Why it’s hard to teach old dogs new tricks

Dogs, just like humans, can have problems with learning, memory and attention, particularly as they get older. Several tests of cognitive ability in dogs have been used in research with a particular focus on the effects of ageing. What is less well understood is how diseases affect these cognitive abilities. In an article in CAB…
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New Trial Eradicated 80% of a Disease-Carrying Mosquito Population

A new trial experiment undertaken in Australia has been shown to successfully eliminate 80% of the disease-bearing mosquito Aedes aegypti.
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Back from the brink: how biocontrol saved St Helena’s national tree from extinction

By Wayne Coles At first sight the humble scale insect, Orthezia insignis doesn’t seem like it could pack much of a punch in a ‘fight’ against a range of native flora – but to make such an assumption would be very dangerous indeed. In fact Orthezia insignis is a genuine invasive menace which in Hawaii,…
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National Parks Week UK

National Parks Week is an annual festival championing what is special about national parks in the UK. This year’s festival takes place Sunday 22 to Sunday 29 July and aims to publicise how people can get outside and discover national parks in the UK, with many special events organized to showcase places and activities within…
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Plant Parasitic Nematodes – the world’s most important crop pathogen?

By Richard Sikora, Danny Coyne, Johannes Hallman and Patricia Timper Plant parasitic nematodes – overlooked, neglected, little known and mostly out of sight; surprising then that they cause billions of dollars’ worth of damage to global crop production annually.  In the tropics and subtropics they persistently undermine production, result in massive waste of disfigured and unmarketable…
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Plant clinics, pests and pads of paper

“We’ve arrived everyone. Off the bus”. Ten journalists, myself and five other CABI staff disembark eager to write our own stories on this, a landmark day, for one of CABI’s latest projects – the Pest Risk Information SErvice (PRISE). PRISE, led by CABI and funded by the UK Space Agency’s International Partnership Programme (IPP), uses…
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Navigating the Nagoya Protocol – CABI’s commitment to Access and Benefit Sharing of genetic resources

CABI scientists have penned an important paper published in the journal Biocontrol Science and Technology which pulls no punches when it boldly states ‘the future of humankind and the rest of Earth’s biodiversity depend upon our research efforts generating solutions to the global challenges.’ Now this stark realisation has grabbed your attention, what does the…
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National Meadows Day 2018

  National meadows day is an annual awareness event focussed around the first Saturday of July, but up and down the country activities took over the whole weekend. Traditionally managed British meadows are characterised by low soil fertility and actively managed cutting or grazing, supporting a range of colourful flowering species including the oxeye daisies…
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The view from above

We might not all be comfortable with the idea of unmanned drones, or government satellites scanning all corners of the earth but the data produced from these constant eye-in-the-skys is proving ever more useful in today’s environmental struggles.
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Reaping a better cotton crop without the use of pesticides

Kurkali is a small village with 8700 households in Tehsil Sinjhoro, District Sanghar. Most of the farmers in this village are either ‘medium-sized farmers’, having less than 30 hectares of farmland, or small, with a farm size of 1 to 2 hectares. During the summer season, farmers grow cotton followed by seasonal vegetables and wheat.…
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