CABI Blogs: hand picked... and carefully sorted

MERS the next pandemic threat?

Isobel Hoskins — Tue, 18 Jun 2013 16:40:55 +0100

10 years ago it was SARS, now the new coronavirus worrying pandemic planners is theMERS (Middle Eastern Respiratory Syndrome) coronavirus, that emerged in Saudi Arabia, last year. The number of cases is gathering momentum and we don’t yet know how it is transmitted or what animal is harbouring it. As Saudi Arabia is the host for the annual Hajj pilgrimage one of the largest mass gatherings in the world, it is important we find out before millions of visitors descend on the country.

Timeline and geography of the epidemic

The virus has been in circulation since April 2012 and for a year caused a steady trickle of cases with a fatality rate of around 60% in cases. This April and May the incidence jumped to 19 cases each month, a cluster of cases was identified and limited transmission between people was demonstrated. The virus has spread within families and from patients to the health care workers caring for them. However it is not as dangerous to health care workers as SARS was, according to WHO. People with the disease have travelled with it to several countries in Europe but the infection does not seem to have established in those countries.

WHO reports ”September 2012 to date, WHO has been informed of a total of 61 laboratory-confirmed cases of infection with MERS-CoV, including 34 deaths. The cases have come from Jordan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE). France, Germany, Italy, Tunisia and the United Kingdom also reported laboratory-confirmed cases; they were either transferred there for care of the disease or returned from the Middle East and subsequently became ill.”

WHO requires that cases (case definition) are notified and urges all countries to survey for cases of severe acute respiratory infections ( fever cough breathing difficulty), take samples and isolate patients.

What is the animal source?

Like more than 60% of emerging human diseases expert think the virus comes from an animal source but which animal? SARS came to man through jumping between two hosts: bats and civet cats. The RNA sequence of this new virus suggests it is most similar to coronaviruses from bats and suggests them as the ultimate source (2,3)

Anna Petherick in the Lancet this week (4) suggests that the coronavirus went from bats to an intermediate host before jumping to man in a similar pattern to the movement of SARS between species. To find out what is going on, she says we need to use the several serological tests that have been developed, to monitor human and sentinel animal populations for the presence of this new virus. This kind of work could help clear up the issue of the animal host, the routes of transmission and whether a mild form of the disease exists.

Public health concern?

Saudi Arabia is the annual destination for 4 million pilgrims from over 180 countries each year as they complete the Hajj pilgrimage. This mass gathering has spread meningitis and flu in the past and now all pilgrims must have appropriate vaccinations to prevent epidemics.

The public health authorities closely monitored last year’s Hajj in for signs of the spread of the MERS virus. Pilgrims had high levels of respiratory symptoms but MERS coronavirus was not detected by PCR in any (5).

With increased numbers of cases and limited human transmission, public health measures may need to be put in place before this year’s pilgrimage begins. So far there is no advice not to travel but the Saudi Arabian embassy advises elderly, pregnant and terminally ill patients and children not to travel.

Have we moved on from SARS? Are we better prepared?

Global disease surveillance has moved on since 2002. The SARS along with threats of flu pandemics pushed the world into revising the international health regulations in 2007 for the first time since 1969 to take such global events into account and enable a better response. The regulations require countries maintain a core of public health surveillance and response capacity and “notify all events that may constitute a public health emergency of international concern within 24 hours of assessment.” And they allow for international disease control efforts including screening of travellers to prevent disease spread. Collective action and collective responsibility are underlined.

As part of the collective effort, WHO and the CDC have developed surveillance networks and have taken on board the need to monitor animal (and plant) populations in a ‘one health’ approach. And as many of these diseases appear to emerge in developing countries USAID has stepped in with its Emerging Pandemic Threats Program. So we may be better prepared now. However a recent article in Emerging Infectious Diseases warns against complacency: “Of 194 World Health Organization member states that signed on to the International Health Regulations (2005), <20% had achieved compliance with the core capacities required by the deadline in June 2012.” (6)

Unfortunately there is a problem that is impeding potential research into the MERS virus and the effort to control it. The virus is the subject of a patent application by the Dutch research group that discovered it. If a patent was granted it would affect the conditions under which researchers can use samples of the virus and serological tests for it that have been developed. The Saudi researchers have complained about this. The International Health Regulations have no rules to deal with this issue.(7)

Dr Margaret Chan underlined the threat to the world at the World Health Assembly and the need to cooperate: “The novel coronavirus is not a problem that any single affected country can keep to itself or manage all by itself. The novel coronavirus is a threat to the entire world.”

