regulate cannabis

well, it's not news really, as we've known for decades that prohibition isn't working, but it's always nice to see it reiterated by some official report, even though we know that politicians aren't listening to reason:

Report urges regulated market for cannabis to replace prohibition

Currently reading : The Great Book of Hemp: The Complete Guide to the Environmental, Commercial, and Medicinal Uses of the World's Most Extraordinary Plant By Rowan Robinson Release date: 1995-11-01

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microbial mining

There's an intriguing piece in Nature's journal club column today, on microbes drilling (or more likely, etching?) microscopic mining shafts into basalt rocks in Hawaii. Apparently, the preference for one component mineral over the other suggests they are after the metals, rather than just creating a cave for protection.

Original paper: A. W. Walton, Geobiology, Volume 6 Issue 4, Pages 351 - 364

Currently reading : Astrobiology: A Brief Introduction By Kevin W. Plaxco

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justice for the miami five

Tuesday marked the 10th anniversary of the arrest of the Miami Five, and there have been whole-page ads in the papers to draw attention to their plight. Essentially, they were arrested for spying on the Cuban exiles in Miami hatching plots to overthrow the Cuban regime. Various sources including Amnesty International and the UN have concluded that they did not have a fair trial. article in tuesday's Guardian

The case has a very high profile in Cuba, I've seen posters and calendars with the pictures of the Miami Five everywhere, but I have hardly ever heard it mentioned elsewhere, so it's definitely a good thing if all the Nobel laureates and other celebrities can raise some awareness. I reckon this is one thing the next US president may want to look at.

Currently listening : Rochy By Rochy Release date: 2006-03-02

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cracking wood

Combining two known approaches, solid acids and ionic liquids as solvents, Ferdi Schueth's group at MPI Muelheim has succeeded in depolymerizing cellulose even from wood under remarkably gentle conditions, an important first step in the production of so-called second generation biofuels from inedible plant materials such as agricultural waste and wood.

Read my story in Chemistry World.

Currently reading : How to Avoid Huge Ships (Humour)

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story of divine chocolate

I don't normally read chocolate wrapping papers, but last week I did, and I found that the inside of my chocolate paper had an interesting story to tell:


The story of how small-scale cocoa growers in Ghana got to own a chocolate company in the UK . . .

In autumn 1998, Divine, the first ever Fairtrade chocolate bar aimed at the mass market was launched onto the UK confectionery market. In an exciting new business model, the co-operative of cocoa farmers in Ghana own shares in the company making the chocolate bar. Two farmers' representatives came to London to celebrate at the most Divine launch party in town. Here's how it all happened . . . . .

Getting it Together
In the early 1990's, the structural adjustment program involved the liberalisation of the cocoa market in Ghana. A number of leading farmers, including a visionary farmer representative on the Ghana Cocoa Board, Nana Frimpong Abrebrese, came to realise that they had the opportunity to organize farmers, to take on the internal marketing function. This would mean that they could set up a company, to sell their own cocoa to the Cocoa Marketing Company (CMC), the state-owned company that would continue to be the single exporter of Ghana cocoa.

These farmers pooled resources to set up Kuapa Kokoo, a farmers' co-op, which would trade its own cocoa, and thus manage the selling process more efficiently than the government cocoa agents. Kuapa Kokoo - which means good cocoa growers - has a mission to empower farmers in their efforts to gain a dignified livelihood, to increase women's participation in all of Kuapa's activities, and to develop environmentally friendly cultivation of cocoa. The farmers who set up Kuapa Kokoo, were supported by Twin Trading, the fair trade company that puts the coffee into Cafédirect and SNV a Dutch NGO.

Doing the Decent Thing
Kuapa Kokoo weighs, bags and transports the cocoa to market and carries out all the necessary legal paperwork for its members. Kuapa strives to ensure that all its activities are transparent, accountable and democratic.
It doesn't cheat the farmers by using inaccurate weighing scales, as other buying agents often do, and because it operates so efficiently, it can pass on the savings to its members. After seeing the benefits Kuapa gains for its members, more and more farmers want to join and the association now has upwards of 40,000 members organised in approximately 1300 village societies.

Pa Pa Paa - The Best of the Best
Cocoa from Ghana is of a high quality and trades at a premium on the world market. Kuapa Kokoo's motto is pa pa paa - which means the best of the best in the local Twi language. Kuapa's premium quality cocoa is now sold to chocolate companies around the world.

A Choc of One's Own
The cocoa farmers, who were already getting a Fairtrade price from some international customers, voted at their 1997 AGM to invest in a chocolate bar of their own. They decided that rather than aiming for the niche market where most Fairtrade products were placed, they would aim to produce a mainstream chocolate bar to compete with other major brands in UK.

A Brand New Day
Together with Twin, Kuapa helped set up The Day Chocolate Company in 1998, with the enthusiastic support of The Body Shop, Christian Aid and Comic Relief. The company was named in memory of Richard Day, a key member of the team at Twin that had helped Kuapa Kokoo develop its organisation.
The Department for International Development pulled out all the stops to guarantee Day's business loan, and NatWest offered sympathetic banking facilities.

