CABI Blogs: hand picked... and carefully sorted

Chikungunya conquers the Swiss Alps

Earlier this week, a mosquito (Aedes albopictus) that can carry chikungunya and dengue fever viruses has been spotted north of the Swiss Alps in the canton of Aargau. In response, the Swiss health ministry plans to make chikungunya, which was described for the first time in Tanzania in 1952, a mandatory reportable disease from next year.

TOPPS - Best Pesticide Practice, Better Water Protection

New advice to protect water bodies from pesticide pollution has been published by EU experts. "Training the Operators to Prevent Pollution from Point Sources" or TOPPS, collates and provides best practice from 15 European countries. TOPPS aims for a sustainable improvement of water quality through education and training.

Forests and climate change: a convenient truth?

'Forests and climate change: a convenient truth?' was the title of a conference I attended on Wednesday, organised by the Forestry Commission. It was a chance to hear from some of the UK's leading experts on the role of forests and woodlands in tackling climate change, chaired by the king of the "Swingometer", Peter Snow, who lead the interactive electronic voting between speakers. Globally, forest ecosystems play a key role in addressing climate change by absorbing CO₂ from the atmosphere and storing it in growing vegetation and soil. Deforestation caused by unsustainable harvesting of timber and the conversion of forests to other land-uses currently leads to 18% of global emissions of CO₂ into the atmosphere. But, managed sustainably so that any logged trees are replaced again, forests and woodlands are a good source of wood – an alternative and less polluting energy source to fossil fuels, and a low-energy construction material.

The conference was kicked off by the Minister for the Environment, Phil Woolas, who emphasised the importance of including forestry in climate change policy and investing in reforestation, afforestation and prevention of deforestation through financial incentives. He said that "a key goal of UK policy is to make forestry part of the process in Bali [where negotiations on the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change will take place next month]. After intensive lobbying of key countries across the world, we now expect support from China, Brazil and the US that this should be the case."

Tim Rollinson, Director-General of the Forestry Commission listed 6 key ways in which forestry can help meet the challenge of climate change, and these formed the basis for the conference talks:

• protecting and managing the forests that we already have;
• reducing deforestation;
• restoring the world's forest cover;
• using more sustainably produced wood for energy;
• using more sustainably produced wood as a substitute for other materials; and
• planning our forests so that they adapt to a changing climate.

Bioethanol production arrives in the UK

British Sugar Plant, East Anglia, UK

Britain is now officially a producer of bioethanol fuel. The plant, already in operation for a few months, was declared open for business yesterday. Biofuels promise so much, carbon neutrality and reduced reliance on fossil fuels to name a couple. But there are potential pitfalls too - Katherine blogged about the issues of water usage in growing sugar cane back in February.

The new plant uses locally grown sugar beet as raw material, aiming to process up to 800k tons into fuel each year. Damage to world food prices is unlikely, since the sugar produced from the crop would be surplus to EU quotas and exported anyway. Scenes like the 'Tortilla Riots' in Mexico, shouldn't be repeated.

Concerning environmental effects, the abstract of this paper (freely available from the CAB Abstracts database via Google) assures us,  "...a significant proportion of the UK crop [of sugar beet] is being grown in an economically efficient way whilst minimizing environmental damage". Further reading can be found in this selection of abstracts here. The savings in carbon emissions could be equivalent to removing 40,000 cars from the roads. Good news when the European Union has set a target for all member states to increase the market share of biofuels to 5.75% by the year 2010. The plan is for fuel to be sold for blending with petrol and distributed widely. As flex-fuel vehicles become more commonplace (heavily dependent on biofuel becoming equivalently priced to fossil fuels), we may well see more industries of this kind being established.

The superfood of the future – Chenopodium quinoa

You may or may not have heard of this already. It’s called quinoa (pronounced keen-wa) and it’s a pseudocereal with properties that have made it an attractive staple food to peoples since the Incas - it was cultivated as early as 3000 BC.
Nutritionally, quinoa is thought to be superior to cereal crops as it has a good amino acid balance, a protein content of 10-18%, and it is gluten free. On top of all this, it has been proposed by the FAO to offer food security for the future, particularly because it is hardy at high altitudes where maize will not grow.

Happy holidays! ‘Tis the season to be hypertensive

With Thanksgiving now upon us, the holiday season has well and truly arrived. This not being a diet blog, I will most likely be indulging with the best of them. Well it would be rude not to, wouldn't it?

