Many of Africa’s poor live in low-rainfall areas where relatively large investments may be needed to increase agricultural productivity. This paper uses the results from an assessment of expected returns to research on soil fertility management at the Kenya Agricultural Research Institute to explore the extent to which such investments can be justified on efficiency and equity grounds. While re...

This introductory article to the Special Issue MENA Political Science Research a Decade after Arab Uprisings: Facing Facts on Tremulous Grounds takes stock of political science research decade uprisings. Engaging with key contributions from social movement and protest studies, comparative politics, International Relations, we discuss three overarching questions that consider as particularly imp...

Birds do it, fish do it and even some insects do it: seasonal, continent-scale migrations. Mammals appear much less adapted to move over such great distances, although whales undertake substantial annual journeys. Now new research suggests that the humpback whale of the Eastern Pacific travels further than any previously documented mammal — moving up and down the south-east Pacific. Researchers...

Deep-sea sponge grounds provide structurally complex habitat for fish and invertebrates and enhance local biodiversity. They are also vulnerable to bottom-contact fisheries and prime candidates for Vulnerable Marine Ecosystem designation and related conservation action. This study uses species distribution modeling, based on presence and absence observations of Geodia spp. and sponge grounds de...

The phenomenological tradition has long contended that natural perception is neither conceptually articulated nor governed by deterministic laws, but rather organized according to the practically articulated structure of bodily being-in-the-world. But this leaves the problem of explaining how perception can provide justificatory support to thought. The phenomenologists’ answer is to say that th...

Much is known about the cues that determine figure-ground assignment, but less is known about the consequences of figure-ground assignment on later visual processing. Previous work has demonstrated that regions assigned figural status are subjectively more shape-like and salient than background regions. The increase in subjective salience of figural regions could be caused by a number of proces...

Correspondence to: Dr M Stattin, Department of Sociology, Umeå University, Sweden; mikael.stattin@ soc.umu.se _________________________ T oday, most modern welfare states face the challenge of an aging population and decreasing rates of labour force participation among older people. Despite increased life expectancy, improved living conditions, and better health status, the average time people ...

A 78-yr-old Saudi male was admitted having had epigastric pain and vomiting for 3 days. The patient was unable to give a clear medical history; however, he described the pain to be severe, colicky, nonradiating and aggravated by food. On the day of admission, he had noticed a small amount of fresh blood in the vomitus. The family indicated that he had had a long-standing history of intermittent...