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…
GRO-Cocoa
The latest edition of GRO-Cocoa is available. GRO-Cocoa is a twice-yearly cocoa newsletter, funded by the US Department of Agriculture (USDA). The newsletter allows readers to access the latest global research on Cocoa and is a forum for sharing ideas. More information and previous editions of the newsletter are available on the CABI project page. …
So that’s what a Guinea worm looks like
As part of CABI's work on the UK Department for International Development's Research for Development portal, I recently found that one of the projects to which DFID had contributed provided links to some television programmes about malaria, available on the website of Rockhopper TV. I then discovered that the same site contained well over 100…
Obama’s Rural Agenda
President Barack Obama unveiled his Rural Agenda last week. Three core areas were identified: to ensure economic opportunity for family farmers; to support rural economic development; to improve rural quality of life
New evidence of warming in Antarctica
An illustration that depicts the warming that scientists have determined has occurred in West Antarctica during the last 50 years. The dark red shows the area that has warmed the most. An article published yesterday in Nature provides new evidence of warming in Antarctica, contradicting earlier findings of possible cooling. Temperature trends in Antarctica have…