Health Literacy in action
This blog is contributed by Dr. Arthur Culbert, a member of the Global Health advisory board, and Executive Director of the non-profit organisation Health Literacy Missouri (HLM), USA. On May 27, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services released the National Action Plan to Improve Health Literacy. The long-awaited action plan is aimed…
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…
Darwin’s finches threatened by invasive nest maggots in the Galapagos Islands
Contents of a Darwin’s finch nest: dead nestlings with larval feeding wounds surrounded by parasitic larvae of the introduced fly Philornis downsi. As mentioned in another entry on this blog a few weeks ago, 2010 has been declared International Year of Biodiversity by the United Nations. Continuing this theme, here is a guest entry by…
Luxury insect hotels
Today is the last day of National Insect Week in the UK. Now that England are out of the World Cup we might all be spending a bit more time in our gardens! So I thought I’d finish the week by letting you know how you can get involved in helping conserve our creepy crawlies…
Entomotherapy: Revolting Recipes or Marvellous Medicine?
During our daily job of searching through journals for articles to add to CAB Abstracts database we came across an article all about entomotherapy (use of insects for medicinal purposes) in tribal communities in Arunachal Pradesh, India. So I’d like to add entomotherapy to the long list of benefits of insects in my blog on…
Bad times for bees and the budget!
The first UK government budget is out today and, just as importantly, this week is National Insect Week. Continue reading to find out why, just as the UK budget, bees and other pollinators are going through tough times.
Celebrating insects
This week is National Insect Week in the UK. With over 900,000 different species, insects comprise over 70% of all known species and inhabit all habitats apart from deep ocean, so it’s hardly surprising they get a whole National Week rather than a mere day! Those of you who find insects a daily irritant may…
Time to become greener and cleaner
Photo credit: Katherine Bourg That is what US President Barack Obama suggested, during his first national address from the Oval Office since he took office, and it comes the evening before his crucial meeting with BP's chairman, Carl-Henric Svanberg, and its chief executive, Tony Hayward, at the White House today. The meeting was arranged to…
Greening the FIFA World Cup 2010
As this year's biggest world sporting event 'the FIFA World Cup 2010' opened today in sunny South Africa, I couldn't help but wonder 'how 'green' is this major sporting event?' It turns out it might be greener than I thought! Read on to find out why!
HIV transmission and maize consumption in subSaharan Africa
A BBC World Service news item alerted me this morning to a landmark study hypothesizing a link between consumption of fumonisin-contaminated maize and HIV transmission. The report suggested that HIV rates in subSaharan Africa could be significantly reduced by altering foodconsumption patterns and reducing maize contamination. Mycotoxins are responsible for many afflictions but this seemed…