MIT researchers built a battery-free, wireless underwater camera, powered by sound waves, that can take high-quality, color images, even in dark environments. It transmits image data through the open water to a receiver that reconstructs the color image.

Researchers at the University of Freiburg have found that hedges and perennial flower strips are complementary in supporting wild bees in orchards by providing continuous resources over the growing season. The results are published in the British Ecological Society’s Journal of Applied Ecology.

The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) is pleased to announce the 50th class of the Science & Technology Policy Fellowships (STPF), who will help inform actionable, science-based policies throughout the U.S. government. Among the 300 highly trained scientists and engineers selected, Dr. Pierre-Andre Jacinthe, a professor of soil biogeochemistry in the Department of Earth Sciences at IUPUI, will spend a year serving at the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) in the Bureau for Resilience and Food Security (BFS).

As part of the Belmont Forum-funded Sustainable Agriculture Matrix (SAM) Consortium led by the University of Maryland, Center for Environmental Science, the African Plant Nutrition Institute (APNI) with the National Institute of Agronomic Research (INRA) organized a workshop in Marrakech, to engage key stakeholders and partners to develop a narrative for the sustainability of olive-based food systems in Morocco.

Climate change (e.g., global warming) is intensifying the global water cycle and the temporal variation of precipitation has increased significantly. The distribution of precipitation is more uneven over time, and drought and flood events occurred more frequently. This unstable variability in precipitation is particularly negative for crop growth. On the one hand, temporal variation in precipitation will directly affect the timing of crop fertilizer applications, further limiting the matching of fertilizer supply and crop demand. On the other hand, the increased temporal variability of precipitation leads to an asynchronous between N supply and N demand, which indirectly leads to more reactive nitrogen losses (including leaching loss, gaseous emissions, etc.), thus causing water pollution, greenhouse gas emissions, air pollution and other ecological environment and human health effects.

In 2012, a crop of California's most prized ornamental trees was overrun by an invisible invader. The growing shoots of coral beans — the official city tree of Los Angeles — began wilting and falling away, revealing stems that had been hollowed out from the inside by the caterpillars of Erythrina stem borer moths. A new study published this Wednesday in the Journal of Applied Entomology reveals the culprit's origin through a DNA analysis of insects provided by the late Dan Lindsley, formerly a retired UC San Diego professor of genetics.

African Plant Nutrition Institute (APNI), Fertilizer Canada, and OCP Africa have recently signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to collaborate on agriculture development programmes that target sub-Saharan rural farmers, particularly women and youth. The planned interventions will see a marked improvement in food-security and livelihoods for smallholder farmers through joint programming, shared learning, and resource mobilisation.