World Tourism Day – Tourism and Biodiversity
2010 is the International Year of Biodiversity. In keeping with this global initiative, this years World Tourism Day (held every year on 27 September) has the theme "Tourism and Biodiversity". The official World Tourism Organisation (UNWTO) celebrations were held in Guangzhou, China, bringing together government representatives, biodiversity researchers and private industry representatives. Many countries have…
How the atmosphere above the Amazon rainforest – the purest air on Earth – can help to cool the planet
Scientists from Harvard and SĂŁo Paulo University (USP) carried out a research to try and find out how the planet’s climate was before the industrial revolution. For this they were searching for the purest air in the planet and found it in the atmosphere above the Amazon rainforest. The study is crucial to understand cloud…
Wild chimps outwit bushmeat hunters
Across Africa, people often lay snare traps to catch bushmeat, killing or injuring chimps and other wildlife. But a few chimps living in the rainforests of Guinea have learnt to recognise these snare traps laid by human hunters. More surprisingly, the chimps actively seek out and intentionally deactivate the traps, setting them off without being…
Climate change for football fans!
If you’re a football enthusiast and want to know the facts about climate change, then Climate Change for Football Fans: A Matter of Life and Death, by James Atkins, is the book for you. It's written as a series of conversations between Joe, a football-mad Burnley FC fan, and Professor Igor who is obsessed with…
Amazing microbes!
(Image from Terry Hazen group) Microorganisms were the first living things in the planet. They are very versatile and are able to replicate rapidly. They even exchange genes – for example bacteria can exchange genes between different species. These features allow them to adapt and survive in new environments fairly quickly. Bacteria and archaea are…
Sustainable food doesn’t mean saying no to technology
The First Sustainable Food Chain Summit last week gave a clear message that to provide food sustainably for the future we need to use technology to bridge the gap between available resources and the amount of food we need to produce. As well as recommending the use of technology, to increase shelf life and reduce…
One for the road – biofuel from whisky
A team of scientists from Edinburgh Napier University has developed a biofuel (biobutanol) using the waste by-products from whisky production ("pot ale", the liquid from the copper stills, and "draff", the spent grains) from the Glenkinchie Distillery in East Lothian. Research leader Professor Martin Tangney said a large amount of both waste products are generated…
Can science feed the world?
This was the question posed by Nature’s Special last week. In other words, how can we feed the Earth's growing population in such a way that no-one goes hungry and nature is left with some land and water of its own? Their answer can be broadly summed up by what Britain’s Royal Society call “sustainable…
Where there’s a will there’s a way! Can internet technologies help combat global warming?
Image from Coalition of the Willing web page The Federal Environment Agency (UBA) of Germany has just released an interim report entitled “Environmental and economic effects of the Copenhagen pledges and more ambitious emission reduction targets.” The report describes the environmental and economic effects of the pledges submitted by industrialized and major developing countries for…
What can you do with 12,000 plastic bottles?
Plastiki departing from San Francisco-photo by Catherine Sparks How about a 20-metre catamaran? That’s what British adventurer and environmentalist David de Rothschild and his crew of scientists and ecologists are sailing on, from San Francisco to Sydney since mid-March. Read on to find out more about the Plastiki and the expedition.