Business and industry articles within Nature Communications

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  • Article
    | Open Access

    Microbial production of succinic acid at an industrially relevant scale has been hindered by high downstream processing costs arising from neutral pH fermentation. Here, the authors report an end-to-end pipeline for succinic acid production at low pH using engineered acid-tolerant Issatchenkia orientalis strain.

    • Vinh G. Tran
    • , Somesh Mishra
    •  & Huimin Zhao

  • Article
    | Open Access

    In this work, authors explore DC-DC converter monitoring and control and demonstrate a generalizable digital twin based buck converter system that enables dynamic synchronization even under reference value changes, physical system model variation, and physical controller failure.

    • Zhongcheng Lei
    • , Hong Zhou
    •  & Guo-Ping Liu

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Corporate procurement initiatives, such as RE100, can increase their impact on the energy transition by formulating ambitious interim targets and sourcing requirements, and by orchestrating corporate interests in countries with less ambitious renewable energy targets.

    • Florian Egli
    • , Rui Zhang
    •  & Bjarne Steffen

  • Article
    | Open Access

    To ensure the privacy of processed data, federated learning approaches involve local differential privacy techniques which however require communicating a large amount of data that needs protection. The authors propose here a framework that uses selected small data to transfer knowledge in federated learning with privacy guarantees.

    • Tao Qi
    • , Fangzhao Wu
    •  & Xing Xie

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Federated learning enables multi-institutional collaborations on decentralized data with improved privacy protection. Here, authors propose a new scheme for decentralized federated learning with much less communication overhead and stronger privacy.

    • Shivam Kalra
    • , Junfeng Wen
    •  & H. R. Tizhoosh

  • Comment
    | Open Access

    Carbon dioxide removal technologies are gaining prominence in academia, industry and policy, yet the need for substantial funding raises serious challenges. This comment discusses these issues and offers suggestions for future funding efforts in this area.

    • Matthias Honegger

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The development of machine learning systems has to ensure their robustness and reliability. The authors introduce a framework that defines a principled process of machine learning system formation, from research to production, for various domains and data scenarios.

    • Alexander Lavin
    • , Ciarán M. Gilligan-Lee
    •  & Yarin Gal

  • Article
    | Open Access

    A new study presents a new global modeling framework to explore the links between ports, maritime transport and global supply-chains, and identifies critical links and dependencies between 1300 ports and the economies that depend on them.

    • J. Verschuur
    • , E. E. Koks
    •  & J. W. Hall

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Bioinks used in current in-situ bioprinting have limitations when applied to complex operational environments. Here, the authors report on the creation of a microgel reinforced GelMA bioink which can be simply prepared and used in different biomedical settings. The application is demonstrated in a cranial defect model.

    • Mingjun Xie
    • , Yang Shi
    •  & Yong He

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Mainstream personalization methods rely on centralized Graph Neural Network learning on global graphs, which have considerable privacy risks due to the privacy-sensitive nature of user data. Here, the authors present a federated GNN framework for both effective and privacy-preserving personalization.

    • Chuhan Wu
    • , Fangzhao Wu
    •  & Xing Xie

  • Article
    | Open Access

    This study finds that foreign firms tend to shy away from countries with higher physical climate risks than do local firms. Chinese FDI is significantly more exposed to most physical climate risks than non-Chinese FDI across countries.

    • Xia Li
    •  & Kevin P. Gallagher

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Climate change will impact the global economy. Here, the authors propose a framework to evaluate its effect on economies across multiple regional and temporal scales, and project decreased financial stability in a northern temperate economy.

    • Kayla Stan
    • , Graham A. Watt
    •  & Arturo Sanchez-Azofeifa

  • Comment
    | Open Access

    While the technological revolution is accelerating, digital poverty is undermining the Sustainable Development Goals. This article introduces a justice-oriented digital framework which considers how fair access to digital capabilities, commodities, infrastructure, and governance can reduce global inequality and advance the SDGs.

    • Katriona O’Sullivan
    • , Serena Clark
    •  & Malcolm MacLachlan

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Current carbon accounting and reporting practices remain unsystematic and incomparable, particularly for emissions along the value chain (scope 3). Here the authors present a framework to harmonize scope 3 emissions by accounting for reporting inconsistency, boundary incompleteness, and activity exclusion.

    • Lena Klaaßen
    •  & Christian Stoll

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Social media platforms moderating misinformation have been accused of political bias. Here, the authors use neutral social bots to show that, while there is no strong evidence for such a bias, the content to which Twitter users are exposed depends strongly on the political leaning of early Twitter connections.

    • Wen Chen
    • , Diogo Pacheco
    •  & Filippo Menczer

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The effectiveness of large historical efforts for decarbonizing steel production is unclear. Here, the authors show that such efficiency gains were offset by a booming steel demand increase. This has led to a stagnating decarbonization progress over past decades, which jeopardizes realization of future climate targets.

    • Peng Wang
    • , Morten Ryberg
    •  & Wei-Qiang Chen

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The value assessment of job skills is critical for companies to select and retain the right talent and for individuals to develop them. Here the authors show that a data-driven method based on an enhanced neural network can assign meaningful value to job skills in a quantitative way and outperforms benchmark models for job salary prediction.

