Feature Article

Globally, fisheries are challenged by the combined impacts of overfishing, degradation of ecosystems and impacts of climate change, while fisheries livelihoods are further pressured by conservation policy imperatives. Fishers' adaptive responses to these pressures, such as exiting from a fishery to pursue alternative livelihoods, determine their own vulnerability, as well as the potential for reducing fishing effort and sustaining fisheries.

Methane leaks during production may offset climate benefits of natural gas.

A new strategy for addressing climate change takes a realistic approach to the challenge of making science useful, says Ryan Meyer.

Natural-gas operations could leak enough methane to tarnish their clean image. (Editorial)

Lactobacillus rhamnosus CRL1505 (Lr) administered during the repletion of immunocompromised-malnourished mice improves the resistance against intestinal and respiratory infections. This effect is associated with an increase in the number and functionality of immune cells, indicating that Lr could have some influence on myeloid and lymphoid cell production and maturation.

In the face of global overfishing of wild-caught seafood, ocean fish farming has augmented the supply of fresh fish to western markets and become one of the fastest growing global industries. Accurate reporting of quantities of wild-caught fish has been problematic and we questioned whether similar discrepancies in data exist in statistics for farmed fish production. In the Mediterranean Sea, ocean fish farming is prevalent and stationary cages can be seen off the coasts of 16 countries using satellite imagery available through Google Earth.

Factors that influence learning and the spread of behavior in wild animal populations are important for understanding species responses to changing environments and for species conservation. In populations of wildlife species that come into conflict with humans by raiding cultivated crops, simple models of exposure of individual animals to crops do not entirely explain the prevalence of crop raiding behavior.

In its first major policy announcement of the new year, China has revealed plans to boost spending on agricultural science and technology - continuing a trend towards rapidly-growing farm support in recent years.

The Chinese government has barred the country’s airlines from participating in Brussels’ controversial plan to place a levy on foreign airlines for the emissions they use on incoming and outgoing flights. With China also set to meet with other opponents of the aviation emissions levy - including India, Russia, and the US - later this month to discuss a plan of action, tensions over the EU scheme are expected to escalate much further.

Differences between individual human houses can confound results of studies aimed at evaluating indoor vector control interventions such as insecticide treated nets (ITNs) and indoor residual insecticide spraying (IRS). Specially designed and standardised experimental huts have historically provided a solution to this challenge, with an added advantage that they can be fitted with special interception traps to sample entering or exiting mosquitoes.