‘Outstanding Paper Prize’ for Honeybee Research

October 2007

 

The editors of The Journal of Experimental Biology have awarded their journal’s ‘Outstanding Paper Prize for 2007’ to NRI’s Visiting Fellow in Ecological Entomology, Dr Don Reynolds, and four colleagues from Rothamsted Research for their paper entitled “Honeybees perform optimal scale-free searching flights when attempting to locate a food source”. In this research, the flight patterns of foraging honeybees searching for an artificial feeder were recorded using harmonic radar – a technique previously developed at NRI by Prof. Joe Riley and Alan Smith. Bees were ‘tagged’ with a small electronic device (a transponder) that allowed their subsequent flights to be monitored over scales of several hundred metres. The experiments showed that the bees’ flight patterns have scale-free (Lévy-flight) characteristics that constitute an optimal searching strategy for locating the feeder. This collaboration between mathematical, physical and ecological scientists is leading to better predictive models of insect flight patterns over landscape scales.

 

A honeybee forager tagged with a harmonic radar transponder Photo courtesy of Andrew Martin

For further information about NRI’s collaborative research with Rothamsted on the use of harmonic radar to study insect behaviour and ecology, contact Dr Don Reynolds (D.Reynolds@gre.ac.uk).

 

IPCC Awarded Nobel Peace Prize

October 2007

 

NRI welcomes the award of the Nobel Peace Prize to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), jointly with Al Gore. The Nobel Committee’s announcement notes that “Through the scientific reports it has issued over the past two decades, the IPCC has created an ever-broader informed consensus about the connection between human activities and global warming”.

 

In the IPCC’s response, its Chairman, Rajendra Pachauri, said that “This is an honour that goes to all the scientists and authors who have contributed to the work of the IPCC”. NRI’s Associate Research Director (Social Sciences) and Professor of Development Anthropology, John Morton, is amongst those thus honoured, being one of the 450 Lead Authors who worked on the IPCC’s Fourth Assessment Report, published this year, in the area of ‘Climate Change Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability’. His contribution was based on his considerable expertise in livestock and pastoralist development, with a particular interest in issues of drought management and irrigation, and his substantial field experience in Africa and South Asia.

 

Professor John Morton in the field with pastoralists in Gujarat © University of Greenwich

 

On hearing the news, Prof. Morton commented that “The award of the Nobel Peace Prize recognizes the importance of global climate change to all aspects of human society, including the dangers of conflict over natural resources that lie ahead if warming goes unchecked. The IPCC process has been a collective international and multi-disciplinary effort. I am very proud to have been involved in the agricultural chapter on ‘Food, Fibre and Forest Products’ [PDF 920Kb], in which we were able to review the serious potential impacts, objectively and with full recognition of how complex and locally-specific they will be.” As well as being a Lead Author on this agricultural chapter, Prof. Morton was also a Contributing Author to the chapter concerned with specific climate change impacts in ‘Africa’ [PDF 1.8Mb].

 

For more information on NRI’s activities relating to the impact of climate change, especially for small-scale agriculture in Africa, contact Prof. John Morton (J.F.Morton@gre.ac.uk).

 

32 Kebbi State Students Earn Master’s Degrees

September 2007

 

The University of Greenwich is collaborating with Kebbi State in north-western Nigeria to establish a new University there. As a key part of this, thirty-two students from Kebbi State arrived here in October 2006 to study on MSc programmes in a number of subjects, especially Natural Resource Management, Science (including Biotechnology), Computer Studies, and Engineering. Nearly a year later, they have successfully gained their Master’s degrees and are now returning home to play an important role in the academic development of the new Kebbi State University. John Linton, NRI’s Commercial Director, said “It has been a great pleasure to have the Kebbi group studying with us: they fitted in very well and adapted to the inevitable challenges of undertaking postgraduate studies in a foreign country, they worked hard, and our staff have greatly enjoyed teaching them. We are delighted with their success, which is a reflection of their effort and enthusiasm.”

 

32 Kebbi State students have gained Master’s Degrees at University of Greenwich in September 2007 © University of Greenwich

 

However, that is not the end of the story.  A third of the successful MSc graduates will be returning to Greenwich later in the autumn to study as research postgraduates (for MPhil/PhD degrees), and a further 20 students from Kebbi State will be arriving in October to start their MSc programmes with us.  As part of the collaborative arrangements, staff from NRI are also assisting with an assessment of the feasibility of establishing a vegetable oil research centre within the new University in Kebbi State.

 

For more information on MSc programmes at NRI, contact Dr Peter Burt (P.J.A.Burt@gre.ac.uk), and for information on research degrees (MPhil/PhD or MSc by Research) at NRI, contact Prof. Andrew Westby (A.Westby@gre.ac.uk).  To learn more about this collaboration with Kebbi State, and similar initiatives, please contact John Linton (J.Linton@gre.ac.uk).

 

Strengthening Capacity in Africa

May 2007

At Arusha, Tanzania, women farmers are participating in on-farm trials supported by ASARECA © University of Greenwich

 

NRI is participating in a new initiative which is designed to strengthen agricultural research capacity in sub-Saharan Africa. The programme – ‘Strengthening Capacity for Agricultural Research and Development in Africa’ (SCARDA) – is led by FARA with funding from DFID. It will be implemented in the three regions by their sub-regional organizations:

• Areas covered by the three sub-regional organizations ASARECA, CORAF/WECARD and SADC-FANR. © University of Greenwich

  in Eastern and Central Africa by ASARECA;
• in West and Central Africa by CORAF/WECARD;
• in Southern Africa by SADC-FANR.

An inaugural planning meeting was held in Accra, Ghana, earlier this year (20-21 February 2007), and scoping studies are now being undertaken to identify the capacity-strengthening priorities that will be addressed by the SCARDA programme.  The main focus of the programme is to strengthen the capacity of key organizations that can contribute to the development of stronger national agricultural research systems in the target countries.

 

NRI is supporting FARA and the three sub-regional organizations ASARECA, CORAF/WECARD and SADC-FANR during the current scoping studies, and will provide capacity-strengthening services during the three-year programme implementation period.

 

For further information on this programme and on NRI’s capabilities in capacity strengthening for agricultural research and development, contact Dr Tim Chancellor (T.C.B.Chancellor@gre.ac.uk), who is co-ordinating NRI’s inputs to SCARDA.

 

Report on Telecentre Initiatives in Rural India

January 2007

 

NRI’s Reader in Rural Livelihoods, Czech Conroy has undertaken a critical review of the role of rural telecentres as one of the means by which information and communications technology (ICT) can contribute to development objectives in rural areas. The review, carried out as part of the EU-funded pilot phase of the TeleSupport Project, discusses issues raised by previous literature on the role of telecentres, and then focuses on descriptions or case studies of nine telecentre initiatives in India. The review (available as the Project’s Working Paper 4 [pdf 253Kb]) relates these case-study experiences to general themes concerning internet-based telecentres and wider approaches to communication for development, including traditional media and other elements of ICT, such as radio and mobile phones.

 

For more information, visit the TeleSupport website or contact the TeleSupport Project Coordinator Dr Tim Chancellor (T.C.B.Chancellor@gre.ac.uk) or the review’s author Czech Conroy (M.A.Conroy@gre.ac.uk).

 

 

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