So many things have happened, that there was not much time left to write in this blog …
Last Saturday, I was in Bonn for a workshop on ‘computer assisted reporting’. Inspired by the workshops of the VVOJ (a Dutch-Flemish organisation for investigative-journalism), I thought it would be a good idea to do something similar for the association of science journalists (WPK) that I am member of. So I made a proposal and the WPK-staff organised the practical things in Bonn.
Such activities are always a nice opportunity to meet colleagues and exchange ideas - it was worth the trip.
A week before, I was in Berlin, where the European Research Council was officially launched (here is my article). The trip included a visit to the famous Geoforschungszentrum in Potsdam and some other interesting research institutes around Berlin.
When the professional part was over, I stayed a few days to visit Berlin. The rebuilt city is very impressive, it breaths the turbulent history that is so fresh that you can still feel it in the air.
The museums in and around Berlin harbour the most beautiful treasures: the Egyptian Collection in the Altes Museum, the Pergamon Museum with its impressive buildings from the Middle East and Hellenistic time, and than the Berggrün Museum in Charlottenburg with a very beautiful and amazinly large collection of Picasso’s, Klee’s and Matisses.
Also recommended: the Hollocaust memorial, the street exhibition at Checkpoint Charly with some remnants of the wall …
Berlin was really a discovery to me, and I would recommend it to anyone who is wondering about where to go for the next city trip.
Kim
Comments Off
Rain forest is being cut for the plantation of oil palm trees, and at the same time, European governments (inc luding the Flemish) are subsidising the use of palm oil for the production of ‘green electricity’. Researchers and conservation organisations are warning that this sort of biofuel production (with the destruction of forests and peat land) is causing more carbon dioxide emissions than the use of fossil fuels does. Companies both in Europe, Asia, Africa and South-America are investing a lot in palm oil, the business is growing fast.
Some organisations, like the Round Table for Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) are working on a (voluntary) certification system to prevent the malpractice, and the European Commission is talking about it too.
Many scientists are interested in another solution: Jatropha curcas, a plant with oil-rich seeds. The oil can be used directly as a biofuel or turned into biodiesel. The plant can grow on deserted land that is dry and poor in nutrients. Since two or three years, hundreds of thousands of hectares are being planted with jatropha, in Africa, Myanmar and India, although it still needs to be proven how sustainable the fuel will be. And how expensive, because harvesting the jatropha-seeds is labour intensive.
I received many positive reactions on my article in De Standaard (from as far as Senegal), mostly from people in the tropical business or in tropical research, adding information from their own experience and confirming that it is a ‘hot topic’, not only because of its impact on energy production, but also on development.
My article consists of two stories and two small boxes with details. By c licking to the pdf’s (pages 32 and 33) you can see the entire double page.
Kim
Someone from FlandersBio reacted to the call in my previous post, to help find tools and technology that can be operated by voice, for paralysed people who cannot use their hands or head. He mentioned Sensotec, Technology & Integration and Skil. I didn’t find too many voice controlled devices on those three websites, but the last company seems to have telephones that can be operated by voice.
From another source, I received information that was less commercial: there is a center called Modem Communicatie- en Computercentrum that gives independent advice about improving the accessibility to electronic aids for people with a disability.
Thanks for all the tips!
Kim
A remarkable coincidence happened this week. For a story about brain activity during coma, I was talking on the phone with Steven Laureys, a neurologist from the University of Liège, who is an expert in this field. He also did a lot of research on people in a vegetative state. A vegetative brain still reacts on external stimuli, like pain or sound, but only on a primary sensory or motoric level. The connections to associative brain regions, for ‘higher processing’ or consciousness are not functional anymore. Vegetative people are awake but unconscious, while people in coma are not awake (they have their eyes closed) and are unconscious.
Just when the conversation with Laureys had ended, the phone rang again. A man called to ask if I knew any company or organisation that provides technical aid for paralysed people who can only use their voice and not their hands or head to command the instruments around them. He was trying to help an acquaintance. (I could not help him, so anyone who does, please contact me).
The man than started to talk about his daughter, who has been in a vegetative state ever since she was born, 28 years ago. She is at home where the man and his wife have taken care of her all these years. She needs some attention every half hour, so the situation has totally changed their lives. ,,We had to abandon all our adventurous plans in life. But still’’, he assured me, ,,I can say that we are happy.’’
The theoretical explanation I had just heard from Steven Laureys suddenly came very much alive. The man who talked about his daughter added that he would be happy to help with advice to anyone in the same situation. I have his details, so you can use my webform.
Kim
In many third world countries, local vegetables are forgotten or neglected. Mass produced ‘world crops’ like corn and cabbage have replaced them in the daily menu. The disapearance of the leafy vegetables from the diet often causes a lack of vitamins and minerals in the local population. This kind of ‘invisible’ malnutrition leads to diseases and underdevelopment in children and adults, even in places where plenty of food seems available. Obesity, due to the consumption of the easy food of the modern world - high in calories and fat - is increasing at a higher rate in developing countries, and is becoming a real problem in some urban areas. Diabetes and heart disease usually take a greater toll in poor countries, where healthcare is limited.
