Changes in the veterinary profession.
Think of a veterinarian and, thanks in part to James Herriot, most people conjure up images of genial man in tweed jacket (except when he has his arm down the back of a cow). Most of his time spent trundling down country lanes from farm to farm treating livestock and dealing with farmers. When Alf…
Report Warns of MRSA in Farm Animals
The UK’s Soil Association is calling for live farm animals and imported meat to be tested for MRSA following reports of the ‘superbug’ in livestock in Europe, particularly the Netherlands. Research published this week [1] by the environmental charity says that a new strain of methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) has developed amongst intensively farmed pigs,…
Plants uproot and head North
Plants are moving northward to find cooler habitats, so it would seem that the blog I wrote earlier on human assisted migration might be moot – they’re doing it for themselves. Using DNA fingerprinting techniques, a study by Inger Greve Alsos and her colleagues has found that ‘long-distance colonization of a remote arctic archipelago, Svalbard,…
Clouds in my decaf
Whilst sourcing news for AgBiotechNet I came across a story about the genetic modification of coffee – I read on, intrigued. Why on earth would you want genetically modify coffee? Well, the problem is the relatively poor quality of decaf compared to that of fully leaded. During the traditional process of chemical decaffeination a large…
Vicki Bonham
Dr Vicki Bonham Content Editor, Plant Sciences My background is in plant sciences with a BSc in botany and PhD in plant molecular biology. I spent 6 years working as a research fellow at the University of Reading on projects varying from searching for the ultimate birch tree (anatomically speaking) to making biodegradable packaging from…
Katherine Cameron
Katherine CameronContent Editor (Environmental Sciences) & Mapping Coordinator My interest in the environmental sciences developed whilst I was studying Biological Sciences as an undergraduate at Oxford University where I specialised in Environmental Sciences and Animal Sciences. I carried out a fieldwork project in my final year looking at the use of hedgerows by insects and…
Obesity- now blame the microwave or lack of sleep.
Two stories I noticed in the last week add to the long list of culprits for the obesity epidemic, invention of microwave ovens and not getting enough sleep. Blaming microwaves seems a bit unfair. What they are really saying is that microwaves, combined with ready meals and the freezer have encouraged people to take an…
CABI fungi examined for medical marvels
Hot off the press is this news release from CABI’s Bioservices department: CABI houses one of the world’s largest genetic resource collections of fungi, numbered at over 28,000 strains. We will be supplying the University of Strathclyde’s Institute for Drug Research (SIDR) with extracts from filamentous fungi to be screened for pharmaceutically active compounds, which…
World Ocean Day and Chinese water news round-up
World Ocean Day is here and the G8 summit is on the go, what better time to highlight the marine and freshwater issues plaguing China than today? Here’s a summary of the news items I’ve been collecting recently; many of the issues they involve are covered in the CAB Abstracts database and I’ve included links…
B-list celebrity in shock relationship scandal
the headlines in the journals are written specifically to grab your attention and make you read the rest.