Amazon founder Jeff Bezos said the Moon is a crucial first step toward exploring the solar system and building a Mars settlement.

A research team at the Institute of Botany, Chinese Academy of Sciences has cloned a core gene, CHPO, at locus qCR2 that links post-freeze tiller regrowth with efficient nitrogen uptake in rice. Using recombinant inbred lines from japonica KY131 and indica ZF802, the team treated regrowth after freezing as a novel metric of frost-recovery and identified CHPO as a regulatory switch that triggers tiller re-growth and enhanced nitrogen absorption after cold damage. The finding provides a molecular module and breeding strategy to develop cold-tolerant, yield-stable, nitrogen-efficient rice varieties. Results were published in Nature on June 17.

Federal Reserve Chair Kevin Warsh said on Wednesday he wants markets to price securities based on their own read of the economy rather than on expectations of how Fed officials will interpret data. "The more markets focus on real economic changes and can judge which data are more or less important, the more they will form pricing they consider most likely," he said, adding this would avoid a situation in which "financial markets are merely echoing what we have said."