Feature Article

Located in the western Pacific ocean, Pohnpei Island is the

This article looks at a system designed and implemented by members of an indigenous community in central Ecuador, which, by localising food production, distribution and consumption, ties together a series of efforts that provide a safeguard against the precarious nature of local employment and fluctuating food prices. Results so far show that this collective action is strengthening community cohesion, and demonstrate how initiatives based on the concept of food sovereignty can address some of the clear inequalities of our globalised food system.

Land use and land cover changes affect the partitioning of latent and sensible heat, which impacts the broader climate system. Increased latent heat flux to the atmosphere has a local cooling influence known as ‘evaporative cooling’, but this energy will be released back to the atmosphere wherever the water condenses. However, the extent to which local evaporative cooling provides a global cooling influence has not been well characterized. Here, we perform a

Nitrogen (N) limits the productivity of many ecosystems worldwide, thereby restricting the ability of terrestrial ecosystems to offset the effects of rising atmospheric CO2 emissions naturally. Understanding input pathways of bioavailable N is therefore paramount for predicting carbon (C) storage on land, particularly in temperate and boreal forests. Paradigms of nutrient cycling and limitation posit that new N enters terrestrial ecosystems solely from the atmosphere. Here we show that bedrock comprises a hitherto overlooked source of ecologically available N to forests.

Ecosystems acquire nitrogen from the atmosphere, but this source can't account for the large nitrogen capital of some systems. The finding that bedrock can also act as a nitrogen source may help solve the riddle.

To fight climate change, it is not enough to generate electricity from renewable sources. The grid infrastructure must be enhanced too.

There is robust evidence of the efficacy of insecticide-treated mosquito nets (ITNs) in reducing malaria parasite prevalence, incidence, and all-cause child mortality from carefully conducted trials in sub-Saharan Africa across a range of transmission settings. Trials have shown ITNs to both significantly reduce Plasmodium falciparum prevalence among children under 5 years old by 13% and post-neonatal (1–59 months) all-cause mortality by 18% in areas of stable malaria transmission in Africa.

Manufactured nanomaterials (MNs) are commonly considered to be commercial products possessing at least one dimension in the size range of 10−9 m to 10−7 m.

The 'Immokalee babies' were born with severe deformities after their mothers were each exposed to pesticides whilst harvesting tomatoes. Barry Estabrook reports on the case that shocked the US.