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This article analyses the political and scientific controversy surrounding a race science project undertaken by the anthropologist Egon Freiherr von Eickstedt under National Socialism. Beginning in 1934, Eickstedt and his team of assistants conducted a series of racial studies on the population of Upper Silesia, a contested borderland in East Prussia. Motivated by a nationalist desire to counter the work of Polish anthropologists in the region, Eickstedt argued that the population of Upper Silesia belonged predominantly to the so-called 'Nordic race' and that the territory was thus fundamentally German. Nazi officials, however, viewed the Silesian studies with alarm, since the results also appeared to show that people in the area were a racial mixture and that the 'Nordic race' made up less than 40 per cent of the population in some locales. They worried that Eickstedt's studies could undermine Germany's territorial claims in the region and threaten national unity. The ensuing controversy presents a case in which the anthropological concept of 'race', rather than serving its usual role in Nazi thinking as the biological underpinning of the Volk (or people), threatened to undermine its coherence. The reaction to Eickstedt's Silesian studies demonstrates a lack of consensus on race within the Nazi system, suggesting that understandings of race in Nazi Germany were neither as coherent nor as uniform as the paradigm of the 'racial state' has assumed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the late 1920s and early 1930s, professional anthropologists and prominent race scientists in Germany served as judges in a series of mail-in photographic competitions designed to identify the most representative examples of the so-called Nordic race. This essay examines the interactions between judges and audience in three of these contests. Race scientists and entrants collaborated to construct a vision of the Nordic race as primarily male and middle and upper class. More important, the contests served to configure the very categories of "science" and "lay public" for the new discipline of race science (Rassenkunde), setting them in an unequal relationship to each other. Race scientists portrayed their audience as the entire German people, or Volk , which they represented as desperately in need of racial knowledge that only experts in Rassenkunde could provide. Rather than breaking down divisions between race scientists and the public, the collaborative process of the contests served to construct those very categories. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article the author discusses the global growth in policy supporting the planting of bioenergy crops to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions in Europe. The authors argue that the effort is important for bird conservation and agriculture in the continent. The authors view that if using the knowledge regarding causes of loss of biodiversity from agricultural systems to ensure bird conservation is a success, it could be a turning point in 2010.

Factors affecting the diet, body condition and growth rates of Skylark chicks were assessed to examine their relationship to their agricultural environment during a critical period in the life cycle of this rapidly declining species. Rainfall explained the greatest amount of variation in body condition and growth rates and had a negative effect on both. Body condition indices were a good predictor of the likelihood of future partial brood loss to starvation. Low body condition in grass fields was related to a low diversity in the diet. Chicks fed insect larvae had higher body condition indices than those not fed larvae. Larger broods tended to have higher growth rates than smaller ones, whereas smaller broods tended to have higher body condition indices. Natural brood size reduction through the non-hatching of eggs resulted in higher body condition indices than were found in nests with the same number of chicks where all eggs hatched, this effect being independent of absolute brood size. There was no significant difference between crop types in the distance adult birds flew to forage for food for nestlings and foraging crop destination had no effect on chick development. Differences between crop types in chick diet could be related to the documented effects of pesticides on different prey species. We suggest that recent agricultural changes have affected diet and possibly body condition, but that these effects are unlikely to have been an important factor in recent population declines. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Tests the null hypothesis that Sparrowhawks Accipiter nisus selected overwintering Redshanks Tringa totanus independently of body size and condition. Study during a 10-year study at two adjacent Scottish sites; Absence of difference in wing length, leg length and bill length between Redshanks killed by Sparrowhawks and the Redshank population.