Feature Article

A Japanese fishing fleet is posting details of catches online in real time. Could this make fishing more sustainable by matching demand to supply?

A TB strain that defies all drugs has infected 12 people in Mumbai. Each may have infected dozens of others.

This paper is the first attempt at examining the growth performance across Indian states during 2001-09, a period also marked by the global financial crisis. We report four key findings. First, consistent with the fact that the decade was the best one for Indian macroeconomic performance, growth increased across almost all major states in 2001-09 compared to 1993-2001. Second, nevertheless, we continue to see the phenomenon of divergence or rising inequality across states: on average the richer states in 2001 grew faster in 2001-09.

The lesson for India after Durban is that it needs to formulate an approach that combines attention to industrialised countries’ historical responsibility for the problem with an embrace of its own responsibility to explore low carbon development trajectories. This is both ethically defensible and strategically wise. Ironically, India’s own domestic national approach of actively exploring “co-benefits” – policies that promote development while also yielding climate gains – suggests that it does take climate science seriously and has embraced responsibility as duty.

There are many problems with the Lokpal Bill 2011, the most serious being the lack of independence to the anti-corruption wing of the Central Bureau of Investigation. There have been problems as well with the civil society approach to the negotiations with the government. Civil society should now put down the non-negotiable demand of a Lokpal with full control over investigation and prosecution, and for one law to operate nationally.

India detects cases of total drug-resistant tuberculosis, but how should she deal with the problem? (Editorial)

The Lokpal Bill deals with the issue of autonomy of investigation in anti-corruption cases with half-measures. (Editorial)

Prospecting macroalgae (seaweeds) as feedstocks for bioconversion into biofuels and commodity chemical compounds is limited primarily by the availability of tractable microorganisms that can metabolize alginate polysaccharides. Here, we present the discovery of a 36–kilo–base pair DNA fragment from Vibrio splendidus encoding enzymes for alginate transport and metabolism. The genomic integration of this ensemble, together with an engineered system for extracellular alginate depolymerization, generated a microbial platform that can simultaneously degrade, uptake, and metabolize alginate.

Your data on changing stock prices for five pharmaceutical companies from 1997 to 2010 (Nature 480, 16–17; 2011) erroneously indicate a 39% drop in aggregated share value, when in fact it would have risen by 82% (see Correction, Nature 480, 425; 2011). The error was due mainly to the selection of unadjusted, rather than adjusted, stock-market closing prices. (Correspondence)