Rebecca Goldburg

The Pew Charitable Trusts · Environmental Science Division

Scientists often lament their lack of influence on environmental policy-making. Some proposed solutions, like teaching scientists to communicate more effectively, can be helpful, but are not necessarily sufficient. Instead, connecting science and policy may often require a separate kind of expert: full-time intermediaries who facilitate the complic...

Aquaculture's pressure on forage fisheries remains hotly contested. This article reviews trends in fishmeal and fish oil use in industrial aquafeeds, showing reduced inclusion rates but greater total use associated with increased aquaculture production and demand for fish high in long-chain omega-3 oils. The ratio of wild fisheries inputs to farmed...

Methicillin resistant staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) is a serious public health threat, killing an estimated 19,000 people in the United States each year. The recent emergence of community-acquired (CA-) MRSA in the US has led to the highly publicized deaths of dozens of otherwise health people, many of them school children. Recent studies from aroun...

The News story “The bacteria fight back” by G. Taubes (Special Section on Drug Resistance, 18 July, p. [356][1]) highlights the growing health threat from antibiotic-resistant bacteria, especially methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA), and the need to rein in medical uses of

Production and trade of wild and farmed fish (finfish and shellfish) are intertwined. While many wild fish stocks have become depleted and total global fisheries catch plateaued, aquaculture production has boomed. At the same time, the global seafood trade has grown dramatically, with a net flow of seafood from poorer to richer nations, and demand...

Aquaculture (fish farming) -- now the source of nearly half of the world's edible fish -- can help narrow the gap between declining global fisheries and increasing consumer demand for seafood. Nevertheless, some types of aquaculture production actually increase demand for wild fish, rather than reduce it. Feed for carnivorous fishthose farmed fish...

The farming of salmon and other marine finfish in open net pens continues to increase along the world's coastlines as the aquaculture industry expands to meet human demand. Farm fish are known to escape from pens in all salmon aquaculture areas. Their escape into the wild can result in interbreeding and competition with wild salmon and can facilita...

Massive quantities of antibiotics are used in agriculture - not primarily to treat sick animals, but to promote growth and compensate for crowded conditions at industrial livestock and poultry farms. This usage contributes to the emerging public-health crisis from antibiotic-resistant bacteria. Medical, scientific, and other organizations now oppos...

The depletion of many marine fisheries has created a new impetus to expand seafood production through fish farming, or aquaculture. Marine aquaculture, especially of salmon and shrimp, has grown considerably in the past two decades, and aquaculturists are also beginning to farm other marine species. Production data for salmon and shrimp indicate th...

Global production of farmed fish and shellfish has more than doubled in the past 15 years. Many people believe that such growth relieves pressure on ocean fisheries, but the opposite is true for some types of aquaculture. Farming carnivorous species requires large inputs of wild fish for feed. Some aquaculture systems also reduce wild fish supplies...

May I respond to the Policy Forum “Nature's subsidies to shrimp and salmon farming” by Rosamond L. Naylor et al. (30 Oct. Science 's Compass, p. [883][1])? Like many new endeavors, this industry is undergoing rapid change, but the authors focus only on its present performance in forming their

Although many fisheries stocks have declined precipitously throughout the world, fish farming--and especially shrimp and salmon farming--has boomed. The increasingly large scale of these enterprises is now having unforeseen ecological consequences on ocean resources through habitat destruction, effluent discharge, exotic species introductions, and...

Nature Biotechnology journal featuring biotechnology articles and science research papers of commercial interest in pharmaceutical, medical, and environmental sciences.

Development of herbicide-tolerant plants is the focus of considerable research. Some projects aim to increase herbicide use or promote use of particularly environmentally damaging chemicals, and thus may lead to environmental degradation. Other projects aim to develop herbicide-tolerant plants that allow substitution of newer less environmentally d...

To the Editor. ——The article by the American Medical Association's Council on Scientific Affairs, "Biotechnology and the American Agricultural Industry,"1 discusses the safety of a range of genetically engineered food products now under development. The first example is of crop plants genetically engineered to resist insects by producing an insect...

Nature Biotechnology journal featuring biotechnology articles and science research papers of commercial interest in pharmaceutical, medical, and environmental sciences.

The purpose of this paper is to briefly review what is currently known about the toxicity of B.t.k. delta endotoxins, evaluate the relevance of this information to human consumption of B.t.k. plants, and assess whether more data are needed in order to ascertain the safety of B.t.k. plants as foods

The goldenrod leaf beetle, Trirhabda canadensis, is known to respond to odors of host and non-host species in the laboratory. Here we report movements of T. canadensis in the field in response to volatile odors from monocultures and polycultures of host plants. Overall, beetles preferentially colonized plots with a higher density of host plants and...

Nature Biotechnology journal featuring biotechnology articles and science research papers of commercial interest in pharmaceutical, medical, and environmental sciences.

As neighboring plants flower sequentially, do flower feeders preferentially remain in the area, rather than move to another area with flowering plants? I examined the movements of the meloid beetle Epicauta pennsylvanica, a flower predator specializing on Solidago, in four types of replicated experimental plots — monocultures of Solidago altissima,...

The discipline of terrestrial animal ecology has developed somewhat differently from other branches of ecology (e.g., plant ecology, marine ecology) and concerns itself with somewhat different questions. At the outset, it is useful to consider these differences briefly because they may color the ways in which we view the promise of new numerical te...

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Minnesota. Includes bibliographies.