CABI Blogs: hand picked... and carefully sorted

Low-level iodine-deficiency produces lower IQ children in UK

Wendie Norris — Wed, 22 May 2013 13:55:20 +0100

IN my March 2013 blog “Eat less salt but make sure it contains iodine!”, I described the problems of addressing iodine–deficiency diseases in Pakistan and the worrying rise in iodine deficiency in the UK, linked to a shift in eating patterns away from dairy and oily fish, our traditional sources of iodine. Whereas, other developed countries had relied on introducing a national supply of iodised salt, we had got away without it. But even countries using iodised salt, now had to watch out, as salt–reduction campaigns to tackle rising cardiovascular diseases, were allowing iodine-deficiency to reoccur albeit at a low-level (as compared to the high level of iodine deficiency found in developing countries)

NOW there is further support for re-emerging iodine deficiency in the UK: this time a study on pregnant women published in the Lancet. They have identified changes in the IQ of primary-school children born to mothers with low-level iodine deficiency: IQ goes down 3 points & reading age is reduced. For more information, read the BBC article Iodine deficiency 'may lower UK children's IQ and the Lancet study.

Need I say more? In the March blog, which featured on Global Health Knowledge Base and CABI-Handpicked & carefully sorted , I covered the spectrum of iodine-deficiency diseases which can occur in children born to mothers with iodine-poor diets, leaving the children with permanent physical & mental intelligence problems. Daily it seems, the case is being made to consider introducing iodised salt into the UK and to advise would-be pregnant mothers not only to ensure folic acid is in their diet but also adequate iodine ( BUT not through seaweed supplements). Pregnant mothers who rely on organic milk should be aware that this contains less iodine than usual and they will need to increase iodine intake to compensate.

WE do indeed “have a new challenge to addressing iodine deficiency in both developing and developed countries”.

Eating insects to save the planet: would it really help?

Vera Barbosa — Mon, 20 May 2013 23:23:19 +0100

Image from Manataka^™ American Indian Council - manataka.org

It was well publicised in the media last week that we have reached the feared 400 ppm carbon dioxide (CO₂) concentration level in the Earth’s atmosphere. The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) reported in a press release last week that the 400 ppm threshold was recorded at several stations of the World Meteorological Organization’s Global Atmosphere Watch network, and the threshold was reached earlier than the predicted 2015-16. The press release shows some dramatic graphic representations of the changes in CO₂concentrations from ice core determinations, for the last 800,000 years and 300 years, and from instrument measurements at Mauna Loa for data since 1957.

An article in the Economist entitled 'The measure of global warming' summarized the situation with regard to the implications for global warming: “As a rule of thumb, CO₂ concentrations will have to be restricted to about 450 ppm, if global warming is to be kept below 2°C (a level that might possibly be safe). Because CO₂ stays in the atmosphere for decades, artificial emissions of the gas would have to be cut immediately, and then fall to zero by 2075, in order to achieve 450ppm. There seems no chance of that. Emissions are still going up. At current rates, the Mauna Loa reading will rise above 450ppm in 2037“.

Agriculture production, especially livestock farming is responsible for around 30% of CO₂ emissions. According to a United Nation’s report entitled Livestock's Long Shadow: Environmental issues and options, the livestock sector alone is responsible for 18% of the world’s total emission of CO₂ and methane, which is more than the emissions produced by the transport sector, i.e. every plane, train, car, truck and other mode of mechanical transportation on the planet, which accounts for 13% of greenhouse gas emissions.

When we think about reducing carbon emissions, as individuals we tend to think about recycling, driving less, switching to energy efficient appliances and light bulbs. When asked what we can do as nation, most people would suggest introduction of policies to promote adoption of renewable energy source and leaving the forests alone. Although all these measures are important contributions to reduce carbon emissions, shouldn’t we be doing more and taking more drastic measures to save the planet from global warming?

We are all familiar with the suggestions that more people should become vegetarians or demitarians to reduce GHG emissions from meat production. However, for those who would not entertain the idea of giving up animal protein, there is a new thing "insectarianism". Although I made up the term, the concept is quite real and not a new thing either - it is called entomophagy, defined as the consumption of insects by humans as food.

