Around The Web
S.A. to host Australia’s first green hydrogen power plant
Which retailers will (and won’t) meet their 2017 LGC liability?
Departing Swan takes aim at Coalition “right wing thugs” over carbon price
“State’s biggest” solar + battery storage microgid to power SA Produce Markets
Know your NEM: All eyes on bond rate and utility earnings
Fixing cities' water crises could send our climate targets down the gurgler
Who’s afraid of electric vehicles? Busting the Kelly myths
Water does best in down month for cleantech stocks
Extreme weather, disappearing coal supply: another day on the NEM
Carnegie to build W.A.’s largest micro-grid at Kalbarri
Carnegie proposes 100MW solar, 20MWh battery near Kalgoorlie
Bolivar identified as permanent location for publicly-owned power plant
Melbourne’s Domain Parkland and Memorial Precinct earns permanent place on Australia’s National Heritage List
Melbourne’s Domain Parkland and Memorial Precinct earns permanent place on Australia’s National Heritage List
Governments can't be trusted to deliver welfare standards for chickens
From earplugs to bedroom swaps: how to protect against noise pollution
Everyday hubbub can increase your chance of cardiovascular problems, new research claims. Here are four ways to mitigate the effects of background sounds
If you find it vexing that a loud bang can trigger a heart attack, bad news: it turns out a low rumble can, too. Several studies have identified links between noise pollution from railways, airports or roads and cardiovascular conditions such as high blood pressure, stroke and heart failure. According to new research published in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology, this is probably because sound can cause a spike in stress hormones, which damages the heart over time.
The researchers from Johannes Gutenberg University in Germany who compiled the research said one of the main ways noise pollution affects heart health is by disrupting sleep. Thankfully, there are simple way to mitigating those effects.
Continue reading...How do you build a healthy city? Copenhagen reveals its secrets
The Danish capital ranks high on the list of the world’s healthiest and happiest cities. With obesity and depression on the rise worldwide, here are its lessons for how to combat them culturally
Maybe it’s the Viking heritage. There is an icy open-air pool in the waters of Copenhagen’s harbour, and although it is mid-winter Danes still jump in every day. On the front cover of the city’s health plan, a lean older man is pictured climbing out, dripping, his mouth open in a shout that could be horror or pleasure. “Enjoy life, Copenhageners,” urges the caption.
It’s not every Copenhagener who wants to take strenuous exercise in cold water either for fun or to get fit. But the packed bike lanes of the Danish capital, even at this sometimes subzero time of year, are testimony to the success of a city that is aspiring to be one of the healthiest in the world. Copenhagen consistently sits at the very top of the UN’s happiness index and is one of the star performers in the Healthy Cities initiative of the World Health Organisation, which, almost unknown and unsung, celebrates its 30th anniversary this year. The initiative was the idea of a group of individuals inspired by the Alma Ata Declaration of 1978, which was about elevating the status of primary care and public health in a world where everybody equated healthcare with hospital treatment after you got ill.
Continue reading...Poison pass: the man who became immune to snake venom
Rock singer Steve Ludwin has been injecting himself with snake venom for 30 years. In a strange twist, his bizarre habit could now save thousands of lives. His former partner Britt Collins tells his outlandish story
Sometime in 2006, when my ex-boyfriend failed to show up for dinner, I assumed something was wrong or perhaps he’d forgotten. About a week later, calling to apologise, he told me he’d had an overdose, accidentally injecting a lethal cocktail of venom from three snakes. A lot has been written about Steve Ludwin, widely known as the man who injects snake venom, and lately his life has turned into a non-stop frenzy of international journalists and film crews revelling in the seeming sheer insanity of it.
Steve was once my great love; an animal lover, vegan and musician who wrote songs for Placebo and Ash, and played the Reading festival with Nirvana. In between tours and recordings he dabbled with snake venom. In his latest incarnation as a self-taught snake expert, moulding himself into the role of a lifetime, he appears as a kind of living specimen and star in a short film at the Natural History Museum’s new exhibition, Venom: Killer and Cure.
Continue reading...