Violent attacks on and interferences with hospitals, ambulances, health workers, and patients during conflict destroy vital health services during a time when they are most needed and undermine the long-term capacity of the health system. In Syria, such attacks have been frequent and intense and represent grave violations of the Geneva Conventions, but the number reported has varied considerably.

Significant salinity anomalies have been observed in the Arctic Ocean surface layer during the last decade. Our study is based on an extensive gridded dataset of winter salinity in the upper 50 m layer of the Arctic Ocean for the periods 1950–1993 and 2007–2012, obtained from ~20 000 profiles. We investigate the interannual variability of the salinity fields, identify predominant patterns of anomalous behavior and leading modes of variability, and develop a statistical model for the prediction of surface-layer salinity.

This study investigated potential changes in future precipitation, temperature, and drought across 10 hydrologic regions in California. The latest climate model projections on these variables through 2099 representing the current state of the climate science were applied for this purpose. Changes were explored in terms of differences from a historical baseline as well as the changing trend.

Original Source

For the first time in the Anthropocene, the global demographic and economic trends that have resulted in unprecedented destruction of the environment are now creating the necessary conditions for a possible renaissance of nature. Drawing reasonable inferences from current patterns, we can predict that 100 years from now, the Earth could be inhabited by between 6 and 8 billion people, with very few remaining in extreme poverty, most living in towns and cities, and nearly all participating in a technologically driven, interconnected market economy.

Transport planning in Bengaluru is characterised by institutional fragmentation, increasing private modes of transport, and questionable investment decisions in the transport sector. What are the possibilities of implementing a polycentric governance system in such a city? Answering this question requires exploring the characteristics of polycentric governance systems as part of the larger discourse in institutional economics and reflecting upon how far Bengaluru satisfies such characteristics and where changes may be required.

Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) have agreed to hold the “increase in global average temperature to well below 2°C above pre‐industrial levels and to pursue efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5°C”. Comparison of the costs and benefits for different warming limits requires an understanding of how risks vary between warming limits.

Since the late Pleistocene, large-bodied mammals have been extirpated from much of Earth. Although all habitable continents once harbored giant mammals, the few remaining species are largely confined to Africa. This decline is coincident with the global expansion of hominins over the late Quaternary. Here, we quantify mammalian extinction selectivity, continental body size distributions, and taxonomic diversity over five time periods spanning the past 125,000 years and stretching approximately 200 years into the future.

The concept of the neglected tropical diseases (NTDs) is built around low socioeconomic status (SES) and poverty as the most important social determinants [1]. Poor health is not confined to poor people, but the burden of poor health is disproportionately greater within poor communities. A combination of insufficient social programs, unfair economic arrangements, and corrupt politics creates conditions that allow poverty to obstruct health [2]. Within this paradigm is the impact of violent conflict.

The past processes that have shaped geographic patterns of genetic diversity may be difficult to infer from current patterns. However, in species with sex differences in dispersal, differing phylogeographic patterns between mitochondrial (mt) and nuclear (nu) DNA may provide contrasting insights into past events. Forest elephants (Loxodonta cyclotis) were impacted by climate and habitat change during the Pleistocene, which likely shaped phylogeographic patterns in mitochondrial (mt) DNA that have persisted due to limited female dispersal.

Climate change impacts are most severe in developing countries with limited adaptive capacity. Accordingly, in Africa, climate change adaptation has become an issue of international funding and practice. As suggested in the Introduction to this special issue, administrative traditions could play a role in how adaptation plays out. This, however, raises questions about how foreign funding regimes coincide with recipients' administrative traditions, especially on the African continent where administrative traditions are often meagerly established.