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Abstract: Conservation projects increasingly aim to deliver both environmental and social benefits. To monitor the success of these projects, it is important to pick indicators for which there is a reasonable expectation of change as a result of the project, and which resonate with project stakeholders. Results chains are widely used in conservation to describe the hypothesized pathways of causal linkages between conservation interventions and desired outcomes. We illustrate how, with limited additional information, results chains can be turned into fuzzy models of social‐ecological systems, and how these models can be used to explore the predicted social and environmental impacts of conservation actions. These predictions can then be compared with the interests of stakeholders in order to identify good indicators of project success. We illustrate this approach by using it to select indicators for a water fund, an increasingly popular and multiobjective conservation strategy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) are the most common sequence difference found in plant genomes, yet they have not been widely exploited for producing molecular markers in common bean (Phaseolus vulgaris L.). The objective of this study was to develop a SNP assay based on a type of heteroduplex mismatch cleavage called EcoTILLING for molecular marker development in this important legume, and apply the assay (i) to the conversion of a sequence-characterized amplified region (SCAR) marker useful for selecting virus resistance (SR2) and (ii) to the screening of SNP polymorphisms in newly developed expressed sequence tag (EST)-based markers. The SNP assay involved heteroduplex mismatch cleavage by a single-strand specific nuclease 'CEL I' which was used to uncover two SNPs in the SR2 fragment and 22 SNPs in 37 candidate ESTs, some of which were used in segregation analysis. While developing the SNP techniques we tested several platforms, including LI-COR, nondenaturing polyacrylamide, and agarose gel detection. The agarose gel system was used for SNP genetic mapping in two common bean mapping populations, showing that heteroduplex cleavage is a useful technique for increasing molecular marker number for the crop. Examples are given of mapped SNP markers for the phytic acid pathway gene for myoinositol-1-phosphate synthase and a drought tolerance-related gene, S-adenosylmethionine decarboxylase. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An abstract of the article "New World Screw-Worm Infestation in a Teenager with Darier Disease," by Gil Abramovici and colleagues is presented.