Tom Olaka, a community animal health worker in Karamajong, northern Uganda, was part of a vaccination campaign in remote areas of the Horn of Africa that drove the cattle plague rinderpest to extinction in 2010 (photo credit: Christine Jost). Fred Pearce writes in New Scientist about How African herders rid the planet of a disease, … Continue reading
ILRI veterinary epidemiologist Jeff Mariner presents his research at a meeting of the World Animal Health Organisation (OIE) (photo credit: OIE). Lauren Everitt of AllAfrica interviewed Jeffrey Mariner, a scientist at the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) in Nairobi, Kenya, about a current article he co-authored in Science (13 Sep 2012) on lessons learned in the eradication … Continue reading
Petroglyphs and pictographs in the Jebel Acacus, Libyan Sahara (photo on Flickr by Carsten ten Brink / 10b travelling). This month’s publication of a scientific article on new evidence of livestock herding in prehistoric Africa is stirring interest. ScienceDaily, for example, reports the following: Chemical analysis of pottery reveals first dairying in Saharan Africa nearly 7,000 years … Continue reading
For the November 2011 ‘liveSTOCK Exchange’ event at ILRI, some senior ILRI staff were provoked to chime in on the need to differentiate research data, results and messages about livestock production systems … Map showing differences in the levels of meat consumed in the world (map by Worldmapper). What set off ILRI’s staff are some … Continue reading
An animated 3-minute video clip by the University of Minnesota’s Institute for the Environment. Justin Gillis has published an interesting piece this week in the Green Blog of the New York Times on a big study just published in Nature by Jon Foley, director of the Institute on the Environment at the University of Minnesota. … Continue reading
These camels in northern Kenya are part of a large herd that will cover dozens of kilometres in search of water (photo on Flickr by Ann Weru/IRIN). USA Today reports on a new paper in the prestigious journal Science that increasing temperatures are pushing plant and animal species to move uphill and northward at much … Continue reading
Christine Ottery reports in SciDevNet last week (24 January 2011) on a review published in the scientific journal Science (21 January 2011) saying that the risk of animals passing diseases to humans could increase in some areas and decrease in others as people encroach on and disrupt wildlife migration paths. ‘. . . Although there … Continue reading
‘Die genetische Vielfalt von afrikanischem Vieh muss unbedingt und raschest in Bio-Banken gespeichert werden. ‘Das fordern Forscher in einem Artikel im Wissenschaftsmagazin Science. “Die in Afrika vorhandenen nativen Zuchten haben sich den zum Teil sehr schwierigen Lebensbedingungen gut anpassen können”, so Studien Co-Autor Olivier Hanotte, Professor für Genetik an der University of Nottingham im pressetext-Interview. … Continue reading
‘The message from our paper is not an inevitable disaster around the corner, but the need for continued vigilance.’–Malik Peiris Continue reading
The 12 February 2010 issue of Science examines the obstacles to achieving global food security and some promising solutions. News articles introduce farmers and researchers who are finding ways to boost harvests, especially in the developing world. Reviews, Perspectives, and an audio interview provide a broader context for the causes and effects of food insecurity … Continue reading
ILRI Clippings 