Haemodynamically yours
Planning to woo your beloved with a romantic tête-à-tête this evening? Looking forward to the incomparable moment when your eyes meet in the flickering candlelight over that bottle of expensive red wine you ordered to get you both in the mood for love? At this point if you can tear your eyes away from the…
From Kenya with love…
International Development Secretary Douglas Alexander is urging UK consumers to buy Kenyan flowers today. Given the unrest in the country, flower producers have had to work extra hard to ensure flowers reached the market in time for Valentine’s Day. Kenya is a leading exporter of cut flowers, roses in particular, and the UK is one…
Beetroot with everything
I heard today that drinking a pint of beetroot juice (500ml) lowers your blood pressure, effects are seen within one hour. Good news for the EU (all those sugarbeet fields: what a quandary do they make sugar, use it for reaching their 10% biofuel goal OR change the type of beet so they can juice…
Feed me. Feed me…
Like many over 50’s I have aged parents: the health of mine is falling apart and finally they are facing up to moving from the only house they have ever owned after nearly 50 years. It’s a worry for me but at least their minds are intact. Unfortunately this is not the case for everyone.…
Year of the Ratte
As editor of Potato Abstracts I thought it only fitting to let you know that the UN has designated 2008 as International Year of the Potato. It’s also Chinese Year of the Rat – hence my hilarious pun on Ratte – a small potato with a nutty flavour! For some really interesting potato factoids then…
Virus infections-it’s a zoo in there!
Take a look at Nature this week: the article ‘The battle within’ by Melinda Wenner gives an intriguing insight into the interactions taking place between viruses in the body. She highlights the interaction between HIV and two other viruses, human herpesvirus-6 and GB-virus-C. Infection with the first hastens HIV disease and infection with the second…
Did the dinosaurs die of malaria?
The other week I heard about a recently published book (‘What bugged the dinosaurs? Insects, Disease and Death in the Cretaceous‘, by George and Roberta Poinar) which argues that disease-transmitting insects played an important role in the extinction of the dinosaurs. I have ordered a copy of the book so it can be indexed in…
Of cows and sweet potatoes
The sweet potato Ipomoea batatas has been used throughout the world as a food source for hundreds of years. Byproducts used as animal feed as a result of sweet potato processing include cannery wastes and sweet potatoes culled during the packing process due to damage, off size or oversupply. The Veterinary Record [1,2] and the…
Northern Circumpolar Soil calendar 2008
Supporting the International Polar Year, March 2007 to March 2009 (two years are needed to cover all the seasons in northern and southern hemispheres), the European Union have published a rather smart 2008 calendar on Northern Cirumpolar Soils (9MB pdf).Each month is dedicated to a different soil type, for example January covers Cryosols (from the…
The Nutrition Delusion
Sorry to harp back to Gary Taubes’ Diet Delusion again. I make no pretence at having read the book, just Taubes’ own ‘teaser’ in New Scientist last week. Rather than be ‘teased’ by the ‘comment & analysis’ piece, I have been left somewhat annoyed. To accuse the nutrition profession of creating ‘a field of clinical…