Feature Article

The International Assessment of Agricultural Science and Technology for Development (IAASTD) brought together governments, internatonal organizations and private sector and civil society organizations to address the challenges of food security, food supply, food prices. The task was to assess the current state and future potential of formal and informal knowledge, as well as science and technology, (i) to reduce hunger and poverty, (ii) to improve rural livelihoods, and (iii) to facilitate equitabble, sustainable development.

A few U.S. energy companies have drawn up plans for synfuels plants that would produce millions of barrels of the alternative fuel annually. The technology is gaining support from a a group of climate scientists who believe that, barrel for barrel, synfuels can emit less carbon dioxide (CO2) than oil and, at some point, even reduce the amount of carbon in the atmosphere.

A recent spike in wholesale and market prices for rice, wheat and maize has touched off food riots and prompted countries with surpluses to impose restrictions on grain exports. In response, U.S. President George W. Bush ordered up $200 million in emergency food aid. Behind the scenes, however, researchers charge that the U.S. government is moving to slash funding for international agricultural research.

Almost 6 years ago, a paper in Science warned of an unheralded environmental peril. Melted snow and ice seemed to be reaching the base of the great Greenland ice sheet, lubricating it and accelerating the sheet's slide toward oblivion in the sea, where it was raising sea level worldwide (12 July 2002, p. 218). Now a two-pronged study-both broader and more focused than the one that sounded the alarm-has confirmed that meltwater reaches the ice sheet's base and does indeed speed the ice's seaward flow. The good news is that the process is more leisurely than many climate scientists had feared.

The international team of climate change scientists that produced an influential series of reports last year will be doing things a little differently in the future. Government delegates to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), meeting in Budapest, Hungary, approved a plan for the 20-year, 100-nation enterprise that would generate more precise and relevant information on climate change-without taking any longer than the current 6-year gap between reports.

Past atmospheric methane concentrations show strong fluctuations in parallel to rapid glacial climate changes in the Northern Hemisphere, superimposed on a glacial

It is now clear that fished populations can fluctuate more than unharvested stocks. However, it is not clear why. Here the authors distinguish among three major competing mechanisms for this phenomenon, by using the 50-year California Cooperative Oceanic Fisheries Investigations (CalCOFI) larval fish record.

Fishing of natural populations increases the variability of fish abundance. A unique data set from the southern California Current has allowed an evaluation of three hypotheses for why that should be so.

Your News story 'Acclaimed photo was faked' (Nature 451, 1034

When people talk about catastrophic climate change, there's a fair chance that Greenland is on their mind. If they use the term 'tipping point', then it is pretty much a sure thing. One-twentieth of the world's ice is locked up atop that island, and if it were to melt completely, global sea levels would rise by seven metres. The collapse of the Greenland ice sheet is in the front rank of potential climate catastrophes.