CABI Blogs: hand picked... and carefully sorted

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.

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. They can cause extinctions of native species, either directly (as in ground-nesting birds helpless against the introduction of rats and stoats to New Zealand), or indirectly as a result of competition from more aggressive invaders. They can also introduce diseases against which native species have no resistance, as in the case of the Squirrel Pox virus carried by non-native grey squirrels in the UK but fatal to the indigenous red squirrels.

Thus major efforts are made to control many invasive species, with attention often focused on new invaders (to control them before they become so established as to make control prohibitively expensive), or on geographically isolated areas such as islands where there is less likelihood of recolonisation if an invasive species can be eradicated. Thus to use the example of the red squirrel again, almost the only place it still thrives in southern England is on Brownsea Island off the coast of Dorset, where it can be protected from the American grey squirrel which is now ubiquitous across most of England.

But once an invader has become an established part of its' new ecosystem, can controlling it have unintended consequences? This is the interesting topic addressed in a new study from New Zealand published on 16 November in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B. The research finds that in some cases, animals such as the highly destructive ship rat can become an important part of the ecosystem in the absence of native pollinators, many of which perish precisely because of animals such as the highly destructive ship rat.

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 source of unusual and interesting research, I had a quick look for any relevant studies. I can’t say the database is brimming with information in this area but what I found was definitely positive. One study looked at the effect of different acoustic frequencies on the growth of cowpea seedlings and concluded that sound waves with different frequency characteristics significantly increased plant height – good treatments included a 400 Hz frequency sound wave, cuckoo acoustic song, and an insect-music mixed sound⁽¹⁾. In the next paper by the same authors, a mixed combination of classical music and cricket voice (I think they mean the insect…) increased the growth, yield and nutritive value of edible fungi (including several Pleurotus spp.)⁽²⁾. Other research papers report similar effects. Some include the use of ‘green music’ to enhance the metabolism and growth of plants, ‘green music’ consisting of a classical music base along with some natural sounds such as those of birds, insects, water and wind, i.e. like music in a field.

After analysing the responses of various crop plants to different audio signals, one group of researchers suggests that it may be possible to compose specific music for specific plants⁽³⁾.

Plants, however, are not alone – ‘green music’ has been shown to enhance the milk yield of cows and increase the fermentation rate of starter cultures in probiotic yoghurt⁽⁴⁾.

Insects, it seems, find music stressful, and music could be used to control unwanted pests. In one recent study⁽⁵⁾, exposure to classical music decreased the lifespan of male Drosophila. Music appeared to affect the normal aging process rather than show overt toxicity, and the authors suggest it could be used in insect management programmes. Better still, greenhouse experiments on Chinese cabbage and aphid injury suggest a win-win situation - ‘green music’ increased Chinese cabbage yields and decreased aphid damage⁽⁶⁾.

References

(1) Huang Jun; Jiang ShiRen. Effect of six different acoustic frequencies on growth of cowpea (Vigna unguiculata) during its seedling stage. Agricultural Science & Technology – Hunan (2011) 12 (6) pp 847-851.
CAB Abstracts ref. Full text paper (in English) available on CAB Abstracts
Online ref.

(2) Jiang ShiRen; Huang Jun; Han XingHua; Zeng XianLin. Influence of audio frequency mixing of music and cricket voice on growth of edible mushrooms. Transactions of the Chinese Society of Agricultural Engineering (2011) 27 (6) pp 300-305.
CAB Abstracts ref.
Online ref.

(3) Lee KeunYoung; Hur TaeWon; Lee WonChu; Yun SongJoong. Analysis of plants response to music signals. Journal of the Korean Society for Horticultural Science (2002) 43 (1) pp 5-10.
CAB Abstracts ref.
Online ref.

(4) Mohammadi, R.; Rouhi, M.; Mortazavian, A. M. Effects of music waves on fermentation characteristics and viability of starter cultures in probiotic yogurt. Milchwissenschaft (2011) 66 (2) pp 193-196.
CAB Abstracts ref.
Online publisher

(5) Morales, R. F.; Seong KiMoon; Kim ChaSoon; Jin YoungWoo; Min KyungJin. Effects of auditory stimuli on the lifespan of Drosophila melanogaster. Entomological Research (2010) 40 (4) pp 225-228.
CAB Abstracts ref.
Online ref.

