Aluminum toxicity, a global agricultural problem, halts root growth in plants, severely limiting agricultural productivity for more than half of the world's arable land. Now biochemists have determined that it is not aluminum toxicity that is directly responsible for inhibiting plant growth. The researchers identified a factor in plant cells, called AtATR, that functions as a built-in DNA surveillance system for alerting the plant of damage from excess aluminum and shutting down growth.

A group has filed a scientific petition with the federal government seeking endangered species protection for the Atlantic wolffish, a fish threatened with extinction due to years of overharvesting and habitat loss due to modern fishing gear. If the petition is successful, this will be the first listing of a marine fish as an endangered in New England.

The President of SINTEF Fisheries and Aquaculture crouches over his laptop, opens one of his presentations and finds an illustration. It shows one red curve and one blue one. He then indicates the point where they meet each other, then frowns and says the message he cannot repeat often enough: There is a huge gap between world demand for fish and what we can harvest from the world's natural stocks. The figures are clear: If we don't do something about the over fishing, the stocks of wild fish will be dealt a death blow. At the same time, the world's population continues to grow - and with it the global demand for food.

With steelworks around the world emitting huge amounts of carbon dioxide, scientists are reporting that a byproduct of steel production could be used to absorb that greenhouse gas to help control global warming.

Researchers in Texas are reporting the first evidence from human studies that perchlorate, a common pollutant increasingly found in food and water, may interfere with an infant's availability of iodine in breast milk. Iodine deficiency in infants can cause mental retardation and other health problems, the scientists note. The study also provides further evidence that iodine intake in U.S. mothers is low and that perchlorate may play a key role.

In a population survey of West African chimpanzees living in Côte d'Ivoire, researchers estimate that this endangered subspecies has dropped in numbers by a whopping 90 percent since the last survey was conducted 18 years ago. The few remaining chimpanzees are now highly fragmented, with only one viable population living in Taï National Park, according to a report in Current Biology.

Unlike the male-dominated societies of their chimpanzee relatives, bonobo society -- in which females enjoy a higher social status than males -- has a "make-love-not-war" kind of image. While chimpanzee males frequently band together to hunt and kill monkeys, the more peaceful bonobos were believed to restrict what meat they do eat to forest antelopes, squirrels and rodents.

A genetic malfunction found in marine crustaceans called copepods likely explains why populations of animals that diverge and eventually reconnect produce weak "hybrid" offspring.