By Andrew Williams •
July 30, 2009
Swedish scientists have discovered that vast numbers of wild birds in the Baltic Sea area are dying of a strange paralytic disease caused by advanced thiamine (vitamin B1) deficiency in eggs, young, and adults.
In a new research paper the team, from Stockholm University, Sweden, report that levels of Thiamine, vital for the proper functioning of the nerves, were found to be deficient in the eggs, livers and brains of several local bird species, contributing to significant declines in many bird populations over the last few decades.
Hearteningly, it seems that paralysed individuals can be successfully remedied by thiamine treatment
By Kelly Rand •
October 23, 2008
If you live in a city (or even the ‘burbs) and are touched with a fiber obsession, the thought of packing it up and moving to a farm to raise your own sheep is not too often in the back of your mind. It sounds so romantic doesn’t it? Tending your own flock, shearing and preparing the fiber for spinning. Spinning, then dying the yarn, then knitting with your creation, knowing everything that went into the process.
Has reality set in yet? Kids, job, partner, just doesn’t equal farm bliss. Well listen up and take heed. You can now, partially, live out your dream of running away to tend sheep with a CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) share from Martha’s Vineyard Fiber Farm.
With a share in the Farm you buy into the Farm and have a stake in its success. The goal is to have yarn or bats for spinning at the end of the process, but you get so much more. You have access to Martha’s Vineyard Fiber Farm’s blog, where there are updates on the farm’s goings on. A weekly email update, invites to shearing parties and a chance to visit the farm and help out. This is after all, part your farm!
By Kelly Rand •
July 24, 2008
Ah silk. It is such a luxurious fiber; cool and soft to the touch. It has an unmistakable feel that you always know when something is made of silk.
To become the silk that we know and love, this fiber has a very interesting story.
Silk comes from the cocoon of the Bombyx moth. Before turning into a moth the Bombyx caterpillar spins itself a cocoon of 1000 yards of silky fiber to house itself during the transformation. The caterpillar secretes a substance that is a thin but strong strand of fiber, which is what we know as silk.
By Max Lindberg •
June 24, 2008
It’s not only the Gulf of Mexico that’s suffering from “dead zones” caused by excess nutrients, such as nitrogen and phosphorus used as fertilizers.
Marine dead zones are spreading in the Baltic sea, and that could cause the entire ecosystem to collapse for lack of oxygen. Dire warnings from Lasse Gustavsson, Swedish head of the World Wildlife Funds branch in Sweden.
