Feature Article

Patients are being forced to buy high-priced drugs and medical devices from hospital pharmacies. With hospitals increasingly operating as for-profi t businesses, these pharmacies are an important revenue source for hospitals. In essence, the in-house pharmacy is a spatial monopoly within the premises of the hospital with the patients obliged to buy from it at prices dictated by the management.

During 2015–2016, record temperatures triggered a pan-tropical episode of coral bleaching, the third global-scale event since mass bleaching was first documented in the 1980s. Here we examine how and why the severity of recurrent major bleaching events has varied at multiple scales, using aerial and underwater surveys of Australian reefs combined with satellite-derived sea surface temperatures. The distinctive geographic footprints of recurrent bleaching on the Great Barrier Reef in 1998, 2002 and 2016 were determined by the spatial pattern of sea temperatures in each year.

Oil palm has a reputation as an environmental menace. Can the latest genetic research change that?

Original Source

The decarbonisation of energy sources requires additional investments in renewable technologies, including the installation of onshore and offshore wind farms. For wind energy to remain competitive, wind farms must continue to provide low-cost power even when covering larger areas. Inside very large wind farms, winds can decrease considerably from their free-stream values to a point where an equilibrium wind speed is reached.

Tropical cyclones and sea level rise cause major problems including beach erosion and damage to infrastructure in coastal areas. Inexpensive but effective plans for coastal protection will be needed by small island nations and developing countries. Natural breakwater formed by reefs is more cost-effective in coastal protection than the construction of artificial defenses. It provides a habitat for marine organisms and societal benefits including marine products, tourism, and education.

The East China Plains (ECP) region experienced the worst haze pollution on record for January in 2013. We show that the unprecedented haze event is due to the extremely poor ventilation conditions, which had not been seen in the preceding three decades. Statistical analysis suggests that the extremely poor ventilation conditions are linked to Arctic sea ice loss in the preceding autumn and extensive boreal snowfall in the earlier winter. We identify the regional circulation mode that leads to extremely poor ventilation over the ECP region.

Gut microbiomes play crucial roles in animal health, and shifts in the gut microbial community structure can have detrimental impacts on hosts. Studies with vertebrate models and human subjects suggest that antibiotic treatments greatly perturb the native gut community, thereby facilitating proliferation of pathogens. In fact, persistent infections following antibiotic treatment are a major medical issue.

Pollinator-driven diversification is thought to be a major source of floral variation in plants. Our knowledge of this process is, however, limited to indirect assessments of evolutionary changes. Here, we employ experimental evolution with fast cycling Brassica rapa plants to demonstrate adaptive evolution driven by different pollinators. Our study shows pollinator-driven divergent selection as well as divergent evolution in plant traits. Plants pollinated by bumblebees evolved taller size and more fragrant flowers with increased ultraviolet reflection.

Climate models project a strong increase in Arctic precipitation over the coming century, which has been attributed primarily to enhanced surface evaporation associated with sea-ice retreat. Since the Arctic is still quite cold, especially in winter, it is often (implicitly) assumed that the additional precipitation will fall mostly as snow. However, little is known about future changes in the distributions of rainfall and snowfall in the Arctic.

Arctic warming over the Barents–Kara Seas and its impacts on the mid-latitude circulations have been widely discussed. However, the specific mechanism that brings the warming still remains unclear. In this study, a possible cause of the regional Arctic warming over the Barents–Kara Seas during early winter (October–December) is suggested. We found that warmer sea surface temperature anomalies over the western North Atlantic Ocean (WNAO) modulate the transient eddies overlying the oceanic frontal region.