    • Ying Sun
    • , Fuzhen Zhuang
    •  & Hui Xiong

  • Article
    | Open Access

    As countries experience economic growth, diversification of economic activities may occur. Here, the authors develop a probabilistic model to examine the diversification of economic activities and how countries may move from small ecosystem products to advanced product clusters over time.

    • Neave O’Clery
    • , Muhammed Ali Yıldırım
    •  & Ricardo Hausmann

  • Article
    | Open Access

    China announced a ban on its import of most plastic waste in 2017, resulting in an impact on global environmental sustainability. Here the authors quantify the environmental impacts of changes in the flow patterns and treatment methods of 6 types of plastic waste in 18 countries subsequent to the ban.

    • Zongguo Wen
    • , Yiling Xie
    •  & Christian Doh Dinga

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Fraudulent adulteration of edible oils is based on the fact that their characteristic fatty acid profile can be mimicked with mixtures of other oil types. Here, the authors use a deep learning method to uncover fatty acid patterns discriminative for ten different plant oil types and to discern composition of mixtures.

    • Kevin Lim
    • , Kun Pan
    •  & Rong Hui Xiao

  • Article
    | Open Access

    As low-carbon energy technologies advance, markets are driving demand for energy transition metals, increasing the stress placed on people and the environment in extractive locations. Here, the authors quantify this stress by developing a set of global composite environmental, social and governance risk indicators, and find that 84% of platinum resources and 70% of cobalt resources are located in high-risk contexts.

    • Éléonore Lèbre
    • , Martin Stringer
    •  & Rick K. Valenta

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Coastal restoration tends to be failure-prone and expensive. Temmink and colleagues improve seagrass and cordgrass transplant survival in field experiments using biodegradable structures which temporarily mimic self-facilitation occurring in mature vegetation stands, and combine onsite and laboratory measurements on sediment stability and stem movement to test the biophysical mechanisms.

    • Ralph J. M. Temmink
    • , Marjolijn J. A. Christianen
    •  & Tjisse van der Heide

  • Article
    | Open Access

    It is crucial to understand the evolving structure of global liner shipping system. Here the authors unveiled the architecture of a recent global liner shipping network (GLSN) and show that the structure of global liner shipping system has evolved to be self-organized with a trade-off between high transportation efficiency and low wiring cost and ports’ gateway-ness is most highly associated with ports’ economic performance.

    • Mengqiao Xu
    • , Qian Pan
    •  & Carlo Vittorio Cannistraci

  • Article
    | Open Access

    There is a lack of systematic approaches to identify and analyze the hierarchical structure of geo-industrial clusters at the global scale. Here the authors use LinkedIn's employment history data to construct a global labor flow network from which they find that the resulting geo-industrial clusters exhibit a stronger association between the influx of educated-workers and financial performance compared to existing aggregation units.

    • Jaehyuk Park
    • , Ian B. Wood
    •  & Yong-Yeol Ahn

  • Article
    | Open Access

    It is important to examine the economic viability of battery storage investments. Here the authors introduced the Levelized Cost of Energy Storage metric to estimate the breakeven cost for energy storage and found that behind-the-meter storage installations will be financially advantageous in both Germany and California.

    • Stephen Comello
    •  & Stefan Reichelstein

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Online misinformation is a threat to a well-informed electorate and undermines democracy. Here, the authors analyse the spread of articles on Twitter, find that bots play a major role in the spread of low-credibility content and suggest control measures for limiting the spread of misinformation.

    • Chengcheng Shao
    • , Giovanni Luca Ciampaglia
    •  & Filippo Menczer

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Carbon budget is diminishing to comply with the target under 2 °C scenario. Facing the limited capacity to improve energy efficiency, the authors show that steelmaking with inherent decarbonisation process can potentially help achieve 2050 emission reduction targets under 2 °C scenario before 2030.

    • Sicong Tian
    • , Jianguo Jiang
    •  & Vasilije Manovic

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Organizations can take different approaches to innovation: they can either follow a strategic process or a serendipitous perspective. Here Fink et al. develop a statistical model to analyse how components combine to obtain a product and thus explain the mechanism behind the two approaches.

    • T. M. A. Fink
    • , M. Reeves
    •  & R. S. Farr

  • Article
    | Open Access

    China has entered a new normal phase of economic development with a changing role in global trade. Here the authors show that emissions embodied in China’s exports declined from 2007 to 2012, while developing countries become the major destinations of China’s export emissions.

    • Zhifu Mi
    • , Jing Meng
    •  & Klaus Hubacek

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Traditional approaches used in the pharmaceutical industry are not precise or versatile enough for customized medicine formulation and manufacture. Here the authors produce a method to form coatings, with accurate dosages, as well as a means of closely controlling dissolution kinetics.

    • Olga Shalev
    • , Shreya Raghavan
    •  & Max Shtein

  • Editorial |

    Nature Publishing Group launches its second multidisciplinary journal, 140 years after the first issue of Nature.

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