Comment

Climate scientists are tiring of governance that does not lead to action. But democracy must not be weakened in the fight against global warming, warns Nico Stehr.

Turn the fraught flirtation between the social and biophysical sciences into fruitful partnerships with these five principles, urge Rebekah R. Brown, Ana Deletic and Tony H. F. Wong.

Granting bodies need more data on how much they are spending on work that transcends disciplines, and to what end, explains Rick Rylance.

UK data hold lessons for how to close the gender gap in bioscience grant applications, success and size, argue Paul Boyle and colleagues.

Cities need to understand and manage their carbon footprint at the level of streets, buildings and communities, urge Kevin Robert Gurney and colleagues.

Make wind and solar power even cheaper by opening up access to the electricity grid and ending fossil-fuel subsidies, urge Gernot Wagner and colleagues.

Tie funding to verified good institutional practice, and robust science will shoot up the agenda, say C. Glenn Begley, Alastair M. Buchan and Ulrich Dirnagl.

California's current extreme drought must be a lesson for managing water in a warmer, more densely populated world, say Amir AghaKouchak and colleagues.

Ten years after the devastation of the US Gulf coast, Edward B. Barbier calls for coastal protection plans like that adopted by Louisiana for the world's most vulnerable nations.

Turning cast-off shells into nitrogen-rich chemicals would benefit economies and the environment, say Ning Yan and Xi Chen.

Leaders and health agencies are talking about 'lessons learned' from West Africa's Ebola epidemic. But a major push is needed to end the outbreak, urges Joanne Liu.

Testing Ebola treatments in West Africa's epidemic happened too late. Research response during future outbreaks must be more nimble, says Trudie Lang.

The future of the bioeconomy requires global agreement on metrics and the creation of a dispute resolution centre, say Roeland Bosch, Mattheüs van de Pol and Jim Philp.

Seventy years after the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki by nuclear weapons, David Kaiser investigates the legacy of 'the physicists' war'.

Governments should not meet existing conservation targets using the compensation that developers pay for damaging biodiversity, say Martine Maron and colleagues.

Ecologists and space agencies must forge a global monitoring strategy, say Andrew K. Skidmore, Nathalie Pettorelli and colleagues.

To drive discovery, scientists heading up research teams large and small need to learn how people operate, argue Charles E. Leiserson and Chuck McVinney.

It is time to use evidence-based teaching practices at all levels by providing incentives and effective evaluations, urge Stephen E. Bradforth, Emily R. Miller and colleagues.

Major funding agencies should ensure that large biological data sets are stored in cloud services to enable easy access and fast analysis, say Lincoln D. Stein and colleagues.

Gathering data that answer particular questions is the most effective way to support the Sustainable Development Goals, say Keith Shepherd and colleagues.