It's been awhile since my last post, with no good enough excuse, other than preparing for, attending, and presenting at a conference - the annual meeting of the Association for Tropical Biology and Conservation. Whoo-hoo!
 |
Botanists use Facebook to help identify those many
mysterious tropical plants. photo: ATBC |
What happens when you stick 900 tropical biologists into a big meeting?
A lot of talking about science, cool findings and great photos of tropical species and ecosystems, but also on the loss of said species and ecosystems to the ever-increasing expansion of human activities, and the effect of that loss on other species and ecosystems.
Also too few talks proposing how we might stop this downward cycle, but that's another story.
There were 6 concurrent sessions at this conference (how to choose?), and I gave a talk at just 1 of them. Which means I and all the other participants spent a lot of the time sitting.
A good amount of research suggests that
sitting is the new smoking. Not quite that bad, maybe, but various
medical studies have linked sitting for long periods with a series of potential
health problems, including obesity, diabetes, and high blood pressure.
Here's what I've found on this outstanding (haha) issue: