CABI Blogs: hand picked... and carefully sorted

And now for the world's most important plant viruses

Other than possibly the newly discovered leaping beetles of New Caledonia with a mysterious plant diet, few if any plant pests or diseases make it onto any one of the Time Top of Everything of 2011 lists.

But pests and diseases are busy making their way into their own ‘Top 10’. CABI scientists put together a list in 2011 of some of the world’s worst plant pests, and plant viruses and fungal pathogens are also getting together.

Molecular Plant Pathology has published the results of a survey amongst plant virologists, ranking plant viruses based on scientific/economic importance. The historical perspective, the science, the economics and the latest research are discussed for each of the viruses making it into the ‘Top 10’.

First place is given to Tobacco mosaic virus for its scientific importance based on its role which has extended beyond practical plant pathology (as a virus causing serious losses in a profitable crop) to its use as a model system and in molecular pathology. TMV (just to corroborate its importance) is also the highest ranking plant virus on CAB Abstracts. The database has more than 8000 records specifically on TMV since 1909 (just over 10% of all the records on plant viruses on the database), and is still going strong with about 100 records added each year.

‘Top 10 plant viruses in molecular plant pathology’ is free to download here. Now watch out for the ‘Top 10 fungal pathogens in molecular plant pathology’…coming soon…

High-speed rail: when should governments invest?

 Recent years have seen a surge in investment in high-speed rail (HSR) infrastructure in many parts of the world, led by China where over $100 billion a year is being spent (although there was a slowdown in construction after a fatal crash in July 2011). The UK has so far lagged behind, but today the government looks set to approve plans for a high-speed rail link between London and Birmingham as the first stage of a planned network which will eventually extend to northern cities. With the mainstream media covering the debate in more detail than can be dealt with here, this blog instead features a recent Working Paper by de Rus which examines the economic rationale for government investment in the construction of HSR lines, before looking at the arguments in Britain in the context of this analysis.

Apps For Climate competition with World Bank cash prizes

 

 

 

 

 

Climate change is undeniably happening and it is expected to hit poorer and developing countries the hardest. It is well known now that its effects, such as higher temperatures, changes in precipitation patterns, rising sea levels and more frequent weather-related disasters pose risks for agriculture, food and water supplies. All organizations, large and small, are getting involved on the fight to stop climate change through mitigation and adaptation. Read on to see details of an Apps for Climate Competition, launched by the World Bank, that aims to bring together the best ideas from scientists, application developers, civil society organizations and development practitioners to develop innovative apps using World Bank data.

The environment in 2011 – the main extreme events!

Being one of the editors for the Cabi resource Environmental Impact and as 2011 comes to a close; I thought I should close the working year with a blog on what happened around the world with regard to environment. One thing that comes straight to mind is that 2011 saw a record rise in greenhouse gas emissions, but what else happened in 2011?

COP17 the results – A step closer towards a legally-binding climate deal!

The high-level highly publicised UN climate change talks ended yesterday in Durban, South Africa. Most governmental and non-governmental organisations accept that climate change is inevitable and that we have to do something about it, i.e. have mitigation and adaptation measures in place. If the world ignore the changes and carry on with a business as usual approach, the consequences could be catastrophic. Many regions of the world have already been experience climatic change, which has resulted in high human and economic costs. It is therefore in everybody’s interest to do something about it, hence the UN conference. The last two conferences in Copenhagen and Cancun resulted in non-legal-binding agreements and there was a lot of pressure from all corners for leaders to work harder at reaching a legally-binding deal in Durban. According to reports from various media, a deal was finally agreed in Durban to push for a new climate treaty, but is it a big deal?

No strings attached: public health messages from puppets!

Image:Loren Javier           Father Christmas & wife puppets         Happy Christmas!
                                                                                       

One intriguing way of getting health messages across to communities who are illiterate and whose spoken language may not even have words to describe the medical concept, is to entertain them. Travelling theatre groups  in Africa sing or act out AIDs prevention stories, board games educate children on climate or help mothers cope with domestic violence, and, not to be left out, there is now an online game that can support the fight against hunger (see UN food aid agency helps create online game to fight hunger)

Another way is storytelling with puppets and I am going to tell you about the work of one particular company No Strings.

From abstract to full text

Most people searching an abstracts database want to be able to click straight through to the full text of a relevant or interesting abstract.

Full text availability is one of the real added value features of CAB Abstracts and the Global Health database, but where and how to find the full text can still be confusing.

