‘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…
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…
Challenges of sharing knowledge – including volcanoes
The struggle to make agricultural information more widely available faces many challenges, but they do not normally include volcanic eruptions. For the last few days, the IAALD conference on Scientific and Technical Information and Rural Development’s website has been providing updates on the effects of activity from the Eyjafjallajökull volcano in Iceland. So it was a big…
Don’t kill birds with kindness
With my son starting to show an interest in feeding our garden birds, I was interested to read two reports this month reminding us to do so with care. Researchers from the Scottish Agricultural College have highlighted the fact that Salmonella can build up on feeders or drinkers, with the potential to kill birds already…