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Track cycling for the first time: 'frightening but instantly addictive' | Trevor Ward
The first thing that strikes me as I emerge from the tunnel into the middle of Manchester velodrome is the banked sections of curved track at either end of the arena.
They tower over me, pitched at a frighteningly steep angle of 42 degrees. A lone rider glides past above me. It looks like a fairground Wall of Death ride.
Continue reading...Burmese python caught in Florida is largest ever recorded – video
Anglers vs 'the Black Death': cormorants have the edge in battle of the riverbanks
Walk the four-mile stretch of the river Lea from Hackney Wick up to Tottenham Hale, and it is easy to forget that you are in London's East End. It may be August but tangles of wild flowers can still be seen in the river's surrounding fields. On the river, moorhens attend to chicks marooned on islands assiduously constructed out of twigs.
The many narrowboat owners who live on the Lea take advantage of the summer to repair their craft while rowers, urged on by their bicycle-riding coaches, guide single sculls through algae blooms and haughty swans. But something is missing from this English riverbank scene: anglers. There are almost none to be found, even on a sunny afternoon last Wednesday when throngs of fishing enthusiasts were out in force on London's canals.
Continue reading...Climategate detective: 'I'm deeply disappointed' we didn't catch hacker | Leo Hickman
On Wednesday, Norfolk Police announced that it was formally ending its two-and-a-half-year investigation into the theft of thousands of private emails stored on servers at the University of East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit (CRU) – an event that has commonly come to be known as "Climategate".
Detective chief superintendent Julian Gregory, the senior investigating officer, said that due to the three-year statutory limitation placed on the investigation by the Computer Misuse Act 1990, he was closing the case now because there was no realistic chance of bringing a prosecution ahead of the third anniversary of the theft in November. He did say, though, that the "the data breach was the result of a sophisticated and carefully orchestrated attack" and that there was no evidence to suggest that anyone working at or associated with UEA was involved in the crime".
Continue reading...Geoengineering projects around the world - map
• US geoengineers to spray sun-reflecting chemicals from balloon Continue reading...
US geoengineers to spray sun-reflecting chemicals from balloon
Two Harvard engineers are to spray sun-reflecting chemical particles into the atmosphere to artificially cool the planet, using a balloon flying 80,000 feet over Fort Sumner, New Mexico.
The field experiment in solar geoengineering aims to ultimately create a technology to replicate the observed effects of volcanoes that spew sulphates into the stratosphere, using sulphate aerosols to bounce sunlight back to space and decrease the temperature of the Earth.
Continue reading...Satellite eye on Earth: June 2012 – in pictures
• More Satellite eye pictures: The moon's shadow during an eclipse in May and a tectonic spectacle in Africa in April Continue reading...
The 'charity' bike ride where no money goes to charity | Trevor Ward
Riders signing up for Britain's newest and most expensive charity cycling sportive could be forgiven for thinking that part of their entry fee goes direct to a good cause.
After all, the official title of the event is the Marie Curie Cancer Care Etape Pennines.
Continue reading...British veal poised for an 'ethical' comeback
As far as reputation goes, it's up there with foie gras and shark's fin. But a decade after furious protests on the streets of Britain brought a ban on both the controversial live export of calves and on the rearing-in-crates system – veal is back.
British rose veal has already won the ethical stamp of approval from the RSPCA and Compassion in World Farming (CIWF) but it remains a niche market in the UK, just 0.1% of the meat we consume each year.
Continue reading...Scottish trawlerman has £1m seized for role in fisheries scandal
A Scottish trawler skipper has had £1m seized by the courts after pleading guilty to a major role in one of Europe's largest illegal fisheries scandals.
Ian Buchan, 55, from Peterhead, was given the £1m confiscation order after he admitted illegally landing and then selling nearly £4.5m worth of mackerel in a highly sophisticated "black landing" scam to evade European fishing quotas.
Continue reading...Household chemicals' 'cocktail effect' raises cancer concerns for watchdog
Common chemicals found in household products, cosmetics and medicines may be causing cancers, fertility problems and other illnesses including diabetes and obesity, according to a study.
Europe's environmental watchdog, the European Environment Agency, has warned that products containing endocrine disrupting chemicals should be treated with caution until their true effects are better known. However, it stopped short of recommending a ban of any specific products. A few such chemicals have already been banned, but many are still in widespread use.
Continue reading...Heartland Institute compares belief in global warming to mass murder | Leo Hickman
It really is hard to know where to begin with this one. But let's start with: "What on earth were they thinking?"
