• China’s Mekong River dams undermine neighbors’ economies, food production

    Five Chinese dams on the Mekong River’s upper portions have caused rapid changes in water level, and other adverse effects, downstream, especially in Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand, and Laos, where millions of people rely on the river for water, food, and transportation

  • Cutting food losses in half would feed an additional billion people

    More efficient use of the food production chain and a decrease in the amount of food losses will dramatically help maintaining the planet’s natural resources and improve people’s lives; researchers have proved a valid estimation, for the first time, for how many people could be fed with reducing food losses

  • Mathematics offers new weapon in fight against pandemics

    Mathematicians have developed a powerful tool to quantify the spread and infectiousness of viruses like the pandemic H1N1 flu strain, a tool which can be used together with modern laboratory techniques to help the healthcare system plan its response to disease outbreaks

  • Research on enhanced transmissibility in H5N1 influenza: the debate continues

    How can scientists safely conduct avian flu research if the results could potentially threaten, as well as save, millions of lives? Enhancing and analyzing the transmissibility of the H5N1 virus could, on the one hand, provide insights that could help prevent or treat a future outbreak of H5N1, or, on the other hand, it may provide a roadmap for a bad actor deliberately to bring about an influenza pandemic or lead to an inadvertent release of a virus with enhanced transmissibility

  • New methods might drastically reduce the costs of investigating polluted sites

    In Europe there are over 20,000 complex and large contaminated areas. These so-called megasites threaten scarce land and water resources, create environmental and health risks, and result in economic and social costs; new methods may allow polluted sites to be investigated and monitored long term at significantly reduced costs

  • Non-lethal cures: new antibiotic cures disease by disarming pathogens, not killing them

    A new type of antibiotic can effectively treat an antibiotic-resistant infection by disarming instead of killing the bacteria that cause it; this is good news, since new drugs are badly needed for treating infections with the bacterium Acinetobacter baumannii, a pathogen that most often strikes hospital patients and immune- compromised individuals through open wounds, breathing tubes, or catheters

  • Herbicide-resistant crops require more herbicides

    Researchers find that the use of herbicides in the production of three genetically modified herbicide-tolerant crops — cotton, soybeans, and corn — has actually increased; this counterintuitive finding is based on an exhaustive analysis of publicly available data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s National Agriculture Statistics Service

  • Probability maps help detect food contamination

    Researchers demonstrate how developing a probability map of the food supply network using stochastic network representation might shorten the time it takes to track down contaminated food sources; stochastic mapping shows what is known about how product flows through the distribution supply chain and provides a means to express all the uncertainties in potential supplier-customer relationships that persist due to incomplete information

  • Entomologists discover new species of malaria-transmitting mosquito

    Malaria is the leading cause of death in Kenya, where twenty-five million people out of its population of thirty-four million are at risk; researchers have recently discovered a potentially dangerous new malaria-transmitting mosquito; the as-yet-unnamed, and previously unreported, mosquito breeds in the western areas of Kenya and has an unknown DNA match to any of the existing malaria-transmitting species

  • Genetic sleuthing uncovers deadly new virus in Africa

    An isolated outbreak of a deadly disease known as acute hemorrhagic fever, which killed two people and left one gravely ill in the Democratic Republic of Congo in the summer of 2009, was probably caused by a novel virus scientists have never seen before

  • How vulnerable is the U.S. to agro-terror attack?

    Since the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the United States has spent billions of dollars to make the country safer from another catastrophic event, but little of that money, and little attention, have been directed toward preventing, coping with, and recovering from a terrorist agro-attack; how vulnerable is the United States to an attack on its food system?

  • Concerns about next month’s Hajj grow as Saudi Arabia identified as source of Sars-like outbreak

    The U.K. Health Protection Agency and World Health Organization are attempting to identify a new Sars-like virus which has infected two people so far, one who has died and another who is receiving intensive care; the source of the virus appears to be in Saudi Arabia, which raises concerned that the Hajj pilgrimage next month could provide the virus a chance to spread around the world; thousands of Muslims from all over the world attend the event every year

  • Removing toxins from the environment

    A Florida State University chemist’s work could lead to big improvements in our ability to detect and eliminate specific toxic substances in our environment; the novel approach is based on stripping electrons from the toxic chemical known as fluoride; in addition to toxin removal, the approach has many other applications

  • U.S. models underestimates costs of carbon pollution

    Model used by government all but ignores economic damages that climate change will inflict on future generations; two economists argue that when these costs are factored in, the real benefits of carbon reduction range from 2.6 to more than 12 times higher than the government’s estimate

  • Precision agriculture using military technology: drones

    Drones are military aircraft currently being repurposed for everyday use, especially within the growing field of precision agriculture; these flying robots allow farmers to detect changes in water content, plant health, and pesticide dispersal in their fields