However, while the marketers are encouraging us to stuff it all in (if you're UK based, like me, 'this is not just food…', after all), the media at large are busy reminding us just how much fat, salt and potential foodborne pathogens we will be putting away over the party season.

Pass the Tamiflu!

A bear, a lion and a chicken meet up in a chat room.

The bear types: "If I roar in the forests of North America, the entire forest is shivering with fear."

Not to be outdone by a mere bear, the lion taps in, "If I roar on the great plains of Africa, the entire savannah is shivering with fear."

The chicken, typing with his beak, says, "Big deal. I only have to cough, and the entire planet is shivering with fear."

Maps - Finding Our Place in the World

If you can't get to Chicago for the Festival of Maps which is currently underway, then why not pop along to the virtual gallery of the exhibition. Navteq have recreated the Chicago Field Museum Maps exhibit in interactive 3D, allowing you to tour the rooms where the maps are hung. By clicking on each of the small arrows gives a short information piece about each map or globe. Why not pop online for a quick tour.

Do you blog about peer reviewed research?

If so, the recent announcement from BPR3 (Bloggers for Peer-Reviewed Research Reporting) might be of interest to you and potentially increase the readership of your blog.

Poverty and Human Development, Global theme issue, supported by Tropical Diseases Bulletin

This is the editorial which I wrote for the November issue of Tropical Diseases Bulletin (vol 104 (11), 2007) in support of an international publishing event on Poverty and Human Development.

Last month, 234 journals worldwide agreed to publish simultaneously editorials and articles on the theme of Poverty and Human Development, to raise awareness and stimulate research. Two of the Millennium Development Goals were halving poverty & the creation of a global partnership for development. These goals were set in 2000, for achievement by 2015, but there is a long way to go and time is flying by.

The Council of Science Editors organised this event and as editor of Tropical Diseases Bulletin (TDB) I should like to add my sup­port to this worthwhile cause and bring to your attention the work of CABI. CABI has been publishing health information within TDB since 1912 AND solving agricultural and environmental problems which impact the poorest people in the world for just as long. We focus on three key areas: commodities, knowledge for development and invasive species, and provide scientific publishing, research and communication for development. Our activities contribute directly to achieving the Development Goals, particularly poverty reduction, partnership for development and environmental sustainability.

To give some recent project examples, CABI scientists are currently working to control armyworms which are threatening crops across sub-Saharan Africa. They also developed a fungal agent to control locusts (Green Muscle®) and helped Ethiopian coffee farmers achieve 30% higher prices by improving the quality of their coffee. CABI’s compendia, which are interactive databases, provide detailed easy-to-search information & images on subjects like crop protection and animal health. We work across the globe: in Bangladesh with rice farmers, in Albania in fruit orchards, in Pakistan on dairy and meat production, in China as part of the Ecosystem Services for Poverty Alleviation Programme (ESPA).

CABI publishes many books relevant to poverty and development, covering agriculture, rural economics and nutrition such as the forthcoming book “School Health, Nutrition and Education for All” (see CABI bookshop section). We participate in AGORA and HINARI which give developing countries access to agricultural and health research journals and databases respectively.

Apart from project & consultancy work and our information products (databases, compendium & books), CABI also built and now manages the portal Research for Development (R4D) for the UK’s Department for International Development (DFID) to give access to research which is focussed on the poorest peoples.

Through TDB and the database Global Health, CABI aims to provide access for researchers and policymakers to relevant health information: it should be self-evident that this impacts poverty. If you are ill or disabled you can’t work as effectively, your crops go unharvested, your family’s income declines. Equally if you can’t grow enough food or a cash crop, it’s not only your nutrition that suffers (with the added bonus of increased susceptibility to infection) but also your education opportunities. There’s no money to buy the education to raise you out of poverty or else you are so malnourished you can’t learn effectively.

CABI, I am proud to say, is at the forefront of the fight to alleviate poverty and promote development.

Wendie Norris PhD (Editor, Tropical Diseases Bulletin)

KNOWLEDGE FOR LIFE

Katrina, flu and bioterrorism

Hello from the American Public Health Association conference. “Whats hot?” you ask. I’d say Katrina, flu and bioterrorism. Yesterday I heard talks from a passionate bunch of people disturbed about how the US government is treating public health in the era of bioterrorism. They talked on flu, bioterrorism and hurricane Katrina but some common threads quickly became clear. Funding for basic public health in the USA - things like vaccination, has fallen, as money has been diverted into bioterrorism research and anthrax and smallpox vaccines. There have been deaths as a result. Then there is military involvement in pandemic and disaster management….