Here at CABI we do try hard to make the full text of any paper we abstract for the database(s) available to users by providing links (including DOIs where possible) and holding full text in our own permanent repository. Over the years we have been building a repository of full text material, mainly journals and conferences, which we host on our servers so that users can click through directly from the abstract straight to the full text pdf. The CABI repository currently contains over 85,000 full text papers from scientific journals and over 54,000 full text papers from conferences, plus the full text of a number of reports and single documents. If you search CAB Abstracts or Global Health on our own platform (CAB Direct), all papers held in the CABI Full Text repository have a clearly visible “View Full Text” button. The CABI Full Text repository is also available to searchers using other platforms (e.g. OvidSP).

We created the CABI repository so that we could offer permanent, unbroken links to full text papers from journals and conferences which for some reason or other are not available online or are difficult to find –  some papers, for instance, are available in print only, and some are available online but the links change or websites disappear over time. The initial concept was to provide a win-win situation for authors and users – authors knew that their papers would be more widely disseminated and read if they were accessible through our widely used database, and users would be able to click straight through to the full text. Our aim was to improve access to papers which were ‘difficult-to-find’ i.e. those which were not easily accessible through open access systems or from mainstream sources with a strong web presence.

Once you’ve done your search, here are some suggestions for subscribers on how to access the full text paper or document from an abstract or bibliographic record on the CAB Direct platform (this is generally applicable to CAB Abstracts/Global Health on any platform):

(1) If the abstract has a “View Full Text” button, this is a link to the paper in the CABI Full Text repository (for advanced users, sc:ft in the search box will pick up all records with a full text document in the CABI repository).

(2) If a url is provided on the database record, click on this to go to the publisher or society website. If your institution has a subscription to the journal, you should have access to the full text. If not, you’ll still find that some of these documents may be open access. Some publishers make all their papers open access, others make special issues open access, sometimes within the same issue of a journal some of the papers will be open access and some not. Others apply an embargo, so that papers published before a certain date become open access. All these models change frequently and the only certain way of knowing whether the full text is available (either open access or paid for) is to try the website.

(3) If the abstract record has a DOI this is even better. The DOI (Digital Object Identifier) is a unique identifier for that paper. Clicking on the DOI will take you straight to the exact document. Try copying the DOI into your Google search box to see if the paper has been deposited in an institutional or other repository.

(4) Or you can contact the author directly – most recent records have email contacts.

Finally, if you are a conference organizer, editor or society and wish to see your papers held in our repository so they are easily accessible to a worldwide audience of subscribers, please contact our Full Text Coordinator.

Working Together – Saving Tomorrow Today: 17th Conference of the Parties (COP17)

The climate talks in Durban, South Africa, entered their second week today, entwined in a weave of issues and with no expectations from observers of a guaranteed deal being reached by negotiators. The theme of this year’s meeting is ‘Working Together, Saving Tomorrow Today’. How much work and progress has been made so far, after one week of meetings?

NGOs call for Durban debate on climate justice in tourism

The United Nations Climate Change Conference in Durban, South Africa is now underway, and already running into difficulties with rumours that Canada may formally renounce the Kyoto Protocol due to fears about economic competitiveness. While tourism is not a major component of the Durban talks, aviation is one of the contentious issues, with individual countries and the EU controversially setting emissions targets for airlines using their airports in the absence of any global regulation of aviation. The tourism industry has long argued that taxes and emission charges on aviation would harm the economic development of some of the world's least developed countries which depend on long-haul tourism for much of their foreign exchange. However, a number of NGOs have issued a Position Paper suggesting that aviation should not be excluded from the talks, and that negotiators should "seriously and objectively address the role of tourism in the international climate negotiations."

The international alliance of civil society organisations, including AKTE (Switzerland), EED/Tourism Watch (Germany), ECOT (Thailand), Fair Trade Tourism in South Africa (FTTSA) and Naturefriends International, says that it is irresponsible to exclude aviation on the grounds that tourism is an "engine of development" and argues that globally binding negotiations on aviation emissions will, if managed properly, enhance rather than undermine poverty reduction.

The UN climate change summit opened in Durban today

The United Nations Climate Change Conference in Durban, South Africa, begins today, 28 November, and will continue until 9 December 2011. The event includes the 17th Conference of the Parties (COP 17) to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and the 7th Conference of the Parties serving as the Meeting of Parties to the Kyoto Protocol (COP/MOP 7). The importance of the UN climate change summit, in my view, is undisputable, but is made even more relevant by a new assessment of global warming by the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature project, which confirms that the Earth is indeed warming.