Monsanto has revealed that a common insect pest has developed resistance to its flagship genetically modified (GM) product in India. The agricultural biotechnology leader says it "detected unusual survival" of pink bollworms that fed on cotton containing the Cry1Ac gene from the bacterium Bacillus thuringiensis, which codes for a protein that's toxic to many insect pests.

In a nod to rising public expectations, China's government work plan for 2010, rolled out last week at the country's two major annual political powwows, puts the environment front and center. At the National People's Congress, officials announced that science priorities include new energy sources, energy conservation, environmental protection, and marine technology.

Phenological events such as bud burst, flowering, and senescence have received increased interest in the light of global warming (1

Climate controls landscape evolution, but quantitative signatures of climatic drivers have yet to be found in topography on a broad scale. Here we describe how a topographic signature of typhoon rainfall is recorded in the meandering of incising mountain rivers in the western North Pacific.

Microbes aside, upward of nine in 10 species crowd into the 30% of Earth's surface that's dry. It wasn't always that way, say a pair of researchers at the University of California (UC), Davis, who have been studying land and ocean features to understand how evolution proceeds in these two realms.

Researchers from Stanford University and a consortium of nonprofit organizations have been working side by side with colleagues from the North Korean Ministry of Public Health

Tanzania and Zambia are petitioning the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) to "downlist" the conservation status of their elephants to allow sale of stockpiled ivory. But just 2 years after CITES placed a 9-year moratorium on future ivory sales, elephant poaching is on the rise. The petitioning countries are major sources and conduits of Africa's illegal ivory.

Southwest China's monsoon-driven climate doesn't bring much precipitation in autumn and winter. But this year's dry season

Remobilization to the atmosphere of only a small fraction of the methane held in East Siberian Arctic Shelf (ESAS) sediments could trigger abrupt climate warming, yet it is believed that sub-sea permafrost acts as a lid to keep this shallow methane reservoir in place.

Stratospheric water vapor concentrations decreased by about 10% after the year 2000. Here we show that this acted to slow the rate of increase in global surface temperature over 2000