Climate change: individuals who are making a difference
There are probably many environmentally conscious people out there who, like me, feel that the measures taken by governments worldwide to tackle CO2 emissions are moving too slowly to halt the inexorable rise in global temperatures. In a week when the recently announced US Climate Bill is predicted to face a long and rocky road…
Cleaning up the Gulf of Mexico oil spill?
Photo of oil spill of Gulf of Mexico taken 4 days ago by Astro_Soichi (twitpic.com) This is not the first time an accident resulting in oil spill in the sea has happened. Other disasters include: the Exxon Valdez disaster in the Alaskan shoreline of Prince Williams in 1989; the cargo oil spill of tanker Volgoneft-248,…
Roasted grasshopper with a sprinkling of termites
Chances are if you’re European you don’t make a habit of eating insects. When you have eaten them it was probably by mistake, maybe whilst enjoying a summer bike ride or a run. After a few seconds of coughing and spluttering and feeling personally affronted at the insect flying into your mouth without warning you…
Integrated systems – the sharp end of information management
Locusts, livestock diseases, invasive species, and the legacy of Linnaeus all featured in Thursday morning’s session on integrated information systems at IAALD 2010. All the presentations described how information systems were being tailored to address specific problems and issues in agriculture production for the researcher or for the practitioner at the sharp end of the…
Belo Monte Dam – “Ecological disaster similar to Avatar”
Image of Xingu River (Amazon Watch) Oscar-winner film director, James Cameron (Avatar), compared the plight of the Amazon indigenous people to that of the movie Avatar, in face of plans to build the Belo Monte hydroelectric dam in the Brazilian Amazon. Read on to find out why.
Are you eating more eggs?
It seems that many of us in the UK could be! According to the British Egg Information Service there has been a rise in egg sales of around 5% this year and, over Easter, sales rocketed to their highest levels for more than 20 years. So what is responsible for the rising popularity of eggs?…
Wendie Norris
I came to CABI in 2002, by a very convoluted route! A BSc Biochemistry from Sheffield University, research assistantships at Cambridge and then with Unilever, Bedford, followed by a PhD Kings College London on cell adhesion receptors (integrins to those in the know). Then postdocs in developmental biology at Oxford University and with ICRF, Oxford…
Digital native or information alien?
Special report from IAALD 2010: Are young people really the digital jugglers we’ve been led to believe? We’ve grown accustomed to seeing many young people as multi-tasking wiz kids who operate freely in technology rich space on the internet, free to interact with who they choose, and able to conjure relevant information at the drop of…
Can librarians, scientists and IT geeks feed the world?
Special report from IAALD 2010: At the International Association of Agricultural Information Specialists (IAALD) meeting in Montpellier this week, representatives from these groups have got together to discuss just this issue. Mark Holderness, Executive Secretary of GFAR thinks these ‘knowledge managers’ have a key role to play in ensuring that agricultural information is accessible…
Tree rings help predict monsoon weather patterns
Historical rainfall across Asia has been documented for the first time from tree-ring data from more than 300 sites in the region. This data has provided information on monsoon rains dating back as far as 1300 AD, which will prove valuable for climate modelling. Much of the world's population lives in monsoon Asia and depends…