Genetic conservation and improvement depends (among other things) on the action of local people (CBD, 1994). We know that farmers are extremely knowledgeable about their crops and that they continuously experiment with them and with new materials arriving from various sources (Richards, 1989). Certain farmers are locally recognised as having “expert” knowledge about agro-biodiversity. They are ...

J. Doyne Farmer, 2 Austin Gerig, 1 Fabrizio Lillo, 4 and Henri Waelbroeck 1Santa Fe Institute, 1399 Hyde Park Road, Santa Fe, NM 87501 2LUISS Guido Carli, Viale Pola 12, 00198, Roma, Italy 3School of Finance and Economics, University of Technology, Sydney, Broadway, New South Wales 2007, Australia 4Dipartimento di Fisica e Tecnologie Relative, viale delle Scienze I-90128, Palermo, Italy 5Pipeli...

Background: Epidemiological studies have used farmer estimates of the prevalence of lameness in their flocks. This assumes that farmers can identify lame sheep. Eight movie clips of sheep with locomotion from sound to moderately lame were used to investigate the ability of farmers and sheep specialists to recognise lame sheep. Each participant was asked to complete a form and indicate, for each...

Infective endocarditis caused by Streptococcus suis serotype 2 is not uncommon in pigs but is rare in human beings. We describe the case of a pig-farmer with endocarditis due to S. suis serotype 2 and in whom prolapse of the mitral valve was the predisposing cardiac lesion. Streptococcus suis, a possible cause of infective endocarditis in endemic areas, may be confused with other group D strept...