News by Subject Business & Economics

Hundreds of dams are being proposed for Mekong River basin in Southeast Asia. The negative social and environmental consequences -- affecting everything from food security to the environment -- greatly outweigh the positive changes of this grand-scale flood control, according to new research by Michigan State University.

A team of researchers led by wildlife ecologist Theresa Walter analyzed over 1,100 fox sightings made by the public as part of the citizen science project StadtWildTiere (www.stadtwildtiere.at). The joint team of researchers from the Vetmeduni Vienna and the University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences, Vienna (BOKU) now showed that foxes prefer specific city areas and environments. The study also revealed that reports of fox sightings correlated with the educational level of the population.

A recent experimental study conducted by researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Washington University in St. Louis, and Columbia University on nanoscale collagen fibrils reported on, previously unforeseen, reasons why collagen is such a resilient material.

Researchers have developed genetically modified pigs that are protected from classical swine fever virus (CSFV), according to a study published December 13 in the open-access journal PLOS Pathogens by Hongsheng Ouyang of Jilin University, and colleagues. As noted by the authors, these pigs offer potential benefits over commercial vaccination and could reduce economic losses related to classical swine fever.

Organically farmed food has a bigger climate impact than conventionally farmed food, due to the greater areas of land required. This is the finding of a new international study involving Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden, published in the journal Nature.