Global Health Database contains records about MERS and bat reservoirs of coronaviruses. Sign up for a hot topic email and free access to Global Health database each month.

Journal articles about MERS

1. Eastern Mediteranean Health Journal supplement on coronavirus

2. Genomic Characterization of a Newly Discovered Coronavirus Associated with Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome in Humans.Sander van Boheemena, Miranda de Graafa, Chris Lauberb, Theo M. Bestebroera, V. Stalin Raja, Ali Moh Zakic, Albert D. M. E. Osterhausa, Bart L. Haagmansa, Alexander E. Gorbalenyabd, Eric J. Snijderb, and Ron A. M. Fouchiera. mBio volume 3 Number 6 e00473-12

3. Human Betacoronavirus 2c EMC/2012–related Viruses in Bats, Ghana and Europe.Annan A, Baldwin HJ, Corman VM, Klose SM, Owusu M, Nkrumah EE, et al. Emerging Infectious Diseases [Internet]. 2013 Mar. http://dx.doi.org/10.3201/eid1903.121503

4. MERS-CoV: in search of answers. Petherick, A. The Lancet, Volume 381, Issue 9883, Page 2069, 15 June 2013 doi:10.1016/S0140-6736(13)61228-3

5. Emerging respiratory and novel coronavirus 2012 infections and mass gatherings. J.A. Al-Tawfiq, C.A.H. Smallwood, K.G. Arbuthnott, M.S.K. Malik, M. Barbeschi and Z.A. Memish. Eastern Mediteranean Health Journal Vol.19 Supplement1 2013 p48.

6. Progress in global surveillance and response capacity 10 years after severe acute respiratory syndrome. Christopher R. Braden, Scott F. Dowell, Daniel B. Jernigan, and James M. Hughes Emerging Infectious Diseases Vol. 19, No. 6 864-869.

7. Who owns MERS. H5N1 blog. http://crofsblogs.typepad.com/h5n1/2013/06/who-owns-mers.html

World Environment Day: Think . Eat . Save

Vera Barbosa — Wed, 05 Jun 2013 16:01:54 +0100

Today is World Environment Day, which is the day to highlight awareness of the environment and promote political attention and action to protect all environments each year, always on 5th June. The day has been celebrated since 1972 and this year’s official theme is ‘Think.Eat.Save: Anti-food Waste and Unnecessary Resource Consumption,’ which is a very important point when considering the massive amount of food that is wasted, especially in the western world, each year.

The Institution of Mechanical Engineers published a report earlier this year, which highlighted the shocking level of waste within the global food system. The report entitled Global Food – Waste not, want not, claims that 30-50% (1.2 - 2 billion tonnes) of all food produced is wasted. In the context of a rapidly growing world population this amount of waste is unacceptable. The report also noted that for each item of food wasted, the resources which have gone towards producing it are also wasted. When considering water shortages in many areas of the world and the energy crises this inefficiency can be devastating.

To highlight the overall theme of avoiding food waste, UNEP has also provided a list of traditional and indigenous ways to preserve food that have been used by communities around the world for centuries. These include:

Chuños - introduced by the Incas to South America. It was a way of preserving potatoes by exposing a frost-resistant potato variety to the very low night temperatures of the Andean Altiplano, freezing them, and subsequently exposing them to the intense sunlight of the day.

Kiviak – a traditional wintertime Inuit food from Greenland that is made of auks (seabirds) preserved in the hollowed-out body of a seal and which are served at feasts or weddings.

Pemmican – a mixture of dried meat and tallow. North American tribes were the first ones to eat pemmican, but it was widely adopted as a high-energy food by Arctic and Antarctic explorers as it is a concentrated mixture of fat and protein.