At present, an estimated 2 billion people globally eat insects, primarily in Africa, Asia, and Latin America, where the practice dates back to around a thousand years, according to a new book by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) released last week entitled Edible insects: future prospects for food and feed security. The most widely consumed species include beetles, caterpillars, bees, wasps and ants. Some advantages of insects over livestock include: insects provide the equivalent amount of protein of beef cattle, while emitting much less GHG; they cost a lot less to produce than livestock; they are taxonomically distant from humans, which makes them less likely to transmit diseases; and they are ubiquitous to almost all environments.

The FAO reports that “edible insects have always been a part of human diets, but in some societies there is a degree of distaste for their consumption.” Although the majority of edible insects are gathered from forest habitats, innovation in mass-rearing systems has begun in many countries, the book says.

The FAO book is an effort of the FAO’s Forestry Department to recognize the traditional practices of gathering insects for food and income, and to document the related ecological impacts on forest habitats. It draws on a wide range of scientific research at Wageningen University, The Netherlands, on the contribution that insects make to ecosystems, diets, food security and livelihoods in both developed and developing countries. This would decrease demand for beef and other meats and eventually reduce the amount of land dedicated to meat production, solving the global food crisis and reducing carbon emissions from meat production.

The Ecologist magazine online has an interesting article entitled ‘Eating insects: a solution to the meat problem?’ which shows how eating insects was a common practice in Mexico many thousands of years ago. It was such a natural thing that they didn’t even have a name for insects and called them simply “the meat we eat”. However, when the European arrived there they found it a barbaric pagan practice.

I’m so glad I’m a vegetarian!

References

Livestock’s Long Shadow: Environmental issues and options. UN report. 2006. 416 pp.

Climate change: The measure of global warming. The Economist. May 2013.

Arnold van Huis et.al (2013) Edible insects: future prospects for food and feed security. FAO Forestry Paper 171. 201 pp.

Eating insects: a solution to the meat problem? The Ecologist. August 2010.

Searching Cabdirect using the terms recipes and insects returned 112 records, including

Philippine edible insects: a new opportunity to bridge the protein gap of resource-poor families and to manage pests. Adalla, C. B.; Cervancia, C. R.; Durst, P. B.; Johnson, D. V.; Leslie, R. N.; Shono, K.; Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), Rome, Italy, Forest insects as food: humans bite back. Proceedings of a workshop on Asia-Pacific resources and their potential for development, Chiang Mai, Thailand, 19-21 February, 2008, 2010, pp 151-160, 6 ref.

Going Direct2Farm

CABI — Thu, 16 May 2013 09:30:00 +0100

Carmen Thönnissen, Programme Manager from the Swiss Agency for Development and Coopertation, recently visited CABI’s Direct2Farm project with her colleagues in Meerut, India. Read Carmen's report on her visit and the impact of mobile technology on Agriculture.

On 23 April 2013, we - from the Swiss Agency for Development and Coopertation (SDC) - had the pleasure to visit one site of the Direct2Farm projects in Meerut, India. Direct2Farm is a mobile-enabled agriculture infomediary service aimed at making high quality information readily accessible to farmers. Accompanied by Mr. Sharbendu Banerjee and Ms Priyanka Anand of the D2F CABI team in Delhi, we visited the Farmer Call Center that serves more than 30,000 farmers; an Airtel phone company selling stand in a nearby market; met with famers in their fields; and visited one farming family’s home near Meerut.

We experienced how advisory ‘audio’-messages were concisely recorded and sent out to farmers, heard farmers calling the call center and the livestock expert giving advice to specific farmer requests. Farmers we met showed a great interest in these advisory messages and related services as it connects them to the broader farming community, to specific knowledge, to market prices, and expert advice etc. This is happening in an environment in which traditional agricultural extension activities seem to be largely absent.

