Do holidays make us happy?
This is my last day in the office before taking a much-needed holiday (the schools have just gone back in the UK, so this is a good time to go away if you want to avoid the crowds). Holidays are important to me, which is why I was a little surprised to hear on the…
Decision day for Europe’s largest collection of fruit and berries
In the International Year of Biodiversity, a threat to one of the world's major collections of fruit and berry varieties has been widely reported in the media over the last week (see e.g. the BBC, Economist and Guardian). Pavlovsk Experimental Station, located just outside St Petersburg in Russia, is the largest European field genebank for…
Why do referees sometimes get it wrong?
I think everyone would agree that soccer referees have a very difficult job. They have to keep a close eye on a fast-moving game in which incidents often occur away from the ball, and need to make decisions in an instant which in high-profile games will be endlessly dissected by pundits and fans – sometimes…
Travel advice: Watch out for the mozzies!
The Hand Picked blog is not perhaps a place where you'd normally expect to find pictures of celebrities. And fear not, we're not going down the route of showbiz gossip. But sometimes celebrity news and serious topics overlap. And the power of celebrity has been harnessed this week to highlight the malaria risk when travelling…
New hope for vultures?
The vulture population in South Asia has declined catastrophically in the last 2 decades, with population decreases since 1992 reported to be over 97% (Senacha et al., 2008). With populations of three of the Asian vulture species decreasing from the 'tens of millions' to less than 60,000 for all species combined, the decline has been…
‘Green exercise’ good for mental health
Here at CABI Headquarters where 'Hand picked' bloggers are based, we are fortunate to be surrounded by trees and fields. So whenever the sun shines at lunchtime (which does happen sometimes, even in England), many of us drag ourselves away from our desks and computers and are able to enjoy a walk in the English…
Too much tourism traumatising dolphins
Dolphin watching. Image: Zanzibar-island.com In many parts of the world, watching whales and dolphins in their natural habitat has become a vital and growing part of the tourist industry. Cetacean tourism is also often used in arguments for the protection and conservation of whales, dolphins and other iconic marine animals, by presenting a potentially…
Canada strikes gold, but Olympics given a bronze rating on climate change
Canada's gold medal winner – Picture by BBC Sport. Yesterday, Canada ended its 34 year wait for an Olympic gold medal won on home soil, with a win for Alexandre Bilodeau in the men's moguls event in Vancouver. But the 2010 Winter Olympics were given only a bronze medal for climate protection initiatives by the Vancouver-based David…
Where now for GM food in India?
India has this week deferred commercial cultivation of what would have been its first genetically modified (GM) food crop. Production of Bt aubergine has been put on hold while further research is done. India has grown transgenic cotton since 2002, and GM varieties now account for 80% of plantings, but aubergine would have been the…
Can ecotourism help save the tiger?
Last week, fellow hand-picked blogger Vicki Bonham posted an article about the problems facing tigers in the wild. Coincidentally, a few days after reading this a set of news alerts on tigers hit my inbox. At the end of January, a high-level meeting in Thailand for the first time laid the groundwork for joint action…