The Shell Economist Prize-winning essays have been announced. This year's theme was "do we need nature?" and there's some fine thinking in there:

Winner: Diane Brooks Pleninger, Interview with a fungus
Ms Lisa E Woodson (USA) Essay : The Forest Laboratory
Ms Jennifer L. Saunders (Switzerland) Essay : Canis lupus
Dr Alan H Goldstein (USA) Essay : Nature versus nanotechnology: Reinventing our world one atom at a time
Ms Kate E. Braverman (UK) Essay : The Fusion of the Natural and Artificial: Growing up in Los Angeles
Dr Noel N Castree (UK) Essay : The disunited colours of nature
Dr William E. Hamilton (USA) Essay : Do We Need Nature?
Dr Dietrich Schmidt-Vogt (Thailand) Essay : Our second nature