CABI Blogs: hand picked... and carefully sorted

Would you miss the mistletoe?

I was thinking “what shall I write about in my Christmas blog?” I then remembered a news item I heard in one of the BBC radio stations about the mistletoe being under threat of disappearing from our landscape. I searched for the news item in their news webpage and found it still there. The article reports that conservationists warned that the future of the traditional English mistletoe is under threat. Read on to find out why the mistletoe is threatened.

Cold weather and lots of snow - is this the sign of things to come?

As I watched the news last night, I heard how the current unusually cold temperatures and snow fall in Europe has affected Christmas travelling and the Christmas trade across the continent. Heathrow and Gatwick airports in the UK had to cancel flights, with only one runway operating at Heathrow. Both Paris and Berlin airports had to cancel flights due to running out of de-icer, which are transported by lorries that are delayed or stuck on roads, due to the severe weather. In Paris, the two main airports are only operating 1/3 of flights. Belfast is facing the worst weather for 25 years, which has affected trade. Eurostar is taking no more booking before Christmas. The UK Transport Minister Philip Hammond said they will have to consult with expert scientists to see if the severe weather experienced in the UK last year and this year is a pattern which we will be seeing in future years. The government need to know whether the UK should be investing in appropriate equipment and technology to deal with severe winters in future, if this is the sign of things to come.

REDD: Protecting forests or shirking responsibilities?

One of the main hopes for the Cancún summit held earlier this month was to find an answer to deforestation. Advances on the REDD (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation) mechanism, which aims to compensate developing countries for protecting their forests, are seen as a triumph by many, but others argue that the scheme is fatally flawed.

You would think that those most passionate about stopping the destruction of rainforests should welcome such a scheme, which promises the conservation of wildlife-rich forests, while reducing the global carbon emissions that come from their destruction in countries such as Brazil and Indonesia. Economic analyses suggest it’s a cheaper and quicker option for developed countries to pay to save rainforests overseas than doing things like building windfarms on their own soil or converting a national car fleet to hybrid vehicles. However, most of the countries where rainforests are found are notoriously corrupt and badly governed. Theft of international funding is endemic, and governmental ability to exert any real control over remote forested areas may be minimal, even where there is the willingness to do so.

Xmas camels, tobacco and kids

    Copyright: W.Norris

My daughter decided to make this camel for the annual school Xmas tree competition. To her, at age 11, camels are “cuddly” and linked to the Three Wise Men, part of the Christmas Story. To me, whilst overseeing her sewing efforts, I’d made the link to the 2 empty packets sitting on my desk waiting for me to write a global health blog.

       You can see them either side here...  

They are cigarette packets but actually only one has ever contained tobacco...can you tell which? Of course you can: it's the one which says Smoking Kills. But that's a UK packet, you don't see that message dominating on packets sold elsewhere...And you have to be able to read.

And that’s the point.

 

 Candy (sweets) that mimic tobacco products

This is marketing at its best... the package shape and silver foil construction, the  same azure blue sky (it really is), the association of Camel or Sphinx with the romance of Egypt and the  yellow desert: these link the two packets to each other & therefore their contents. But the packet with the Sphinx contained chocolate sticks covered in rice paper, accurate copies of adult cigarettes, and was purchased by my daughter from her favourite sweet shop. She loved them; I objected.

And I had to explain why, because she didn’t know. She had not made the connection.

But I had. When I was a child, pink-tipped white candy sticks were my favourite and I knew that they were a kids' version of adult cigarettes.  Kids love to pretend to be adults. The reason I knew of course was that THEN many adults including my father smoked. I even used to buy him mini-cigars for Xmas, despite the fact that I loathed the smell (it made me feel sick). The white candy sticks are still on sale but they are poor imitations of cigarettes so the link to smoking is now so remote that I’ve not be too worried.

Sphinx candy sticks are a different matter. They operate on a much subtler level.

We are still trying to stop children and adolescents from taking up tobacco smoking, even though overall adult smoking is in decline and is reinforced by the ban on smoking in public places in many European countries (Although Belgium has just relaxed that!).

Counting the cost of invasive species

 Invasive non-native species (INNS) cost the British economy at least £1.7 billion per annum. This is the headline finding of new research conducted by CABI on behalf of Defra, the Scottish government and the Welsh Assembly Government. And even this is likely to be significantly less than the full economic cost, since many indirect costs resulting from INNS, such as the damage to ecosystem services and loss of biodiversity, cannot be readily quantified.

The study found that the rabbit was the most economically damaging species, followed by Japanese knotweed, for which CABI is trialling biological control methods. As a group, plants inflict the most damage to the economy, with species such as field speedwell and floating pennywort carrying high costs. Mammals such as rats and non-native deer also have high costs, with less well-known organisms such as the slipper limpet and green spruce aphid also making the list of the top 20 non-native species.

 
Britain's most costly non-native pecies

New: CABI Working Papers

We’ve just launched CABI’s new Working Paper series, which will make available the results of CABI research in preliminary form for discussion and comment. The first two papers focus on the links between climate change and two of CABI’s key research areas: invasive alien species and agricultural commodities.

What was the outcome of the UN Climate Change conference in Cancún?

The UN Climate Change Conference (COP16) ended on Saturday, 11th December 2010 and during the second week of the conference, ministers from developed and developing countries were paired in an attempt to facilitate negotiations on the main issues, such as mitigation, adaptation, financing, REDD and technology. The outcome was the 'Cancún Agreements' as it is called, which according to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), "is a balanced package of decisions that set all governments more firmly on the path towards a low-emissions future and support enhanced action on climate change in the developing world." ‘‘Cancún has done its job", said UNFCCC Executive Secretary Christiana Figueres. But has it?

Do current e-book models help or hinder the migration from print to online?

It seems that in 2010 we have been finally witnessing the “tipping point” for e-books, with more and more libraries making a positive choice to purchase e-books instead of print editions.  Do publishers’ business models make this migration easier for libraries to implement, or actually place obstacles in their way?  E-book collections versus individual title selection; annual subscriptions versus one-time purchases; simultaneous users versus unlimited site-wide licensing; availability or not of online textbooks … We asked librarians from three very different institutions for their views. Read what they said and add your own opinions below.

Medical tourism: what do we know?

 Medical tourism is much-hyped by its proponents, with high figures for its value and patient numbers published in some industry reports. In 2007, Deloitte estimated American patient outflow at 750,000 and projected this to increase to 6,000,000 by 2010: in reality, the recession hit medical tourism numbers, which a more recent Deloitte report estimated at 648,000 in 2009 and projected to be 1.6 million in 2012. Accurate figures are hard to come by, as numbers are often inflated for political or marketing purposes, and companies pushing medical tourism have a vested interest in hyping the potential. So how much do we actually know about medical tourism: the size of the market, and also the effects on patients and on health care in destination and departure countries? Two recent scoping studies address the current state of knowledge. Johnston et al. (2010), in a paper published on 3 November in the International Journal for Equity in Health, examine the effects in destination and departure countries from a number of perspectives, while Crooks et al. (2010) reviewed patient experience of medical tourism.