Veterinary Medical Profession Is Preparing to Celebrate its 250th Anniversary
The world's first veterinary school was officially established 249 years ago in Lyon, France in 1761. The slogan for World veterinary anniversary is "Vet for health, Vet for food, Vet for the Planet!" suggested by Dr Jacques Bruhlet of the French Ministry of Agriculture and Fishing. Even without mentioning animals, this particular slogan reveals so much to professional…
Sunnyside up…
Friday 16 July 2010. AS I listened to Radio 4 Woman’s Hour on the way to work, I found myself increasingly incensed & talking to the airwaves. In the studio was a male travel medicine expert, a woman who loved the suntanned look, and another woman who was determined to be “pale & interesting”. The…
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…
Attack of the Buttock-Biting Spider and Other Myths
“The trouble with the world is not that people know so little, but that they know so many things that ain’t so.” This observation from Mark Twain is one of many illuminating quotes in an examination by Richard Vetter of the power of myth in science and medicine, and the limited power of hard science in…
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…
What can you do with 12,000 solar cells?
Image from solarimpulse.com Power an airplane, of course! A team of Swiss engineers, led by Mr. Andre Borschberg and fellow aviator Bertrand Piccard, have been doing just that for the past few years – building an airplane powered entirely by sun energy, which they named ‘Solar Impulse’. The airplane has 12,000 solar cells arranged on…
Cutting The Salt
Salt reduction is a hot topic at the moment in the US and the UK as officials react to research that suggests decreasing salt intake could decrease levels of stroke in the population. Consumers can do a lot to reduce the salt they consume, but as most of salt consumption comes from eating processed food,…
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.