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CAPTIVE BREEDING
Captive breeding is sometimes touted as the answer to save threatened animal populations, but the modern attitude of zoos to captive breeding is complex.

Normally, breeding is done only to replace captive animals, to allow close-up research, and to raise awareness and money; not to repopulate wild animals. Captive breeding for reintroduction into the wild is a last resort in cases where the animal would otherwise go extinct, and when the problems in the habitat that caused the decline have been fixed—an example of this is Andrew Cunningham’s project to breed vultures in India.

He’s based at the Zoological Society of London, as is Sarah Christie who works with big cats. Tigers are popular among amateur breeders in the US, and commercial breeders in China who hope to make money from the illegal tiger bone trade.

Private breeders claim to be contributing to tiger conservation, but Sarah emphasises the difference between zoo breeding programs, which she calls ‘conservation breeding’, and private breeding, which she calls ‘farming’.

POLYMER ELECTRONICS
Plastics are well known for their insulating properties, but in the 1970s researchers discovered a plastic polymer that could conduct electricity. It could do this because of its special molecular structure.

These polymers have varying abilities to conduct electricity and are the basis for a new field of research: plastic electronic engineering. Quentin Cooper finds out from Professors Henning Sirringhaus of Cambridge University and Donal Bradley of Imperial College London how polymers are being used to replace metals and semiconductors in electronic circuits.

In fact electronic devices made from conducting plastics are cheap to manufacture and can be very light and flexible, opening up a host of new applications.

Polymer-based television screens are set to challenge existing ways of watching.

In the future these materials will make possible things like thin, flexible laptops and even artificial skin for robots.

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