Feature Article

The transmission of malaria through population inflows from highly endemic areas with limited control efforts poses major challenges for national malaria control programmes. Several multilateral programmes have been launched in recent years to address cross-border transmission. This study assesses the potential impact of such a programme at the Angolan–Namibian border.

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Timber harvest from tropical regions generates seven billion dollars annually in exports and is estimated to occur across 20% of the area of remaining tropical forests. This timber harvesting is estimated to account for more than one in eight of all greenhouse gas emissions from tropical forests. Yet there is currently no means to independently estimate extracted volumes and associated greenhouse gas emissions.

Original Source

The Paris Agreement of COP21 set a goal of holding global average temperature increases to below 2 °C above pre-industrial levels and to pursue efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5 °C. This is particularly relevant for the African context where temperatures are likely to warm faster than the global average and where the magnitude of change will be regionally heterogeneous. Additionally, many biogeophysical and socioeconomic systems are particularly vulnerable to change in both means and extremes.

Remaining habitat for P. tapanuliensis is threatened by forest fragmentation, habitat degradation, and conversion that are slated to continue. These are critical factors for the survival of large primates, and particularly Sumatran orangutans, including P. tapanuliensis. Presently, individuals of this species are divided among three forest fragments in the Batang Toru region of Sumatra.

While lifestyle-related cancers saw a universal increase from 2006 to 2016, several cancers from infectious causes – including cervical and stomach cancers – decreased over the same time period finds this global study published in the journal "'ONCOLOGY"

The fall armyworm (FAW), Spodoptera frugiperda, is a major pest of maize in North and South America. It was first reported from Africa in 2016 and currently established as a major invasive pest of maize.

Bacteria that cause infections in humans can develop or acquire resistance to antibiotics commonly used against them. Antimicrobial resistance (in bacteria and other microbes) causes significant morbidity worldwide, and some estimates indicate the attributable mortality could reach up to 10 million by 2050. Antibiotic resistance in bacteria is believed to develop largely under the selective pressure of antibiotic use; however, other factors may contribute to population level increases in antibiotic resistance.

Considered as a hotspot for biodiversity in the Mediterranean Basin, Lebanon is currently witnessing anarchic urbanization and unprecedented destruction of its natural habitats. Unregulated urbanization is also compounded by the surge in Lebanon’s population due to the unabated influx of Syrian refugees since 2012. This work aims to define Important Plant Areas (IPAs) with exceptional botanical richness. These IPAs should constitute the priority zones for conservation, contributing to the fulfillment of national targets in the framework of the Aichi Biodiversity Targets.

Coppice and coppice with standards are important habitats for species of light forests, because regular cutting of re-growth applied in this type of forest-use produces forest structures that fulfil habitat requirements of these species. Coppicing had been a traditional forest-use system in Central Europe for centuries, but it has dramatically declined in the last 100 years. As a conservation strategy, a contract-based conservation program for forests (CBCP Forest) was introduced in 2005 in Bavaria, Germany, that supports among other activities coppiced forests.

Increasing farm labor scarcity and depletion of natural resources such as water are posing a major threat to the sustainability of traditional puddled transplanted rice (PTR) farming in Eastern India. Dry-seeded rice (DSR) or non-puddled transplanted rice (NPTR) could be used as an alternative to PTR. To understand the trade-off with different water management and rice genotypes under non-puddled conditions, a field experiment was conducted during 2014–2015 on a sandy clay loam soil of Bhubaneswar, Odisha.