The biggest threat to global stability is the potential for food crises in poor countries to cause government collapse.

The mysterious ailment called colony collapse disorder has wiped out large numbers of the bees that pollinate a third of our crops. The causes turn out to be surprisingly complex, but solutions are emerging.

Agriculture has fueled the eruption of human civilization. Efficiently raised, affordable crops and livestock feed our growing population, and hunger has largely been banished from the developed world as a result. Yet there are reasons to believe that we are beginning to lose control of our great agricultural machine.

As the world warms up, some species cannot move to cooler climes in time to survive. Camille Parmesan thinks humans should help even if it means creating invasive species.

Tuberculosis is growing in many places, and strains resistant to all existing drugs are emerging. To fight back, biologists are applying a host of cutting-edge drug development strategies.

Cindy Hale, an ecologist at the University of Minnesota, answers e-mails from a lot of distraught citizens of the Great Lakes region. The residents, it seems, have introduced certain earthworms into their gardens, she says,

The need to tackle global climate change and energy security makes developing alternatives to fossil fuels crucial.

Producing beef for the table has a surprising environmental cost: it releases prodigious amounts of heat-trapping greenhouse gases.

The debate about the future of the U.S. automobile industry exemplifies the shortcomings of U.S. public discussion about large-scale technological change. The auto industry has been widely vilified in recent months, with public opinion running strongly against government financial support for it.

Every winter and spring, tens of thousands of endangered olive ridley sea        turtles clamber onto the shores of Gahirmatha Marine Sanctuary, along In-