Feature Article

Climate exchange Unfair share of cause and effect Ecological damages are distributed more towards poor nations Human activities are changing

Two years ago, Eduardo Ferreira was studying the microbiology of cancer cells in S

A rash of projects probing everything from life under the Arctic ice to the global movements of marine mammals is providing the information that conservationists badly need. It is now clear that hotspots do exist even out in the open ocean. However, these are not quite like their counterparts on land. For a start, they do not necessarily stay in the same place. Places with the highest biodiversity may not be the best habitats for the species that live there. Meanwhile, some seemingly inhospitable areas turn out to be thronging with life.

Donald Rumsfeld, the former US Secretary of Defense, liked to distinguish between "known unknowns" and "unknown unknowns", and for this he was widely ridiculed. But Rumsfeld had a point. We all know, for instance, that global warming is harming cold-adapted species on mountain tops, even if we can't predict the ultimate magnitude of the damage. Yet the really alarming changes are those that come completely out of the blue - the unknown unknowns that we never even imagined.

If you do like to be beside the seaside, it might be best to avoid beaches near major ports. The mix of sea salt, ship fumes and city smoke leads to a chemical reaction that encourages the formation of ozone smog, adding to the pollution that forms in cities. James Roberts from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Earth System Research Laboratory in Boulder, Colorado, and his colleagues have developed a mass spectrometer that can detect nitryl chloride (NO2Cl) - a chemical that aids the formation of ozone.

The energy we can get from uranium is set to rocket, but safety fears and waste disposal problems loom : a report.

In the nuclear industry, memories can be distressingly short. In 1976, the UK Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution declared that it would be "morally wrong" to make a major commitment to nuclear power without demonstrating a way of safely isolating radioactive waste. Yet the UK is about to embark on a programme to build at least 10 reactors while still lacking a disposal site for the waste that has accumulated over the past 50 years. What's more, spent fuel from these reactors will be far more radioactive than existing waste and may even require a second repository. (Editorial)

The statistics on dengue have been getting increasingly alarming over the past few years with 2

On April 17

A recent national survey in Tanzania reported that mortality in children younger than 5 years dropped by 24% over the 5 years between 2000 and 2004. The researchers aimed to investigate yearly changes to identify what might have contributed to this reduction and to investigate the prospects for meeting the Millennium Development Goal for child survival (MDG 4).