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To save the planet, chow down on a caterpillar
Richard Jones/Sinopix/Rex Features
UPFRONT
Wing, leg or carapace? IT’S cricket crumble for dinner. We should all be eating more insects, because doing so is better for the planet than tucking into conventional meat like beef. In a new report entitled “Edible Insects: Future prospects for food and feed security”, the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) says that farmed insects could make a big contribution to our diets – they contain lots of protein and are cheap to produce. They also have major environmental benefits. Conventional meat is not an efficient way to get nutrients because animals must be fed on crops, and much of the energy that goes into cultivating the crops is wasted. To produce 1 kilogram of beef, for example, you need 10 kg of feed,
whereas 1 kg of crickets requires just 1.7 kg. What’s more, 80 per cent of a cricket is edible compared with just 40 per cent of a cow. The FAO therefore calculates that crickets are 12 times as efficient at converting feed into meat as cows. By farming insects, we could get more meat from the same amount of grain, use less land for agriculture and cut pollution. The problem is that most people in the developed world are reluctant to eat creepy-crawlies. “On paper, insects are fantastic, but on a plate most people won’t touch them,” says Aran Dasan of Ento, a London company specialising in insect-based foods. “I don’t think we can sell insects based on their sustainability,” Dasan says. Instead Ento targets foodies with bite-sized morsels.
Asbestos trade
Five of the six forms of asbestos are already listed under the UN Rotterdam Convention. Chrysotile cement is, however, still in use – particularly in Asia, Russia and eastern Europe. Russia, the world’s leading exporter, Kazakhstan, Ukraine, Kyrgyzstan, Zimbabwe, India and Vietnam blocked the move to list the mineral at a meeting in Geneva, Switzerland, arguing that it would increase shipping and insurance costs. “This is a human tragedy,” says Kathleen Ruff of the Rotterdam Convention Alliance.
–An idea with legs-
Polio: the last salvo
“All 140 countries must switch vaccines at the same time. Nothing like that has been done before” returns after that, we will need live vaccine to contain it. By then, drug firms will not be making it, says Bruce Aylward, head of the WHO’s polio programme. 4 | NewScientist | 18 May 2013
D-Wave
WILL this be the end of an old foe? A new global assault on polio will involve the biggest roll-out of a vaccine ever attempted. Until now, the World Health Organization’s eradication drive has used a vaccine made from weakened live virus. It is cheap and effective, but the virus in it can sometimes revert to causing disease – and spread. Circulating vaccine-derived polio viruses (cVDPV) now cause more outbreaks of polio than wild virus. The original plan was for every country to stop using live vaccine when wild polio disappeared, switching to a killed vaccine that would protect children as cVDPV died out. But if either virus
The new plan, launched this week, is for the 140 countries at most risk of polio resurgence to start giving killed vaccine once the wild virus is largely gone. They will also use live vaccine effective against two of polio’s three strains. Virtually all cVDPV is type 2 – which was eradicated in the wild in 1999. By using live vaccine made with types 1 and 3, countries can maintain immunity while cutting off the source of cVDPV. All 140 countries will have to switch vaccines at the same time. “Nothing like that has ever been done before,” says Aylward.
DO HOLD your breath. An attempt to blunt the threat of asbestos in developing countries has failed. Russia and six allies last week blocked a move to have chrysotile, or white asbestos, listed under a United Nations convention that requires member countries to decide whether or not to risk importing it. More than 107,000 people die every year from asbestos-related lung cancer, mesothelioma and asbestosis, according to the World Health Organization.
Quantum face-off GO, GO quantum gadget! For the first time, a commercially available quantum computer has been pitted against an ordinary PC – and it left the regular machine in the dust. D-Wave of Burnaby, Canada, has been selling what it calls quantum computers since 2011. The firm’s devices are designed to solve an optimisation problem that crops up in applications such as image–Are you in there, entanglement?– recognition and machine learning.
UPFRONT
Wing, leg or carapace? IT’S cricket crumble for dinner. We should all be eating more insects, because doing so is better for the planet than tucking into conventional meat like beef. In a new report entitled “Edible Insects: Future prospects for food and feed security”, the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) says that farmed insects could make a big contribution to our diets – they contain lots of protein and are cheap to produce. They also have major environmental benefits. Conventional meat is not an efficient way to get nutrients because animals must be fed on crops, and much of the energy that goes into cultivating the crops is wasted. To produce 1 kilogram of beef, for example, you need 10 kg of feed,
whereas 1 kg of crickets requires just 1.7 kg. What’s more, 80 per cent of a cricket is edible compared with just 40 per cent of a cow. The FAO therefore calculates that crickets are 12 times as efficient at converting feed into meat as cows. By farming insects, we could get more meat from the same amount of grain, use less land for agriculture and cut pollution. The problem is that most people in the developed world are reluctant to eat creepy-crawlies. “On paper, insects are fantastic, but on a plate most people won’t touch them,” says Aran Dasan of Ento, a London company specialising in insect-based foods. “I don’t think we can sell insects based on their sustainability,” Dasan says. Instead Ento targets foodies with bite-sized morsels.
Asbestos trade
Five of the six forms of asbestos are already listed under the UN Rotterdam Convention. Chrysotile cement is, however, still in use – particularly in Asia, Russia and eastern Europe. Russia, the world’s leading exporter, Kazakhstan, Ukraine, Kyrgyzstan, Zimbabwe, India and Vietnam blocked the move to list the mineral at a meeting in Geneva, Switzerland, arguing that it would increase shipping and insurance costs. “This is a human tragedy,” says Kathleen Ruff of the Rotterdam Convention Alliance.
–An idea with legs-
Polio: the last salvo
“All 140 countries must switch vaccines at the same time. Nothing like that has been done before” returns after that, we will need live vaccine to contain it. By then, drug firms will not be making it, says Bruce Aylward, head of the WHO’s polio programme. 4 | NewScientist | 18 May 2013
D-Wave
WILL this be the end of an old foe? A new global assault on polio will involve the biggest roll-out of a vaccine ever attempted. Until now, the World Health Organization’s eradication drive has used a vaccine made from weakened live virus. It is cheap and effective, but the virus in it can sometimes revert to causing disease – and spread. Circulating vaccine-derived polio viruses (cVDPV) now cause more outbreaks of polio than wild virus. The original plan was for every country to stop using live vaccine when wild polio disappeared, switching to a killed vaccine that would protect children as cVDPV died out. But if either virus
The new plan, launched this week, is for the 140 countries at most risk of polio resurgence to start giving killed vaccine once the wild virus is largely gone. They will also use live vaccine effective against two of polio’s three strains. Virtually all cVDPV is type 2 – which was eradicated in the wild in 1999. By using live vaccine made with types 1 and 3, countries can maintain immunity while cutting off the source of cVDPV. All 140 countries will have to switch vaccines at the same time. “Nothing like that has ever been done before,” says Aylward.
DO HOLD your breath. An attempt to blunt the threat of asbestos in developing countries has failed. Russia and six allies last week blocked a move to have chrysotile, or white asbestos, listed under a United Nations convention that requires member countries to decide whether or not to risk importing it. More than 107,000 people die every year from asbestos-related lung cancer, mesothelioma and asbestosis, according to the World Health Organization.
Quantum face-off GO, GO quantum gadget! For the first time, a commercially available quantum computer has been pitted against an ordinary PC – and it left the regular machine in the dust. D-Wave of Burnaby, Canada, has been selling what it calls quantum computers since 2011. The firm’s devices are designed to solve an optimisation problem that crops up in applications such as image–Are you in there, entanglement?– recognition and machine learning.