Mark Palmer
Mark Palmer Content Editor After doing a degree in Natural Sciences (mostly biological) at Cambridge University I decided that I was interested in dealing with and making available the information generated by scientific research, so after spending a year working in the library at the University of York I went on to do an MSc…
Death takes the poor man’s cow…
Seven years since the major outbreak of foot and mouth disease devastated farming here in the UK, another animal health disaster story is unfolding just over a thousand miles to the south, in Morocco. A viral disease, called peste des petit ruminants (PPR), in sheep and goats has broken out in Morocco for the first…
EAAE Conference
The XIIth Congress of the European Association of Agricultural Economists (EAAE) took place in Ghent, Belgium. The theme ‘People, Food and Environments: Global trends and European strategies’ meant a huge variety of topics were covered in a packed 4 days. Attended by well over 750 delegates from all over Europe plus a strong US presence…
Intellectual activity blamed for obesity epidemic
Its becoming a hobby of mine, spotting odd reasons for the obesity epidemic. Here’s the latest: don’t read the next bit too closely and certainly don’t analyse it because the intellectual activity could be bad for your body weight. That’s what a study in Psychosomatic Medicine suggests at first glance.
ICPP 2008
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Pollinator Presence Plummets
<!– /* Style Definitions */ p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal {mso-style-parent:""; margin:0cm; margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size:12.0pt; font-family:Arial; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman";} @page Section1 {size:612.0pt 792.0pt; margin:72.0pt 90.0pt 72.0pt 90.0pt; mso-header-margin:36.0pt; mso-footer-margin:36.0pt; mso-paper-source:0;} div.Section1 {page:Section1;} –> National Wildlife Week in Canada was from 6-12 April and this year’s theme was pollinators. Hot on its heels was…
The first great ape to go extinct?
A worrying thought indeed that any of our great apes should be facing extinction yet a paper recently published in Oryx reveals the latest figures for orang-utans in the wild …and it doesn’t make for comfortable reading.
Water recycling – bathing in greywater!
Yes, it is happening already! Greywater, which is non-industrial wastewater generated from domestic processes such as dish washing, laundry and bathing, comprises more than 50% of residential wastewater. It gets its name from its cloudy appearance and from its status as being neither fresh (white/clear potable water), nor heavily polluted (blackwaters). Hence it has the…
Why do some countries win more Olympic medals?
Looking at the medal table as the Beijing Olympics enter Day 12, it is clear that while the Olympics include more countries than the United Nations, a relatively small number still dominate the medals. While 76 countries have ‘medalled’ at the time of writing, only 16 of those are into double figures, and the two…
Hide and seek: 125,000 gorillas found in Congo
Thomas Breuer ©WCS-Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology More than 125,000 western lowland gorillas (Gorilla gorilla gorilla) have been discovered deep in the isolated forests of the Republic of Congo. This new find is a huge boost to their population, at least doubling estimates to between 175,000 and 225,000. The gorillas were found during the…