conflict
pgleick | February 17, 2016Since its founding in 1987, the Pacific Institute has worked to understand the links between water resources, environmental issues, and international security and conflict. This has included early analytical assessments (such as a 1987 Ambio paper and this one from the journal Climatic Change) of the risks between climate change and security through changes in access to Arctic resources, food production, and water resources, as well as the ongoing Water Conflict Chronology – an on-line database, mapping system, and timeline of all known water-related conflicts. In 2014, an analysis of the…
sastyk | September 6, 2011Mark Notaras has a great review of the UN's World Food Program on the links between food insecurity and conflict:
Brinkman and Hendrix point out that the relationship between food insecurity and violent conflict is not one way. High food prices are both exacerbated by and exacerbate the chance of civil unrest. In other words, food security is a pre-condition for political stability and political stability is a precondition for food security. The question of what came first is perhaps not as relevant as attempting to understanding how to escape what Collier and his colleagues refer to as the…
edyong | December 22, 2009Patricia Brennan from Yale University is trying to encourage male Muscovy ducks to launch their ballistic penises into test tubes.
Normally, the duck keeps its penis inside-out within a sac in its body. When the time for mating arrives, the penis explodes outwards to a fully-erect 20cm, around a quarter of the animal's total body length. The whole process takes just a third of a second and Brennan captures it all on high-speed camera. This isn't just bizarre voyeurism. Duck penises are a wonderful example of the strange things that happen when sexual conflict shapes the evolution of animal…