What struck us is how this service allows information to ‘quickly’ reach women and men farmers, even those that are not at ease in writing and reading, provided that their diagnostic is accurate and based on good observation! It empowers farmers to stay informed, to share this information with others, and based on that decide themselves to make informed choices. The CABI team, which is the content partner of this phone service set up with a telecom company as well as a fertilizer company and farmer association, is a young and highly motivated team. It engages with the view to continuously learn from farmers’ feedback to improve the mobile service, and is devoted to reach out and empower the ‘bottom of the pyramid’ farmers. The approach bears a high potential and can exploit synergies with other CABI activities, such as implemented by Plantwise.

Carmen Thönnissen, Pierre-André Cordey and Peter Bieler, Global Programme Food Security, SDC

What’s the big deal about Open Access?

David Mountain — Wed, 15 May 2013 15:48:59 +0100

Specifically, what’s in it for the people who get involved? How can publishers, government bodies, academic institutions, researchers, and even the general public reap the benefits?

The aim of open access is to improve the communication of knowledge and encourage advancements in research by allowing information to be freely accessible to anyone. At a recent conference held in Oxford, the idea of open access data was discussed with people from all walks of life: publishers, researchers, business entrepreneurs. The general consensus was that openness should be common practice in the academic and publishing world – and that subscriptions, journal payments and other barriers to information should become a thing of the past.

One speaker who enthralled the entire conference was Professor Chas Bountra, a chief scientist for the Structural Genomics Consortium (SGC), who emphasised the importance of open access for drug discovery and the progression of medicine. He talked of the difficulties the pharmacological industry faces in finding new proteins for drugs, and how these difficulties are only exacerbated by the idea of ‘intellectual property’. Alzheimer’s disease is a key example, whereby different companies have been competitively working in parallel for 29 years, investing millions of pounds on developing and testing the same proteins for drugs, but with little success. The SGC wants to revolutionise the industry by working with many organisations, including private and academic institutions, and by making their work on new drugs open access and encouraging others to do the same. Therefore, instead of several parties working separately and in secret on the same drugs, their idea is to improve the rigour of science by pooling resources and working on multiple proteins for drugs under the same research umbrella. To quote the CEO of the SGC, ‘more knowledge with faster uptake should lead to greater understanding, better ideas, fewer failures, greater productivity, increased health, increased wealth’.

Not only was Chas’s speech powerful because it touched on a very pressing cause, but it also stressed the potential leaps and bounds that can be made if only the science was accessible. This holds true not just for the pharmaceutical industry but across all areas of science. It was for this reason that the SGC also caught my attention, as it holds many similarities with CABI’s Invasive Species Compendium (ISC), in that it demonstrates the benefits that can be gained from everyone contributing to one open resource.

There are also practical reasons, as well as noble aspirations, for adopting open access. One question asked at the conference was, ‘why would organisations want to fund an open access resource?’ What’s in it for them if they will have free access to the resource once it has been developed anyway? An important consideration is that it is often cheaper for an individual organisation to fund part of a larger, open access resource than for it to carry out all the work internally. The ISC is a prominent example, whereby it makes economic sense to collaborate on a single, large resource rather than having separate organisations each creating their own database of invasive species; the ISC currently holds over 1600 full datasheets on invasive species and over 7000 basic datasheets.

Another reason is that the research or work produced may be of higher quality because of the larger, pooled budget and shared knowledge and expertise. Furthermore, the influence of individual members may allow open access projects to be tailored to specific regions or to tackle specific problems. For example, in the case of the ISC, consortium members are able to suggest datasheets for particularly prevalent invasive species affecting an area of concern to them.

For me, the conference clearly highlighted the economic, social and environmental benefits to be gained from open access and the potentially large audience that can look to reap the rewards. As the Minister of State for Universities and Science, David Willetts pointed out at the conference: current cultural and technological innovations shouldn’t be ignored. In the era of Facebook, Twitter and Wikipedia, science needs to keep up with the fast exchange of information, and open access seems to be the key for making this happen.

This blog was written by Nicola Wakefield, who is a Content Editor for the ISC.