The Heartland Institute, a Chicago-based rightwing thinktank notorious for promoting climate scepticism, has launched quite possibly one of the most ill-judged poster campaigns in the history of ill-judged poster campaigns.
Continue reading...Nuclear power is only solution to climate change, says Jeffrey Sachs
Combating climate change will require an expansion of nuclear power, respected economist Jeffrey Sachs said on Thursday, in remarks that are likely to dismay some sections of the environmental movement.
Prof Sachs said atomic energy was needed because it provided a low-carbon source of power, while renewable energy was not making up enough of the world's energy mix and new technologies such as carbon capture and storage were not progressing fast enough.
Continue reading...The cargo bike – somewhere inbetween the courier and the truck | Peter Walker
It is a familiar, unpleasant but seemingly inescapable part of modern city life: streets full of diesel-belching vans or lorries on delivery runs, either stuck in jams or else creating them as the driver double-parks to dash into a building. The solution? Roll forward the humble bicycle, or at least its close cousin.
The idea of cycle freight replacing the ubiquitous truck might seem initially fanciful, but it is an increasingly serious idea, one being presented to transport ministers from several dozen countries at a major conference starting on Wednesday.
Continue reading...Ten of Britain's rarest wild flowers – in pictures
Don't miss your 108-page guide to 50 of Britain's wild flowers, an exclusive excerpt from Sarah Raven's Wild Flowers (Bloomsbury), free this Sunday 29 April with the Observer Continue reading...
Sainsbury's slimline toilet roll to wipe 140 tonnes from carbon emissions
With each Briton getting through an average of 50 toilet rolls a year, the carbon footprint created by supplying it is huge.
Makers including Andrex have made rolls last longer by increasing sheet numbers. But Sainsbury's is set to try something new: shrinking the inner tube.
Continue reading...Damien Hirst's butterflies: distressing but weirdly uplifting
Butterflies made Damien Hirst's career and this is how he repays them: in a stark, white, windowless room in Tate Modern, hundreds of insects pull themselves from their pupae only to die there a few days later, surrounded by gawping tourists.
For some visitors to Hirst's blockbuster retrospective, it is not the rotting cow's head surrounded by flies, the sheep in formaldehyde or the giant ashtray filled with cigarette butts that makes them feel queasy. It is the installation in Room 5, where tropical butterflies futilely flit around the boxy space, eventually falling to die on the floor, where they are promptly scooped up by security staff.
Continue reading...F1 fuel-saving flywheel to be fitted to London's buses
A fuel-saving flywheel first developed for use in Formula One racing cars, but abandoned before it could be used due to a regulation change by the sport's administrators, will soon be retrofitted to a handful of London buses.
Six prototype buses owned by Go-Ahead, one of the UK's largest buses operators, are currently being fitted with the flywheels for a trial beginning later this year in and around Putney, south-west London.
Continue reading...How wildlife is thriving in the Korean peninsula's demilitarised zone
• In pictures: wildlife in the DMZ
• The world's most dangerous nature reserve
A thin green ribbon threads its way across the Korean Peninsula. Viewed from space, via composite satellite images, the winding swath clearly demarcates the political boundary between the Republic of Korea (ROK) and the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK). Its visual impact is especially strong in the west, where it separates the gray, concrete sprawl of Seoul from the brown, deforested wastes south of Kaesong. In the east, it merges with the greener landscapes of the Taebaek Mountain Range and all but disappears.
From the ground, the narrow verdant band manifests as an impenetrable barrier of overgrown vegetation enclosed by layers of fences topped by menacing concertina wire and dotted with observation posts manned by heavily armed soldiers. That a place so steeped in violence still teems with life seems unimaginable. And yet, the Demilitarized Zone, or DMZ, is home to thousands of species that are extinct or endangered elsewhere on the peninsula. It is the last haven for many of these plants and animals and the centre of attention for those intent on preserving Korea's rich ecological heritage.
Continue reading...Iceland's volcanoes may power UK
The volcanoes of Iceland could soon be pumping low-carbon electricity into the UK under government-backed plans for thousands of miles of high-voltage cables across the ocean floor.
The energy minister, Charles Hendry, is to visit Iceland in May to discuss connecting the UK to its abundant geothermal energy. "We are in active discussions with the Icelandic government and they are very keen," Hendry told the Guardian. To reach Iceland, which sits over a mid-ocean split in the earth's crust, the cable would have to be 1,000 to 1,500km long and by far the longest in the world.
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