Bt cotton is spreading very rapidly in China, in response to demand from farmers for technology that will reduce both the cost of pesticide applications and exposure to pesticides, and will free up time for other tasks. Based on surveys of hundreds of farmers in the Yellow River cotton-growing region in northern China in 1999, 2000 and 2001, over 4 million smallholders have been able to increas...

Crown-of-thorns starfish (CoTS; Acanthaster spp.) are an outbreaking pest among many Indo-Pacific coral reefs that cause substantial ecological and economic damage. Despite ongoing CoTS research, there remain critical gaps in observing CoTS populations and accurately estimating their numbers, greatly limiting understanding of the causes and sources of CoTS outbreaks. Here we address two of thes...

UNLABELLED BACKGROUND Lidar height data collected by the Geosciences Laser Altimeter System (GLAS) from 2002 to 2008 has the potential to form the basis of a globally consistent sample-based inventory of forest biomass. GLAS lidar return data were collected globally in spatially discrete full waveform "shots," which have been shown to be strongly correlated with aboveground forest biomass. R...

BACKGROUND Accurate pesticide use data are essential when studying the environmental and public health impacts of pesticide use. Since the mid-1990s, significant changes have occurred in when and how glyphosate herbicides are applied, and there has been a dramatic increase in the total volume applied. METHODS Data on glyphosate applications were collected from multiple sources and integrated ...

African oil palm has the highest productivity amongst cultivated oleaginous crops. Species can constitute a single crop capable to fulfill the growing global demand for vegetable oils, which is estimated to reach 240 million tons by 2050. Two types of vegetable oil are extracted from the palm fruit on commercial scale. The crude palm oil and kernel palm oil have different fatty acid profiles, w...

to determine the effects of priming and planting density on improvement of morphological and physiological traits of the two hybrid corns sc (s.c. 704) under double cropping in sari, a split plot experiment as randomized complete block design with four replications was conducted in 2010. treatments included two densities of 80 and 100 thousand plants per hectare as the first factor and osmoprim...

jeremy shiffman’s editorial appropriately calls on making all forms of power more apparent and accountable, notably productive power derived from expertise and claims to moral authority. this commentary argues that relationships based on productive power can be especially difficult to reveal in global health policy because of embedded notions about the nature of power and politics. yet, it is e...

F are a critical component of the global carbon (C) cycle, storing more than 1 × 1015 metric tons of carbon in biomass, detritus, and soils (Dixon et al. 1994). Forest C storage is an important ecosystem service, locking upC thatmight otherwise exist in the atmosphere as carbon dioxide (CO2), a potent greenhouse gas. In the northern hemisphere, forests are estimated to sequester up to 7 × 108 m...

Transforming modern agriculture towards both higher yields and greater sustainability is critical for preserving biodiversity in an increasingly populous and variable world. However, the intensity of agricultural practices varies strongly between crop systems. Given limited research capacity, it is crucial to focus efforts to increase sustainability in the crop systems that need it most. In thi...