Attack of the 340 million propagule timebomb! Stories of Phytophthora

CABI — Fri, 10 May 2013 10:44:51 +0100

Welcome to a new monthly series called CABI Author Focus. Each month one of the many talented authors or editors of books published by CABI will be writing about an element of their research. This month Kurt Lamour, editor of Phytophthora: A Global Perspective, writes for us on his experiences of this plant-damagng pathogen. As well as Phytophthora, Kurt co-edited Oomycete Genetics and Genomics: Diversity, Interactions and Research Tool with Sophien Kamoun.

Potato famine! Starvation and emigration! For many folks the only Phytophthora they’ll ever hear of, albeit tangentially, is through tales of the infamous potato blight that occurred in mid-1800 Ireland. I’ve often used the famine as a reference point to help answer questions concerning what it is I do for a living; although I’ve learned this conversational strategy can be tricky.

When I first arrived at the University of Tennessee in 2003, I mentioned the potato famine to some new Irish friends (fellow scientists but not plant pathologists). They looked at me askance and one asked "Who told you that cock and bull story? It's a bunch of malarkey! The damned British had loads of food and were exporting grain the whole damn time..." I looked into it. What do you know? Seems there’s something to that claim.

Nonetheless, even if the blight organism (P. infestans) is not the famine-producing monster I once thought it to be, Phytophthora species do in fact cause tragic and spectacular losses of life (plants!) and livelihoods. As I’ve studied the vegetable pathogen P. capsici over the past 15 years, I’ve witnessed firsthand the havoc wreaked once it has been introduced to farms in Michigan and Tennessee. I vividly recall a Michigan farm where I walked with three generations of farmers (grandfather, dad, and son) to inspect acre after acre of pickling-style cucumbers that looked like they’d all been dipped in powdered sugar. Needless to say, this sugar was not sweet and meant the fruit were severely infected and covered in spores. The farm had successfully produced cucumbers since the 1950’s and the grandfather and father looked at the son while asking me “How did this happen?” For these guys, large-scale disease and being forced to default on their contracts reflected poor stewardship – something that had never happened on their watch.

I felt bad for the son who’d only been in charge of the farm for a few years. As I’d done many times before and since, I explained how this epidemic was not any of their faults. It may never be clear how the disease made it to their farm, but, P. capsici can be exceptionally pernicious and is a serious problem on a wide variety of vegetables worldwide. In most cases, there are no effective chemical controls and even worse, the pathogen makes thick-walled dormant spores (oospores) that survive in the soil for years (like weed seeds). If even a few oospores germinate and cause infection, the disease can multiply and spread very rapidly – often just when a field is ready for harvest. I once counted and estimated the number of viable spores on the surface of a single squash at around 340 million. I’d often bring a picture of the squash with the caption “340M propagule timebomb” to show farmers (see picture). Each of these spores can release 20 to 40 swimming zoospores in rain or irrigation water and not surprisingly, it had rained heavily a few days prior to my visit this cucumber field. No doubt this rain event launched a deadly flotilla from what may have been a very limited amount of infected plant material - reducing their crop to a complete loss.

Phytophthora capsici is representative for species in the genus as a whole; species which attack a huge range of important plants in the wild and managed settings. There’s a fairly large group of scientists worldwide who’ve dedicated their careers to studying these enigmatic and often intractable organisms. Over the past year I’ve had the profound honor of guiding a group of “Phytophthora-ologists” through the process of collating our collective knowledge in the form of a book (Phytophthora: A Global Perspective). This was a highly rewarding venture and since I’m not capable of adequately summarizing the contributions of 60+ authors in this short space, I can only encourage anyone with an interest in Phytophthora to check it out.

Visit CABI's bookshop for more information on Kurt Lamour and the recent publication of Phytophthora : A Global Perspective

Managing floods and droughts for a changing climate

Vera Barbosa — Mon, 29 Apr 2013 14:02:23 +0100

Extreme weather is becoming increasingly more common in the UK in recent years; for example, recent figures from the UK Environmental Agency (EA) showed that 1 in every 5 days saw flooding in 2012, but 1 in 4 days were in drought. The EA reported that rivers like the Tyne, Ouse and Tone went from their lowest to their highest flows since records began, in the space of only four months. These stats indicate the UK must work on dealing with such extremes. The Flood and Water Mangement Act (2010) and the Environment Agency Catchment Flood Management Plans promote working with natural processes where possible.

