Feature Article

The high prevalence of obesity and related metabolic diseases calls for greater understanding of the factors that drive excess energy intake. Calorie-dense palatable foods are readily available and often are paired with highly salient environmental cues. These cues can trigger food-seeking and consumption in the absence of hunger. Here we examined the effects of palatable food-paired environmental cues on control of instrumental food-seeking behavior.

Environmental enteropathy (EE) is a poorly understood condition that refers to chronic alterations in intestinal permeability, absorption, and inflammation, which mainly affects young children in resource-limited settings. Recently, EE has been linked to suboptimal oral vaccine responses in children, although immunological mechanisms are poorly defined. The objective of this study was to determine host factors associated with immune responses to an oral cholera vaccine (OCV).

Terrestrial ecosystems play a significant role in the global carbon cycle and offset a large fraction of anthropogenic CO2 emissions. The terrestrial carbon sink is increasing, yet the mechanisms responsible for its enhancement, and implications for the growth rate of atmospheric CO2, remain unclear.

In this prospective observational study, Grant Dorsey and colleagues measure changes in malaria burden after long-lasting insecticidal net distribution and indoor residual spraying at three sites of in Uganda.

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August 2014 saw a major landslide strike in a densely populated district 80 km northeast of Kathmandu, in Sindhupalchok district. This study combines evidence from surveys and interviews to assess impacts and preventive and coping measures taken. The impacts relative to annual income show that lower-income households lost up to 14 times their annual income, as opposed to 3 times for the wealthier. The implications of these findings for discussions surrounding loss and damage are discussed.

The projected rise in food-related greenhouse gas emissions could seriously impede efforts to limit global warming to acceptable levels. Despite that, food production and consumption have long been excluded from climate policies, in part due to concerns about the potential impact on food security.

Low-carbon electricity generation, i.e. renewable energy, nuclear power and carbon capture and storage, is more capital intensive than electricity generation through carbon emitting fossil fuel power stations. High capital costs, expressed as high weighted average cost of capital (WACC), thus tend to encourage the use of fossil fuels. To achieve the same degree of decarbonization, countries with high capital costs therefore need to impose a higher price on carbon emissions than countries with low capital costs.

Despite the 1989 ivory trade ban, elephants continue to be killed to harvest their tusks for ivory. Since 2008, this poaching has increased to unprecedented levels driven by consumer demand for ivory products. CITES is now considering the development of a legal ivory trade. The proposal relies on three assumptions:

(1) harvest regulation will cease all illegal activities,

(2) defined sustainable quotas can be enforced, and

Humans have altered terrestrial ecosystems for millennia, yet wilderness areas still remain as vital refugia where natural ecological and evolutionary processes operate with minimal human disturbance, underpinning key regional- and planetary-scale functions.

The term ‘new normal’ is defined and applied to 2015 record-breaking temperatures. A new normal can be useful for understanding and communicating extremes in a changing climate when precisely defined.

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