Happy Birthday, Charles Darwin!
Over 200,000 people have paid the ultimate 21st century homage to Charles Darwin by signing up on social networking site facebook to wish him a happy birthday. Facebook itself is celebrating its fifth birthday and appears to be winning the struggle for survival of the fittest (or coolest, or most addictive) against other social networking…
Coffee waste: the ultimate biofuel?
Recently, I came across an exciting piece of research which I thought is worth sharing here. Researchers from the University of Nevada, Reno, USA, developed an inexpensive process to extract oil from the leftovers of making espresso, cappuccinos and other coffees collected from a coffee house chain. The oil was then converted into biodiesel,…
Pushing Water Higher up the Development Agenda
Scientists estimate that by 2025 more than 50% of the world population will be facing water-based vulnerability. The UN called this situation a water crisis. The water crisis term refers to the status of the world’s water resources relative to human demand. The world population will continue to grow, but water is a finite resource,…
Irreplaceable, Part II
Photo from World Wild Fund for Nature – Indonesian Programme I was slightly taken aback when first reading the 'Irreplaceable' blog from Handpicked author Katherine which started 2009 here on Handpicked. Naturally, I agree with the importance of conserving species such as bees on which so much human food depends – but was she…
Fed up with recycling? Try this instead!
SnaffleUp is an online resource that gives people with unwanted but useful household items an opportunity to donate them to other people instead of throwing them away. I joined this online resource and thought I’d share the contents of their latest newsletter here, including some very useful tips on being green and doing our bit…
The mighty PRION! may be no more!
These distorted pathogens lack both DNA and RNA and are believed to cause fatal brain diseases, such as chronic wasting disease (CWD) in deer and moose, mad cow disease in cattle, scrapie in sheep and Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease in humans. Prions resist almost every method of disinfection from chemical disinfectant and autoclaving to fire, which all…
Crop-eating caterpillars swarm over Liberia
Last week Liberia's President declared a state of emergency and appealed for international aid to fight a plague of caterpillars that is spreading across Liberia, destroying whole farms within days and contaminating water sources with their faeces. Find out more about the pest, its impact on Liberia and how CABI is helping African farmers forecast…
Toad Haul
15 new amphibian species have been described for the first time, found in Tanzania during research led by UK conservation charity Frontier. The researchers say that the range of these frogs appears to be restricted to a few remote valleys deep in the mountain forests of eastern Tanzania. The haul includes a number of species…
Are new forests saving our climate?
In tropical countries around the world areas of farmland are reverting to nature as people abandon their land and move to the cities in search of better livings. As farmers turn their backs and walk away new life is springing up in the fields they left behind. Seedlings push out of the ground – but…
Dear handpicked readers, thanks for sticking with us
We've been blogging at handpicked for over 2 years now. We've enjoyed the experience so far and we hope you have as well. We'd like to know a little bit more about you, so we can make handpicked even better. So while stocks last, we'd like to offer you a copy of our 2009 fungi…