I attended a seminar last week, Wednesday 24 April 2013, entitled ‘Integrated Approaches to Managing Floods and Droughts for a Changing Climate.’ The event organised by the Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology (POST) comprised presentations by five prominent speakers that tackled the subject from different angles, which together elucidated the audience on flood and droughts in the UK, i.e. why we have been noticing changes in frequency of these natural events; what the future holds under climatic uncertainties; and how we are dealing with them so far and might continue in future.

Why are we experiencing an increase in floods and droughts frequency?

Man-induced changes to the landscape, such as extensive drainage of land, water bodies and wetlands, which removed natural water storage, and urban paving with concrete, tarmac, etc., which reduced natural infiltration of precipitation, not surprisingly, have made the UK less resilient to floods and droughts resulting from climate change. An increase in the frequency of floods and drought periods in the UK is expected in the future, as a result of climate change, which is also man-induced. In fact, we are already beginning to experience these climatic changes in the UK, in the form of more frequent and more intense weather extremes, such as floods and droughts, as I mentioned above.

Professor Edward Maltby, Emeritus Professor of Wetland Science, Water and Ecosystem Management, from the University of Liverpool, and Visiting Chair of Research Innovation at Louisiana State University, talked about ‘Ecosystem approach to the management of land, water and living resources in the UK.’ He said that the new horn is floods and droughts and that we created a landscape that can’t withstand the new horn. He added that this is the challenge we are dealing with. He suggested that the important thing is to recognise how ecosystems work, i.e. the functional connectivity across the whole catchment, which we have lost. Now we need to achieve a balance, which is to provide a service and avoid risk.

What does the future hold?

Shorter droughts of up to 18 months may become more frequent by 2100, with a drought like that of 1976 perhaps occurring on average every 10 years by the end of the century, compared with a current frequency of perhaps 1 in 50 to 1 in 100 (Burke et al 2010).

Professor Jim Hall, Director of the Environmental Change Institute, University of Oxford and Member of the Adaptation Sub-Committee of the UK Independent Committee on Climate Change, presented on ‘Preparing for the impacts of floods and droughts’ and he said it is expected that annual damage from floods will increase from £0.7 billion currently to £0.9 - £6.9 billion in 2080.

Professor Alan Jenkins, Deputy Director of the Centre of Ecology & Hydrology and Science Director for the Water Research Programme, talked about floods, droughts and the future. He pointed out that another problem is the compounded effect of climate change together with the projected population increase. He added that we also need to worry about what is happening in other parts of the world.

Ian Barker, Head of Land and Water at the Environment Agency, who spoke about the role of the EA in managing water, said that the future will be different, which makes planning difficult, but that we must not stop planning. He added that the severity, duration and when cannot be predicted.

How are we dealing with weather extremes and how are we preparing for the future?

Richard Benyon, MP and DEFRA Parliamentary Under-Secretary for Natural Environment and Fisheries delivered a speech on flood and environment. He told us that £2.3 billion will be spent to protect the UK from floods by 2015. The plan is to use natural ecosystems or work with natural processes for flood alleviation, for example, the Natural Environment White Paper and the Water Framework Directive. He gave examples of current projects, such as Thames 2100, which is a project to provide more flood storage. He also mentioned the ‘Slowing the Flow Project’ in Pickering, North Yorkshire, and that the land management measures implemented by the Forestry Commission as part of the project, basically applying wood debris to slow the flow of water, has reduced flooding events. The community can see the difference too, he added.

Professor Hall summarised what the Committee on climate change has done, which includes responding to flood, i.e. reducing flood waters, reducing damage, taking properties out of risk areas and policy. With regard to the risk of water shortages, he said that a more adaptive approach is preferred, for example, reduce leakage, reduce per capita consumption from 150 litres/day to 133 L/day, which although seems to be a modest cut, will make a difference. The Committee is monitoring changes’ progress, he added, and the next steps are: publication of the Adaptation Sub-Committee (ASC) Annual report (June 2013), publication of DEFRA’s First National Adaptation Programme, and the ASC Statutory Assessment to Parliament on the progress so far.

