzheimer’s disease, and other neuroinflammatory conditions. Although our observation period was shorter than the chronic course of these diseases, the persistence of disease-like microglial states suggests that transient inflammation can prime the brain for long-term vulnerability. Targeting this primed state may offer new strategies to prevent or mitigate neurodegenerative pathology.

Seaweed farming is emerging as a scalable and effective carbon dioxide removal (CDR) strategy, offering direct sequestration benefits through carbon uptake pathways and indirect climate advantages by substituting carbon-intensive products. This paper evaluates the potential of seaweed farming within the context of South Korea, leveraging its advanced aquaculture infrastructure, extensive coastal resources, and supportive policy frameworks. By synthesizing current literature, this study examines key sequestration mechanisms, including biomass storage, dissolved organic carbon (DOC) release, and particulate organic carbon (POC) burial, while addressing uncertainties such as the stability of recalcitrant DOC and the efficiency of POC burial under site-specific conditions. The analysis highlights South Korea’s unique strengths, such as its established seaweed farming industry and innovative technological developments, alongside challenges like ecological trade-offs, nutrient competition, and the absence of robust monitoring, reporting, and verification (MRV) systems. The paper identifies opportunities to scale offshore farming, adopt integrated multi-trophic aquaculture, and enhance lifecycle climate benefits through product innovation and renewable energy integration. To guide future research and policy, the paper outlines critical gaps, including the need for precise quantification of long-term carbon sequestration pathways, development of MRV frameworks, and exploration of socio-economic impacts. By addressing these gaps, seaweed farming can become a central pillar of South Korea’s climate mitigation strategy, providing valuable insights for other regions seeking to integrate marine-based solutions into global CDR efforts.

While marine kelp forests have provided valuable ecosystem services for millennia, the global ecological and economic value of those services is largely unresolved. Kelp forests are diminishing in many regions worldwide, and efforts to manage these ecosystems are hindered without accurate estimates of the value of the services that kelp forests provide to human societies. Here, we present a global estimate of the ecological and economic potential of three key ecosystem services - fisheries production, nutrient cycling, and carbon removal provided by six major forest forming kelp genera ( Ecklonia, Laminaria, Lessonia, Macrocystis, Nereocystis , and Saccharina ). Each of these genera creates a potential value of between $64,400 and $147,100/hectare each year. Collectively, they generate between $465 and $562 billion/year worldwide, with an average of $500 billion. These values are primarily driven by fisheries production (mean $29,900, 904 Kg/Ha/year) and nitrogen removal ($73,800, 657 Kg N/Ha/year), though kelp forests are also estimated to sequester 4.91 megatons of carbon from the atmosphere/year highlighting their potential as blue carbon systems for climate change mitigation. These findings highlight the ecological and economic value of kelp forests to society and will facilitate better informed marine management and conservation decisions. By combining fisheries, nutrient, and carbon cycling data, this synthesis suggests that marine kelp forests, a dominant but often undescribed habitat, provide services with a potential value of $111,000/ha/year and a global yearly value of $500 billion.

We present a new method for identifying Galactic halo substructures accreted from dwarf galaxies by combining metallicity distribution functions (MDFs) with orbital parameters. Using apogalactic distance–orbital phase space, we assume that the MDF peak of a substructure reflects its progenitor’s chemical signature. We test this approach with two Galactic potentials (St ä ckel and McMillan) and find consistent results. Our sample consists of retrograde halo stars with low orbital inclinations and intermediate eccentricities (0.5 < e ≤ 0.7), drawn from Sloan Digital Sky Survey and Large sky Area Multi-Object Fiber Spectroscopic Telescope spectroscopy combined with Gaia DR3 astrometry. We identify four distinct low-inclination retrograde substructures (LRS 1, LRS 2, LRS 3, LRS 4) with MDF peaks at [Fe/H] = −1.5, −1.7, −1.9, and −2.1, respectively; LRS 3 is newly discovered. Further analysis reveals an additional stream (LRS 2B) with [Fe/H] = −2.3 embedded within LRS 2; the remaining LRS 2 stars (LRS 2A) are associated with Sequoia. LRS 1 is likely linked to Thamnos 2 and Arjuna, and LRS 4 is likely linked to I’itoi. Comparison with the ED-2 stream suggests that LRS 2B is chemically distinct, but high-resolution spectroscopy is required to confirm whether they originate from separate progenitors. Our MDF-based approach demonstrates the utility of chemodynamical space for uncovering halo substructures, while highlighting caveats such as metallicity gradients and redshift evolution of the mass–metallicity relation, which may blur the mapping between MDF peaks and progenitors.