(6) Qin YuChuan; Lee WonChu; Choi YoungCheol; Ahn MiYoung. Preliminary study on the relationship among sonic, Chinese cabbage growth and aphids' injury. Journal of China Agricultural University (2001) 6 (3) pp 85-89.
CAB Abstracts ref.
Online ref.

Other references on CAB Abstracts

Effects of insect acoustic and music acoustic frequency on the growth of 6 kinds of vegetables.

The effects of different musical elements on root growth and mitosis in onion (Allium cepa) root apical meristem (musical and biological experimental study).

Measuring effects of music, noise, and healing energy using a seed germination bioassay.

Effect of musical sound of Veena on balsam plants.

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 cyclists are being fed the stuff (beetroot juice, packed with betalains and nitrates) to improve performance.

Well here in this blog, for your delectation, is the link to the actual research!  We have it on our public health database Global Health, and you can read the detailed summary with the URL I have provided. There you will see that just (!) O.5 litre beetroot juice, was taken 2.5 hours before cycling. The result? The juice increased power output, a measure of performance, in both 4km (up by 2.7%) and 16.1 km (up by 2.8%) cycling time trials.I know you will be glad to see that for completeness, I’ve also included an earlier blog about beetroot’s ability to reduce blood pressure (“Beetroot with everything”)!

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 et al. said that anaerobic treatment of wastewater offers the potential for wastewater treatment to become a net generator of energy, rather than the large energy consumer that it is today. The good news for the environment and the wastewater treatment industry in the north of England is that the European Investment Bank (EIB) announced that they have just approved a £400 million loan to the UK’s United Utilities for energy efficient water management, including generating green energy.

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 better understanding of these biases could be used to improve animal welfare. Rogers, of the University of New England, Australia explains her ideas in an article in CAB Reviews.

Horses, like many animals, show side bias  (Fir0002/Flagstaffotos, see License).

The left hemisphere of the brain deals with repeated stimuli, paying attention and learning rules, whilst the right is more concerned with emergency responses to threats. Given the switch over between brain side and the part of the body that it relates to, this means that domestic chickens prefer to look at potential predators with their left eyes (associated with the right hemisphere), but to use their right eyes (and left hemisphere) to search for food, having learned rules for what is and isn’t food. Many animals respond more strongly to predators that approach them from the left.

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 covered well: BBC, Guardian and Telegraph to name just a few.

Speaking as an August baby, the only reason why I grew up lacking confidence and my brother, also an August baby, lacked self-esteem (note the difference between us) was that we had a father who was, frankly, a bully. For us, school was an escape; weekends could be very hard.

So you can imagine what I first thought when I heard about the study on BBC Radio4 Tuesday morning (1/11/2011). My second more rational thought was about this link to underachievement, with 20% less of us going to Russell Group universities. Is it linked to our school year starting in September, is it therefore confined to the UK? Is it linked to day length? Is there a difference between decades reflecting changes in society?

The answer to my questions would lie in studies of August-born children in northern France, or southern parts of Scandinavia, or closer to home, Eire.  Or looking at other countries which have cut-off dates for school entry. Very close to home, it’s February cut-off in Scotland.

I went looking on CABI's public health database, Global Health, for studies on health or educational attainment or adult socioeconomic status, which others may have also linked to birth month (see Further Reading for some examples).

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 by the NHS. Occasionally the news concerns a drug approval, after a long campaign by an individual and their family.

So attending the Global Health 2011 at the BMA, London, made a very NICE change.  It was an eye-opener to see that an offshoot of NICE, “NICE International”, is making a real positive difference to health systems in many countries.

Funded solely by their client countries and international donors (World Bank, DFID and IADB, to name a few), NICE International has sent its adviser teams into Latin America, China, Georgia and India to improve clinical practice  and help them develop relevant guidelines. These countries may even set up their very own NICE organisation.