Prof Jenkins said that the 2007 floods in the UK was a wake-up call to hydrologists. He added that we need to use existing data properly to produce warning, e.g. for surface flooding, the warning comes from the Met Office forecast of rain. There is a need for a set of consistent hydrological projections, and the hydrological outlook for the UK, which will tell where in the UK we may expect wetter conditions, is a work in progress.

Ian Barker pointed out that per capita water consumption is static and beginning to decline, due mainly to efficiency of modern appliances such as washing machines and dish washers. He also suggested that the use of effluent water for irrigation is another possibility.

The POST briefing on Natural Flood Management (NFM) concluded that collaboration between land-owners and communities is likely to be a key part of the success of NFM, and that long-term funding measures or incentives and better use of local knowledge will also be important.

CABI Environmental Impact internet resource search: [flood + drought + "climate change"]

Reference

Burke, E.J.; Perry, R.H.J.; Brown, S.J. (2010). An extreme value analysis of UK drought and projections of change in the future. Journal of Hydrology doi:10.1016/j.jhydrol.2010.04.035 (Met Office)

POST (2011). Natural Flood Mangement. POSTNOTE No. 396. The Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology, London.

April 25th World Malaria Day: affordable medicines & artemisinin-based control

Wendie Norris — Thu, 25 Apr 2013 14:00:00 +0100

April 25th is World Malaria Day and we’ve had some mixed news this month concerning the GlaxoSmithKline RTS,S vaccine, reported in New England Journal of Medicine. 65% of children were protected in the 1^st year, but protection then declined to zero over the next 3 years: which means booster shots will be essential. Vaccine efficacy also declined faster in children who were more exposed to malaria than in those who had below-average exposure. Not the grail we hope for, but we inch our way there.

Effectiveness is at the heart of the problem of malaria control. Last year Oxfam’s report “Salt, Sugar And Malaria Pills” highlighted their concerns on the effectiveness of the “Affordable medicines facility for malaria” (AFMm) hosted and managed by the Global Fund, with financial support from UNITAID, the UK Department for International Development (DFID), and others.

A fuller discussion of these issues can be found in the April issue of Global Health Knowledge Base, along with the latest research on drug-related aspects of malaria control

Open up! Open ways of dealing with invasive species

David Mountain — Thu, 25 Apr 2013 12:11:22 +0100

I recently attended a conference on the theme of ‘rigour and openness in 21^st century science’. The conference focussed on perhaps the biggest buzzword in current science: open access. Specifically, how can open access be embraced without risking the standards and rigour that are so important to scientific enquiry?

The conference aimed to cover a lot of ground and the topics discussed were necessarily very varied, touching on themes such as access to software, publishing costs and the challenges facing peer review.

One discussion in particular – on the topic of ‘citizen science’ – caught my attention, as it brought up some interesting points about the study of invasive species, which relates to work that CABI’s Invasive Species Compendium (ISC) is currently undertaking.

The open access ISC aims to compile all available information on non-native species currently affecting ecosystems, including their distribution, impacts and management. This is no easy feat; by their very nature, invasive species are apt to move around and so ecologists must play a cat-and-mouse game of Sisyphean proportions in order to keep track of them.

Some ecologists have responded to this problem by turning to citizen science – the involvement of volunteers in science. Volunteers can help by collecting data, describing results and even devising investigations and solving problems alongside scientists. Everyone at the conference was keen to highlight that openness does not simply mean uploading a document to the web; scientific research and development can also be conducted in an open fashion.

An recent example of a citizen science project is Ashtag, which has been tracking the spread of ash dieback disease, caused by the fungus Chalara fraxinea, since it reached British shores in 2012. Both a website and a smartphone app, Ashtag asks members of the public to send in photos of suspected sightings of the disease. These sightings are given a preliminary diagnosis by scientists and likely reports are then passed on to the Forestry Commission for investigation.