Farinha – yucca or cassava flour that was produced by indigenous tribes by fermentation and maturation, but has become a highly popular Brazilian staple food.

Ghee – a type of butter that has a long shelf-life and needs no refrigeration, prepared by boiling butter and removing the residue. Introduced by the Bedouins and also used by other desert populations.

Cheese – one of our popular foods is an ancient food whose origin predates recorded history and is assumed to lie in the practice of transporting milk in bladders made of ruminants' stomachs, with their inherent supply of rennet.

The Chartered Institution of Water & Environmental Management (CIWEM) also published a report recently entitled Less is More: A lifecycle approach to waste prevention and resource optimisation, which aims to assist in the production of England’s waste prevention programme and raise awareness of this important issue. The report shows the potential for waste prevention across material lifecycles, from extraction to disposal.

CABI has an internet resource Environmental Impact, which is dedicated to environment and constitutes 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, biofuels, desertification and habitat loss. Environmental Impact is accessible by subscription.

Link to UNEP World Environment Day website.

You have a Right to Mental Health

Wendie Norris — Tue, 04 Jun 2013 10:03:00 +0100

Image: King College London, project Emerald (emerging mental health systems in low- and middle-income countries)

One of the key sessions I attended at the second day of “The world in denial: Global mental health matters”( March 26-27, 2013, Royal Society of Medicine, London) highlighted the existing legal tools available to achieve international recognition of the Right to Health, AND the problems of getting mental health included in this framework. In particular how including it under disability has implications for access to treatment. This blog summarizes the session and puts information into context with current events, including the 66th World Health Assembly recommendations.

There was much I learnt that day, yet of much I was already aware, as CABI’s Global Health database has 20,000 records on mental health, 25% of them focussed on developing countries. One of the eye-openers for me was an understanding of the various legal tools dealing with international recognition of the Right to Health and the problems of getting mental health included in this framework; how including it under disability has implications for access to treatment.

This is what I learnt, put simply, from talks given by Professor Norman Sartorius (President of World Psychiatric Association) and Gunilla Backman (Former health adviser SIDA & Editor, The right to health: theory and practice).

Basic Human rights: these are not defined or not universally accepted

AND

There are 5 categories of documents related to human rights

I have summarised the categories for you as:

1. Conventions: UN or international covenants: countries sign and then must abide by them

2. Declarations:
1948 UN declaration of human rights: referred to by everyone (individuals, academics and government policymakers) BUT not obligatory AND a choice of 2 different documents for countries to choose from! [One favoured by USA, one by Russia, each with different emphasis]. Under this banner, has come human genome project, opportunities for the disabled, protection of people with mental illness AND right to treatment.

3. UN Special Rapporteur on Right to Health, annual reports:
The 1st rapporteur was appointed in 2002, changed hands in 2009, and is held by a human rights lawyer. Role: “to raise the profile of the Right to Health as a fundamental human right; to clarify what the Right to Health means; and to identify ways of operationalizing this human right”. Acknowledges that mental health is most neglected of all human rights.

4. Regional instruments:

• WHO mental health declaration for Europe (valid only in Europe)

• American convention of human rights

• Banjul African charter of human & people’s rights

• Arab charter on human rights

5. Non-binding standards, guidelines & declarations: these depend on an individual’s application of them in health practice and also on medical societies.

You can read more in the Global Health Knowledge Base blog Right to Health and mental health which forms part of June's e-newsletter with the theme Global Mental Health.

As Locog winds up, what is the London 2012 legacy?

Dave Simpson — Fri, 31 May 2013 15:08:14 +0100

Around ten months after they opened, the London 2012 Olympic Games are becoming a distant memory, but as another summer begins the efforts to ensure lasting legacies continue. An unexpected surplus in the final accounts of the London Organising Committee of the Olympic Games (Locog) means a minor windfall for legacy projects, while yesterday London Mayor Boris Johnson got together with Australian cricketing legend Shane Warne to publicise volunteering opportunities in the hope that one of the big Olympic success stories, the tens of thousands of volunteers, will continue to inspire.

Shane Warne said "grassroots sport can't survive without the support and dedication" of volunteers as he joined forces with Boris Johnson to announce 25,000 new opportunities for Team London volunteers as part of the legacy of the London 2012 Games.

