The story of the rare book on plant diseases that returned ‘home’ to China after a 72 year absence
Photo: The 1942 text by Professor Wang Ming-Chih, returned to China after more than 70 years Lesley Ragab thought she knew CABI’s stock of more than 24,000 books and 2,000 journals like the back of her hand after serving as librarian at the organisation’s Egham, UK, office for over 20 years. That was until she stumbled…
How to Control Urban Pests: Q&A with Entomologist Dr. Partho Dhang
Quick and easy solutions for treating pests with conventional sprays can harm the environment and contaminate surrounding areas, making them unsafe and unfit for solving urban pest problems. We asked CABI author and entomologist, Dr Partho Dhang, for some practical advice on treating these common pests that will be helpful for those whose living spaces are…
Chocolate SDGs unwrapped
“The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), otherwise known as the Global Goals, are a universal call to action to end poverty, protect the planet and ensure that all people enjoy peace and prosperity.”1 Should we prioritise chocolate in this universal call to action? Threats to the cocoa industry including low productivity, marketing challenges, pests and disease,…
Universal health coverage: everyone, everywhere…what about cancer?
The World Health Organization is supporting countries moving to universal health coverage and World Health Day, April 7th is part of a year long campaign. WE consider the costs of cancer control in universal health coverage plans, and using cervical cancer as an example the importance of prevention as a cost-effective strategy for low and middle income countries.
Water, tourism and gender – how tourism can increase inequalities. From the work of Dr Stroma Cole
March 22 is World Water Day, designated to focus our attention on the importance of water. The theme for World Water Day 2018 is ‘Nature for Water’ – exploring nature-based solutions to the water challenges we face in the 21st century. But of course water is essential for life, and thus affects every aspect of…
Food Forests can be a part of Urban Cultivation
Urban cultivation (UC) refers to a range of practices at various scales that include the growing, processing, and marketing of crops (often called urban agriculture), the tending of livestock, and apiculture, in urban and peri-urban areas, mostly for consumption in the same urban space (WinklerPrins 2017). According to the United Nations, the world population is increasingly urbanizing, currently at about 54% but trending toward at least 66% by 2050, and with much higher rates in many parts of the globe (UN 2014).
Family-centric cinema: a Q&A on changing the conversation for women in agriculture
Women need first-hand information and knowledge about new agricultural technologies to have a say on how family farms are run, according to Dannie Romney, Global Director, Development, Communication and Extension, CABI. Dannie is currently Project Executive for the Africa Soil Health Consortium (ASHC) and Gender and the Legume Alliance (GALA) projects working jointly in Ghana. …
World Book Day 2018 – Our Favourite Books
CABI staff are celebrating World Book Day with some of their favourite books! We’re proud of our diverse range of titles, relevant for students, researchers and professionals across a range of subjects. Here are some of our top picks from 2017, and what we enjoyed about working on them.
What do tourists want and how can DMOs deliver? Q&A with author Alfonso Vargas-Sanchez
Unavoidably in the 21st century, fast and amazing tech developments represent the most powerful source of disruption in the whole economy, and tourism is not an exception. In this line, Artificial Intelligence is likely the most disruptive expression today in the most advanced travel and tourism environments. The greatest efforts are being made in areas such as machine learning, natural language processing, voice recognition and chatbots. Artificial Intelligence is playing a key role in all of them.
Emerging contaminants – a growing concern?
[Image credit: minthu] Over the last 200 years, the global population has been growing at an exponential rate and according to the UN, is predicted to reach 8.5 billion by 2030. The population increase to date, has been supported by the development of agricultural, industrial and health care resources, which has led to the rise…