The ash tree, threatened by ash dieback disease. Photo credit: Jean-Pol Grandmont

Concern has been raised that such collaborations between scientists and the public lack the rigour expected of traditional scientific investigation. After all, the vast majority of volunteers are not trained biologists. With Ashtag, the problem of species diagnosis was fairly limited, as volunteers were only asked to identify likely sightings of a single species; but what about citizen science involving multiple, similar-looking species? Can we really expect ordinary citizens to provide reliable sightings?

One very successful solution to misdiagnosis has been developed by the Cornell lab of Ornithology for their various collaborative projects. Records sent in by the public are automatically checked against a database of known species’ distributions – so if a member of the public incorrectly records a tropical bird in a temperate climate, for instance, the database will identify the mistake and suggest a similar species that the person might have seen instead.

As long as such challenges are taken into account, a more open way of tracking invasive species can yield several significant benefits. By including the public in surveys, the scale of a study – and hence its validity – can be greatly increased. This point was stressed by several speakers at the conference, including Sir Mark Walport, chief scientific advisor to the government. Far from jeopardising the rigour of scientific studies, he believes that the statistical clout offered by open, collaborative projects may in fact help achieve the exact opposite.

Another important feature of citizen science is its ability to harness humans’ natural curiosity – or, as speaker Chris Lintott put it: we get bored. The human mind is designed to wonder and wander and so citizen scientists are likely to report curious sightings or unusual data they come across; whereas a computer, when given the same task, will stick rigidly to its instructions and ignore any extraneous details. This is significant, as unusual or unexpected sightings can be crucial in understanding the spread of invasive species, which have a nasty habit of turning up in surprising locations.

Just as open research is becoming increasingly common, so too is open publishing. On its own, open access data is not necessarily useful or worthwhile; in the words of the Royal Society, open access data must be ‘intelligible, accessible, assessable and useable’ in order to be of any benefit. This is where I think open access projects like the ISC play an important role. Speakers Catriona Cannon and Linda Atkinson of the Bodleian Library emphasized the growing importance of knowledge management in an increasingly open world, so that, as more and more data becomes available, users are still able to make sense of it all.

By the end of the conference, the overall message was clear: open access is here to stay. Treated carefully, it can meet the demands of scientific rigour and should be welcomed with open arms. It is now up to the scientific community and government to encourage it, as its potential benefits, already hinted at in the study of invasive species, could have a revolutionary impact in science.

Reducing hunger and undernutrition - how are we doing?

Janice Osborn — Tue, 23 Apr 2013 11:59:51 +0100

Hunger and undernutrition are amongst the most persistent global development challenges. Part of Millennium Development Goal 1 is to ‘Halve, between 1990 and 2015, the proportion of people who suffer from hunger’ (UN, 2012). With global numbers of undernourished people static at 870 million for the past 5 years and undernutrition contributing to the deaths of 2.6 million children under five each year (FAO, 2012), at the global level, clearly insufficient progress has been made towards achieving this target. But, at a national level, how are governments doing?

This month saw the publication of The 2012 Hunger and Nutrition Commitment Index (HANCI 2012 Report). There are many reasons for insufficient progress in reducing hunger and undernutrition. One of these is a lack of political will or prioritization. Produced by the Institute of Development Studies (IDS), the HANCI compares 45 developing countries for their performance on 22 indicators of political commitment to reduce hunger and undernutrition. Three areas of government action are considered:

Policies and programmes
Legal frameworks
Public expenditures

The first global index of its kind, it was created to provide greater transparency and public accountability by measuring what governments achieve, and where they fail, in addressing hunger and undernutrition. The hope is that this will:

Enable civil society to exert greater pressure on governments and international policy makers to take action
Encourage governments to evaluate their own efforts and to prioritize appropriate action.

So, what are the key findings of the 2012 Hunger and Nutrition Commitment Index?