Mr Johnson is calling on Londoners to offer their time and skills to a range of projects from planting a community garden, time keeping at fun runs, or helping young people with job skills, to volunteering at major sporting and cultural events like Ride London, the Greenwich and Docklands Festival and the ICC Champions Trophy.

Warne said: "It's a true delight to be supporting the Mayor of London's volunteering drive.

"We all saw how much of a difference the many thousands of volunteers made last summer during the London 2012 Games. I can't be enthusiastic enough about people joining in, even if only for a few hours now and again, they can still make a difference.

"Grassroots sports can't survive without the support and dedication of good people of all ages and backgrounds."

Volunteer charities were among the winners this week when Locog announced a £30 million surplus in their final accounts. Most of the surplus goes back to the government, and the British Olympic Association gains £5.3 million, while a total £1.3m will be donated to Games legacy projects as part of an agreement with the National Lottery. The International Inspiration sports legacy charity will receive £1m and the Join In Trust (which aims to use volunteers to run sports and other events) £300,000.

London 2012 sponsor BT last week signed up as the first commercial sponsor of the Join In Trust, which is headed up by former Locog marketing director Greg Nugent and ex-ITV chief executive Sir Charles Allen.

BT will work closely with Join In to raise the profile of volunteering over the coming months and will provide volunteering opportunities at sports clubs and community groups across the UK.

Volunteering, sport participation (both grass roots and elite), tourism and urban regeneration are just some of the legacies which were hoped for from London 2012. The success of some of these aims has been called into question, with recent news for example of over one third of school teachers reporting a drop in the number of children exercising. In April, a report on the Olympics by the Public Accounts Committee of MPs warned that the government had no clear plan for capitalising on the legacy of the games, which was in danger of "fizzling out". The tourism industry group Tourism Alliance has also claimed that falling tourism funding risks any potential tourism legacy from the Games.

Links to several legacy organizations are given below. CABI's Leisure Tourism Database currently provides abstracts for 100 papers on Olympic legacies, and has a wide range of news and review articles on the topic. A few of the more recent studies are listed below..

Useful links

Legacy Trust UK

London Legacy Development Corporation

London 2012 legacy pages

Join In

Academic studies

The (Neo) institutionalization of legacy and its sustainable governance within the Olympic Movement. Leopkey, B.; Parent, M. M.; European Sport Management Quarterly, 2012, 12, 5, pp 437-455, many ref. [doi: 16184742.2012.693116]

Governance of the London 2012 Olympic Games legacy. Girginov, V.; International Review for the Sociology of Sport, 2012, 47, 5, pp 543-558, many ref. [doi: 1012690211413966 ]

Culture and the 2012 Games: creating a tourism legacy? Stevenson, N.; Ploner, J.; Robinson, M.; Journal of Tourism and Cultural Change, 2012, 10, 2, pp 137-149, 47 ref. [doi: 14766825.2012.682478]

Olympic games legacy: from general benefits to sustainable long-term legacy. Leopkey, B.; Parent, M. M.; Routledge, Abingdon, UK, International Journal of the History of Sport, 2012, 29, 6, pp 924-943, many ref. [doi: 09523367.2011.623006]

The sport participation legacy of the Sydney 2000 Olympic Games and other international sporting events hosted in Australia. Veal, A. J.; Toohey, K.; Frawley, S.;Journal of Policy Research in Tourism, Leisure and Events, 2012, 4, 2, pp 155-184, many ref. [doi: 19407963.2012.662619]

Developing a physical activity legacy from the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games: a policy-led systematic review. Weed, M.; Coren, E.; Fiore, J.; Wellard, I.; Mansfield, L.; Chatziefstathiou, D.; Dowse, S.; Perspectives in Public Health, 2012, 132, 2, pp 75-80, 36 ref. [doi: 1757913911435758]

Developing a framework for evaluating Olympic and Paralympic legacies. Dickson, T. J.; Benson, A. M.; Blackman, D. A.; Brown, G.; Journal of Sport & Tourism, 2011, 16, 4, pp 285-302, 47 ref. [doi: 14775085.2011.635014]

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.