the manila pact

Though considered ineffectual and was formerly dissolved in 1977 after key members withdrew their support, on this day in 1954 the Philippines, Thailand, New Zealand, Australia, Pakistan as well as France, the US and the UK formed the mutual defence collective called the Southeast Asia Treaty Organisation (SEATO) as force to countermand the spread of Communism in the region. Although failing to halt Soviet influence and the existence of the treaty was cited as the US and Australia as justification for involvement against North Vietnam and large-scale military intervention, SEATO leaves a legacy of educational and vocational endowments that support research and outreach projects to this day.

snap pack

Danish pilsner Carlsberg will replace the usual plastic ring binding used to secure multipacks of beer with a specially formulated glue that’s has both the properties to hold the aluminium cans together securely for transport but are still easy to separate and with no residual stickiness. Reducing its plastic use by the equivalent of sixty million plastic bags a year, the global brewery ought to be applauded for demonstrating that with just a little ingenuity, we can be better stewards of the environment. Skål!

hyperaccumulators

Thanks to Super Punch, we learn that there is a class of highly-specialised trees that have evolved a particular affinity for normally toxic metals.
As the appropriately named Doctor Antony van der Ent explains to the BBC’s science desk, a species that they are studying in New Caledonia has high concentrations of nickel in its sap (latex) that researchers speculate may be a defence against insect predation. Under threat from deforestation from strip mining activities and slash and burn farming, scientists hope to study how the mechanism, called hyperaccumulation, works and perhaps to harness it to purify soils contaminated by industry or waste or even passively mine the ground for metals, harvesting the accrued resources with the plant—an extraction strategy called phytomining.

when life gives you lemons

Derived ultimately from the Arabic word for swindler, mafioso did not necessarily carry the negative connotations on the island of Sicily where it took on the qualities of swagger and fearlessness and the mafia itself arose, as presented quite fascinatingly by Æon Magazine, due at least in part to the success of another Arabic transplant, the lemon.
The unification of Italy (previously Sicily was ruled by a Bourbon dynasty and the residents of the island probably viewed the mainland as just another in a long succession of colonial powers) intersected with the medical insight that citrus would prevent scurvy in sailors on long ocean voyages and translated to a huge windfall for those who kept orchards on the island. More and more groves were planted to keep up with demand and in order to prevent loss of the valuable fruit through theft, guards were employed to supplement the unreliable or non-existent defence that local police or the courts could provide. Eventually such protection, merited or otherwise, became customary with a growing cut of the proceeds going to wardens who had established themselves as fixtures of the marketplace and de facto authority.