Socioecology Research Today

The supposition that agricultural intensification results in land sparing for conservation has become central to policy formulations across the tropics. However, underlying assumptions remain uncertain and have been little explored in the context of conservation incentive schemes such as policies for Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation, conservation, sustainable management, and enhancement of carbon [...]

A study with low statistical power has a reduced chance of detecting a true effect, but it is less well appreciated that low power also reduces the likelihood that a statistically significant result reflects a true effect. Here, we show that the average statistical power of studies in the neurosciences is very low. The consequences [...]

Understanding the role of atmospheric CO2 during past climate changes requires clear knowledge of how it varies in time relative to temperature. Antarctic ice cores preserve highly resolved records of atmospheric CO2 and Antarctic temperature for the past 800,000 years. Here we propose a revised relative age scale for the concentration of atmospheric CO2 and [...]

This paper identifies trends in new gasoline and diesel passenger car characteristics in the European Union between 1995 and 2009. By 2009 diesels had captured over 55% of the new vehicle market. While the diesel version of a given car model may have as much as 35% lower fuel use/km and 25% lower CO2 emissions [...]

A 2004 paper estimates that humanity could stabilize rapidly rising annual carbon emissions at 2004 levels by 2054 if it embarked on seven massive campaigns that would each prevent 25 billion tons of carbon emissions over 5 decades; the options included building a fleet of nuclear reactors and ending tropical deforestation. The authors dubbed each [...]

Whether modern humans and Neanderthals co-existed and interacted thousands of years ago has been the subject of much debate. A fossil analysis suggests that Neanderthals had already become extinct in the Caucasus region — thought to be one of their final refuges — by the time modern humans arose. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/492010b

Researchers have used the number of mutations in DNA like a molecular clock to date key events in human evolution. Now it seems that the molecular clock ticks more slowly than anyone had thought, and many dates may need to be adjusted. Over the past 3 years, researchers have used new methods to sequence whole [...]

Recent reports show that fewer adolescents believe that regular cannabis use is harmful to health. Concomitantly, adolescents are initiating cannabis use at younger ages, and more adolescents are using cannabis on a daily basis. The purpose of the present study was to test the association between persistent cannabis use and neuropsychological decline and determine whether [...]

Most researchers think the dinosaurs, many plants on land, and much of the life in the sea succumbed to a huge cosmic impact 65.5 million years ago. But new evidence from the sea floor just off Antarctica points to a major extinction there a geologic moment before the impact. The culprit in this earlier cataclysm [...]

Responses of species to climate change are extremely variable, perhaps because of climate-related changes to interactions among species. We show that temperature-related changes in the dependence of the butterfly Aricia agestis on different larval host plants have facilitated rapid range expansion. Historically, the butterfly was largely restricted to a single plant species, Helianthemum nummularium, but [...]