Background We aim to discuss the overall effect of customer service manual (CSM) on service industry workers using Korean Working Condition Survey. Methods Out of 50,007 total survey participants, 11,946 customer service workers were included in the current study (5613 men, 6333 women). Answers to survey questions were used to define the use of CSM, emotional burden, emotional dissonance, engaging angry customers and other covariates. Emotional burden included either depressive event or stress level. Odds ratio (OR) with 95% confidence interval (95% CI) of experiencing emotional burden was calculated by logistic regression model. Interaction effect between CSM and engaging angry customer on emotional burden was also estimated. Results Out of 11,946 subjects, total of 3279 (27.4%) have experienced emotional burden. OR (95% CI) of experiencing emotional burden was 1.40 (1.19–1.64) in men and 1.25 (1.09–1.44) in women. There was gender difference in interaction effect between the use of CSM and engaging angry customers. In men, OR (95% CI) was 3.16 (1.38–7.23) with additive effect when always engaging angry customers with CSM compared to rarely engaging without CSM, while in women OR (95% CI) was 8.85 (3.96–19.75) with synergistic effect. Moreover, the risk of depressive event increased only in women with OR (95% CI) 2.22 (1.42–3.48). Conclusions Our current study highlighted association between emotional burden and CSM in both men and women service workers. Furthermore, women were affected more severely by CSM. The results from current study suggest that CSM should be changed appropriately to benefit workers.

Macroalgae host diverse epiphytic eukaryotes that contribute to coastal biodiversity and ecosystem function. Yet how fine-scale host traits shape these communities remains unclear. Using small organelle-enriched metagenomics (SoEM), we profiled epiphytes on eight intertidal macroalgal species from Korea and tested whether host cortical cell layer thickness predicts community structure. Epiphytic composition separated strongly by cortical thickness (thick > 8 cells vs. thin ≤ 5 cells), independent of host phylum. Thick-layered hosts predominantly harbored macrofauna (e.g., Malacostraca, Hexapoda), whereas thin-layered hosts were dominated by microalgae (diatoms). Phylogenetic diversity and the net relatedness index (NRI) indicated phylogenetic clustering in most thick-layered hosts (suggesting habitat filtering), while thin-layered hosts tended toward near-random assembly. Our findings identify cortical cell layer thickness as a key morphological trait structuring epiphytic eukaryotic communities. This trait-based perspective clarifies host–epiphyte interactions and motivates replicated, multi-scale studies integrating morphological and functional traits with genomic data for coastal biodiversity management.

We present a chemodynamical analysis of 11,562 metal-rich, high-eccentricity halo-like main-sequence stars, which have been referred to as the Splash or Splashed Disk, selected from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey and Large Sky Area Multi-Object Fiber Spectroscopic Telescope. When divided into two groups, a low-[α/Fe] population (LAP) and a high-[α/Fe] population (HAP), based on kinematics and chemistry, we find that they exhibit very distinct properties, indicative of different origins. From a detailed analysis of their orbital inclinations, we suggest that the HAP arises from a large fraction (∼90%) of heated disk stars and a small fraction (∼10%) of in situ stars from a starburst population, likely induced by interaction of the Milky Way with the Gaia-Sausage/Enceladus (GSE) or another early merger. The LAP comprises about half accreted stars from the GSE and half formed by the GSE-induced starburst. Our findings further imply that the Splash stars in our sample originated from at least three different mechanisms: accretion, disk heating, and a merger-induced starburst.

Chemical anomalies in planet-hosting stars (PHSs) are studied in order to assess how the planetary nature and multiplicity affect the atmospheric chemical abundances of their host stars. We employ APOGEE DR17 to select thin-disk stars of the Milky Way, and crossmatch them with the Kepler Input Catalog to identify confirmed PHSs, which results in 227 PHSs with available chemical abundance ratios for six refractory elements. We also examine an ensemble of stars without planet signals, which are equivalent to the selected PHSs in terms of evolutionary stage and stellar parameters, to correct for Galactic chemical evolution effects, and derive the abundance gradient of refractory elements over the condensation temperature for the PHSs. Using the Galactic chemical evolution corrected abundances, we find that our PHSs do not show a significant difference in abundance slope from the stars without planets. However, when we examine the trends of the refractory elements of PHSs, based on the total number of their planets and their planet types, we find that the PHSs with giant planets are more depleted in refractory elements than those with rocky planets. Among the PHSs with rocky planets, the refractory depletion trends are potentially correlated with the terrestrial planets’ radii and multiplicity. In the cases of PHSs with giant planets, sub-Jovian PHSs demonstrate more depleted refractory trends than stars hosting Jovian-mass planets, raising questions on different planetary formation processes for Neptune-like and Jupiter-like planets.