Simply Divine
Divine Fairtrade milk chocolate, made from Kuapa's best of the best fairly traded cocoa beans was launched in October 1998 and by Christmas 1998, had made it onto the supermarket shelves . . .

A first for Fairtrade
The farmers' ownership stake in The Day Chocolate Company a first in the fair trade world, means that Kuapa Kokoo has a meaningful input into decisions about how Divine is produced and sold. Two representatives from Kuapa Kokoo are Directors on the company's Board, and one out of four Board Meetings every year is held in Ghana. As shareholders, the farmers also receive a share of the profits from the sale of Divine. This innovative company structure was recognised when Divine was awarded Millennium Product status.

Beans mean Business
In a ferociously competitive chocolate market worth almost £4 billion in the UK alone, being the new bar on the block can be a daunting prospect. But as so many people adore delicious chocolate, the potential for Divine's success is huge. There are hundreds of chocolate brands available in the UK, and the biggest companies spend up to 10% of their profit margins - tens of millions of pounds - in their fight to retain their brands' positions in the Chocolate Top Ten.

Divine has been developed to appeal to the British public's palate, and it tests favourably against all the market leaders. The UK has one of the highest per capita levels of consumption of chocolate in the world and therefore, even capturing a small proportion of this market translates into real benefits for cocoa farmers.

The latest news
In 2006, original Day Chocolate founder The Body Shop made the brilliant decision to donate its shares in the Company to Kuapa Kokoo - so now the farmers' cooperative has an even bigger stake in Divine. On 1st January 2007, Day Chocolate changed its name to Divine Chocolate Ltd to more closely align the company with our flagship brand, and the brand itself experienced a major redesign. Then on February 14th 2007 the launch of Divine Chocolate Inc in the USA was announced... Another big year in the life of Divine!

-----------------------

OK, the version on the wrapping was a little shorter, but essentially the same story. And the chocolate is good, too.

Divine Chocolate

Currently reading : The Fairtrade Everyday Cookbook By Rose Gray

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blogging is good for science
Category: Blogging

... according to Oxford University's latest press release.

Couldn't agree more, but the estimate of 1200 science blogs worldwide strikes me as ridiculously small. If it's true, science has a lot of catching up to do in the blogosphere.

Currently listening : One Cell In the Sea By A Fine Frenzy Release date: 2008-02-12

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self-destructing polymers

The idea of using chain reactions to create polymers in the test tube is almost a century old (I'm guessing!), so it's intriguing that until recently nobody thought of turning the idea around and producing lots of monomers by a chain reaction deconstructing a polymer. This approach has been pioneered by Doron Shabat at Tel Aviv, and recent progress is discussed in a highlight in Angewandte Chemie. Apparently there are lots of ideas for applications from drug transporters through to sensor signal amplification. One has to be careful though to make sure that the polymer doesn't self-destruct before it is told to do so. Falsely triggered reactions will probably be a worry if this ever reaches real-world applications.

Currently reading : Architecture: From Art Nouveau to Deconstructivism (Prestel Sightlines) By Klaus Richter

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cello concerto

Cellist Natalie Clein has recorded the Elgar concerto, part of which you can hear on her MySpace profile. The CD is out now:




and available from amazon.co.uk, for example. I'm a great fan of her "Romantic Cello" compilation (see below), so I'll probably complete our Clein collection at some point.

Currently listening : The Romantic Cello Release date: 2007-01-16

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platypuses reviewed
Category: Writing and Poetry

A few reviews of The birds the bees and the platypuses are beginning to appear:

Highbeam.com: SciTech Book News (hope this one is ok, haven't bothered signing up for a free trial in order to read the text)

Paul Halpern's review on Amazon.com (also appeared on his MySpace blog

well, err, that's all I've spotted so far, apart from the texts by the publisher and various book chains. hope to be able to expand this list soon ...

Currently listening : Willkommen im Club By MIA. Release date: 2008-09-09

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going green - 15 years late

I don't want to engage in any flag waving, but I need to get rid of this rant before the year is out, so here it goes:

We moved from Germany to the UK in 1993, and with all the "going green" discussion happening here in the UK now in 2008, it has struck us that the state of progress on green awareness here and now is very much like Germany 1993. Councils collecting plastic for recycling, shops offering multi-use cloth bags to buy instead of handing out plastic bags automatically, occasional appearance of solar panels on private houses, acknowledgement of green issues by leading politicians, all these things have only become noticable here in the last months, and all of these happened in Germany before we moved away in May 1993.

So I now declare the UK to be 15 years behind on green issues, and if any politician here claims leadership in this field again I'll knock him over the head with a solar panel ... just kidding. Rant over now.

Currently reading : Green Living For Dummies (For Dummies (Home & Garden)) By Yvonne Jeffery

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