Can invasive species become necessary for their new ecosystems?
Invasive species are, in most cases quite rightly, generally seen as a "bad thing". Often free from native predators in their new environment, they can become much more aggressive than in their native habitats where they are in balance with the rest of the ecosystem and held in check by natural enemies, predators and diseases.…
Music enhances plant growth and keeps pests at bay
A recent AoB blog caught my eye (ear?). Do plants respond to music? The blog refers to an experiment in which plants were assembled in Cadogan Hall, London for a 3-hour recital performed by the UK’s Royal Philharmonic Orchestra to investigate the effects of music on plant growth. Knowing that CAB Abstracts is a good…
Superfood Beetroot: just in time, for me…
Beetroot: amortize/flickr THANK you dear Libby Purvis for having Italian chef Antonio Carlucci on to talk about beetroot recipes in your BBC Radio4 show, Midweek, (Wednesday 9 November)! The recipes feature in his BBC TV Great British Food Revival Series 2, programme-7: Beetroot & Currants. On Midweek, he mentioned an Exeter University study (UK) where…
Generating energy from sewage will soon become a reality in the north of England
Being a wastewater treatment specialist, I have often pointed out that more projects should be making use of waste by-products to generate renewable energy. Anaerobic digestion (AD) processes, which are widely used in wastewater treatment processes produce biogases. These are mainly methane and carbon dioxide gases, which are often wasted. In a recent paper McCarty…
He’s OK if you don’t get on the wrong side of him
Most of us have preferences such as left- or right-handedness, and tend to favour one eye over another to look down a telescope. These biases are the result of brain lateralisation, with a dominant left side of the brain leading to right handedness, and vice versa. Many animals show comparable biases. Lesley Rogers believes a…
August babies lack self-esteem
Image:'popofatticus This week we heard that being born in August in England leads to lack of self-esteem and a lifelong tendency to underachieve (Does when you are born matter?, from Institute of Fiscal Studies (IFS)). This appears to be a follow-up study to one focussed on primary school children in 2007, and it certainly got…
NICE people lend a helping hand
“Nice” is not a word often used in scientific research and when it appears in the UK media, it’s now associated with NICE, National Institute for Health & Clinical Excellence. More often than not this government organisation makes headlines with bad news: the press reports quickly when a drug is not approved for general use…
Countdown to seven billion: does the world have enough water to produce food for us all?
As the world counts down to the landmark of seven billion people on the planet (a scary number predicted to happen – perhaps a little too conveniently? – on the scary day of Halloween, 31 October) we are seeing an increasing number of stories and statistics on whether the Earth's resources can cope with a…
Universal influenza vaccine is now a possibility..
Across my desk today at CABI, came the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) and tucked away at the back in a section called “Clinical Implications of Basic Research” was “Stalking influenza diversity with a universal antibody” by Charles R. Russell (St Jude Children’s Hospital, Memphis). Here I learnt that an antibody has been isolated…
Food for thought on UN World Food Week – Close to one billion people are chronically hungry
“In the searing heat of late spring, before anyone realized that what was happening here was just the beginning of something much bigger, a tiny girl stumbled through a field of rocks toward a group of international aid workers. She was barefoot and limping. Flies dotted her face, craving the moisture of her eyes, lips,…