The organisation Bioversity International, based in Rome, is coordinating projects with local partners to re-introduce the traditional leafy vegetables. In Kenya, scientists, television, supermarkets, restaurants, and many other organisations worked together and succeeded in bringing the vegetables back to the supermarket and the local market places. After the success in Kenya, similar projects are starting up in other countries, where the effects on nutritional health will be monitored more closely.
I learned about this fascinating project from Patrick Maundu, a Kenyan etnobotanist, and Emile Frison, the (Belgian) director of Bioversity International (formerly know as IPGRI), whom I met at a biotech conference in Rome.
At the University of Ghent, Céline Termote told me about another (but related) project she is doing in Congo to bring more diversity into the local menu. She and her colleagues are identifying valuable (wild) fruits and vegetables in the jungle, in the hope they can be cultivated.
If you go to my article in De Standaard, you might want to
c lick to the pdf: it is a double page with beautiful pictures.
Kim
The Genius Factory is a book that I would recommend to every science journalist, and to everyone else. It tells the story of a ‘Nobel sperm bank’, which was founded by Robert Graham in 1980 in the United States, with the aim to create a generation of ‘Nobel children’.
Slate journalist David Plotz found donors and mothers that once were involved in the sperm bank, and talked to some of the more than two hundred children that originated from it. The family stories are brilliantly written and really touching, the portraits of the donors and the other people behind the sperm bank vary from hilariously funny to tragi-comic or simply pitiful.
Plotz brought some of the children in contact with their (until than anonymous) donors; a moving experience for some, a disappointment for others - some donors appeared to be not that ‘Nobel’ after all…
In his book (which also appeared in Dutch: Wonderkind op bestelling), Plotz gives an interesting insight on how the eugenic ideology (selecting people on the basis of certain qualities to create a ‘better’ human race) grew and spread throughout the United States and Europe, and how it led to less ‘innocent’ events in history than the foundation of a sperm bank.
Here is my article about it in De Standaard.
More about the book and the author: www.thegeniusfactory.net
Also highly recommended: My Unc le Oswald, a very funny story that Roald Dahl wrote in the eighties, inspired by Robert Graham and pushing the idea of a Nobel sperm bank just a little bit further …. 
Kim
PS: One more tip: The most beautiful story I have read in the past year was Life of Pi, by Yann Martel, a book you will never forget.
Just noticed something funny: today, the recently launched ‘international’ news channel France 24 features a science story L’eau va manquer en Bolivie, about c limate change and melting glaciers.
The movie on the website begins with “Les Andes Boliviennes, altitude 5.000 mètres…”. Web visitors who choose the English version at France 24 (Bolivian Andes facing water shortages), hear in the same movie “The Bolivian Andes, altitude 15.000 meters…”. A new world record !
Kim
Jef Leroy, a Belgian researcher at the Mexican National Institute of Public Health calculated (together with American colleagues) that many more children in developing countries could be saved if research money was better spent. Today, 97 percent of the research funding for the prevention of child death is used for the development of new technologies (new vaccines, medicines, diagnostics…).
Previous calculations have shown that even the best technologies could save only two million of the ten million children (younger than five) that die every year, if nothing is done about the availability and use of the medical aid.
However, six million children could be saved if the already existing technologies (rehydratation salts, musquito-nets…) would be more available and used. But only three percent of the child death research money is spent on research to make the current technology more available. Leroy calls it the 3/97 gap.
In the February issue of the American Journal of Public Health (and advanced online), he and his colleagues urgently ask for more research on the strategies that have the capacity to save most lives. (Article in De Standaard.)
With the name ‘3/97 gap’, Jef Leroy also refers to the 10/90 gap: only ten percent of all research funding on health is spent on problems of developing countries. The other ninety percent goes to health issues of the industrialized world.
Kim
Comments Off
Het Nieuwsblad, the more popular newspaper of the media-company I work for, is now also publishing my Science Shops (Wetenschapswinkel: a column in which I answer readers’ questions about everyday-life science). That is good news, because it almost multiplies the number of readers by four.
I have not heard any recent sales numbers of my Science Shop book yet, but it is still prominent in the book shops, so I suppose it is still doing well.
The latest question I answered in the Science Shop was ‘Why does shampoo only foam the second time you wash your hair?’ It is an individual thing: shampoo can also foam the first time. The foaming depends on the skin type, the washing frequency and the amount of calcium in the water. And softer types of shampoo (like for children) may not foam at all. Warning for foam fans: too aggressive treatments may cause the skin to dry out.
My article in Het Nieuwsblad has been edited a bit (shortened). The full version in De Standaard is here.
Kim
Comments Off
Between Christmas and New Year, we made a Science Section in De Standaard with a festive twist. In the Science Shop, the question of the week was ‘Do animals have a sense of humor?’ Very difficult to say. Apparently, rats can laugh, but that does not prove that they are joking. Funny ancdotes of parrots and chimpanzees suggest that some animals really have humor, but proof is hard to get. It is an intriguing field of research, and amusing too…
Kim
Comments Off