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…
How much would you save if you recycled two buildings?
I’m sure there are people out there wanting an answer to this question!!! Read on to find out! Photo from Google Images
Review of 2008
On behalf of all the authors of the blog, and CABI, I would like to wish you all a Happy New Year and thank all of our readers for the comments supplied throughout the year. I hope these will continue and flourish onwards during 2009. Sorry for the delay in this post, but its finally…
Hot off the press: ebola structure and sick pigs
Iremember as I struggled through my PhD in the 1980s wondering what the lab next door was up to as I never saw anyone there in a lab-coat. No-one there struggled with vast cell cultures to get a few ug of material as I did or God forbid had to proactively source chicken hearts from…
Euro MPs back pesticide bill
My last blog of 2008 commented on a deal being struck in the European Parliament that would pave the way towards new EU pesticide legislation. Another step towards adoption of the legislation has now been taken, with MEPs voting today to approve a new Regulation on the Placing on the Market of Plant Protection Products…
2009 – the year of hunger?
Around 963 million people worldwide are now undernourished, according to the most recent survey of the crisis by the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO). In an interview to the Independent Newspaper the UN body expects the situation to worsen with the financial recession. The number is expected to rise steadily this year and might reach…
I predict more breakthroughs than ever in 2009!
It’s customary in the New Year to look into a metaphorical crystal ball (as any rational scientists would have obviously dispensed with the real thing). In doing that, I can confidently predict that the number of scientific breakthroughs will reach an unprecedented level this year. How can I be so sure? A study of the…
Millennium development goals: the LIDC conference
Measles deaths are sharply down according to the recently released Millennium Development Goals Report 2008. But are they? At a recent conference at the London International Development Centre (LIDC): No goals at half time: what next for the millennium development goals, Professor Kim Mulholland of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine took issue…
Irreplaceable
At 8pm on New Years Eve BBC Radio 4 broadcast the Earthwatch debate “Irreplaceable – the world’s most invaluable species” (listen to the original debate here). Five scientists battled it out to convince an audience that their group of species was more valuable than the other 4. The 5 speakers, their groups and their main arguments…