(a) Guatemala claims top spot and Guinea Bissau is the worst performing country in 2012

(b) Economic growth has not necessarily led to a commitment from governments to tackle hunger and undernutrition

The HANCI’s objective is to develop a credible measure of the commitment to reduce hunger and undernutrition to help focus support and pressure for change. These key findings should help to determine where governments can target their efforts to improve their hunger and undernutrition status and move them up this annual league table.

References

FAO, The State of Food Insecurity in the World 2012, Food and Agriculture Organization, Rome, Italy, 2012

Lintelo, D. te; Haddad, L.; Lakshman , R.; Gatellier , K., The Hunger And Nutrition Commitment Index (HANCI 2012), Institute of Development Studies, Brighton, UK, 2013

UN, The Millennium Development Goals Report 2012, United Nations, New York, USA, 2012

Earth Day 2013 – The Face of Climate Change

Vera Barbosa — Mon, 22 Apr 2013 11:48:50 +0100

Image courtesy of The Earth Day Network.

Today is Earth Day, which this year is on the theme 'The Face of climate change'. The Earth Day Network is the organization that coordinates Earth Day around the world each year and their website www.earthday.org is encouraging people from around the world to share their stories on the impact of climate change.

The Network has been collecting images of people, animals and places affected by climate change, and stories with images of people doing their part in the fight against climate change. During the days surrounding Earth Day, an interactive digital display of all the images has been shown at events worldwide as people continue to upload photos of their actions in real-time.

“This interactive mosaic is depicting the very real impact that climate change is having on people’s lives and uniting Earth Day events around the world into one call for climate action,” said Franklin Russell, director of Earth Day at Earth Day Network. “The stories we’ve collected so far have been inspiring.”

According to the Earth Day press release over one billion people in around 192 countries are taking action to protect the environment, by mobilizing their communities and helping depict the Face of Climate Change. The actions taken by groups of people and organisations range from the action taken by Google, who is marking the day with the ‘Google doodle’ that shows a set of many images used in articles, websites and blog posts to celebrate Earth Day over the years, to that of a Junior High School in Kaosiung, Taiwan, which is taking part in a community clean-up as part of their environmental education class.

Earth Day has become a big event and each year more people of all ages and backgrounds come together and do tasks like cleaning up beaches and coral reefs, showing films, drawing petitions, and marching to solve the climate crises. More than 100 million schoolchildren around the world learn about the importance of clean air and water, says the press release.

The day to raise awareness of the Earth was created in the USA in 1970, with Gaylord Nelson being the main person behind it, to "activate individuals and organizations to strengthen the collective fight against man's exploitive relationship with the planet." Although a lot has been achieved to save the planet's resources through actions and awareness raised during Earth Day over the past 43 years, there’s still a lot that need to be done to encourage people to adopt behaviours in their everyday lives to help to save the Earth’s resources. Earlier this year an article in the Guardian online showed that public concern for environment is at its lowest in 20 years in 12 countries, according to an international poll.

The Postcode Lottery Green Challenge, chaired by Richard Branson, has launched a competition which aims to find a product or service that will reduce greenhouse gas emissions and is capable of being brought to market within two years. He says “I encourage everybody around the world with a great green idea to enter this prestigious contest. One smart, creative idea can make a huge difference.”

Spring is here, in the northern hemisphere that is, and the US EPA has some tips for a more environmentally-friendly spring cleaning in their blog page, which includes suggestions such as giving to charity items such as clothing gathered during that wardrobe clear out, ‘one man’s trash is another man’s treasure;’ using biodegradable and eco-friendly labelled cleaning products; and conserving water by using alternative water such as rainwater from a rain barrel to water the garden, which not only can cut down on wasted water but also lower your water bill.

CABI’s internet resource, Environmental Impact, was created with environmental protection in mind, and comprises a single comprehensive bibliographic information resource on climate change and other influences of humans on the biosphere. It also covers other aspects of human damage to the environment such as pollution, deforestation, desertification, and habitat loss. Follow the link above to check it out and click on the ‘request a free trial’ tab on the left hand side of the page to try it out.

Link to the Earth Day press release.

Link to vies The Face of Climate Change video and photos.

Link to see highlights from The Face of Climate Change and Earth Day events around the world.