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‘We have a chance to show the truth’: into the heart of Chernobyl

The Guardian - Sat, 2016-04-09 18:00

Three decades after the nuclear disaster, the concrete protecting the reactor is starting to crack. Yet people still live there – and a new virtual reality project will take many more inside the ‘death zone’

At first they thought it was just a fire, then the chickens started to turn black. When it comes to the Chernobyl nuclear disaster, everyone has a vivid detail that is snagged in the memory; the absurdities or the obscenities. It might be the local village that, once evacuated, was claimed by a mob of pigs. Or the way milk would turn to white powder whenever the residents of Pripyat (the town built a few hundred metres from the doomed power plant) would attempt to churn butter. Or the cat that refused to be stuffed into a suitcase by its owner, who couldn’t bear to abandon his pet during the mass exile, 36 hours after the explosion. Who can forget that 70 Belarusian villages had to be buried under the ground? Or that Soviet soldiers shot every dog, in case it wandered, toxically, into a neighbouring city? Or that many of those same men risked their lives hoisting flags on the roofs of buildings every few weeks, whenever the old ones were chewed to lace by the radioactive breeze?

For many, it is the story of a 23-year-old pregnant woman, married to one of the brave and reckless firemen who put out the blaze at reactor number four in the early morning of 26 April 1986. Doctors at the Moscow hospital to which he was transferred warned her not to hug her husband. She refused, tending to him even when the nurses would no longer enter the room where he lay, naked, under a sheet of thick plastic. Two months after he died, she visited the cemetery where he was buried in a matryoshka nest of coffins: one zinc and, within that, one wooden. She knelt at his grave and promptly went into labour. At her late husband’s suggestion, she named the baby Natashenka. Due to the radiation, Natashenka was born with cirrhosis of the liver and congenital heart disease. She died less than four hours later in a tragedy of appalling symmetry: a child both conceived and destroyed in her parents’ lingering embrace.

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Melting ice sheets changing the way the Earth wobbles on its axis, says Nasa

The Guardian - Sat, 2016-04-09 10:35

‘Dramatic’ shift in polar motion attributed to effects of global warming and the impact humans are having on the planet

Global warming is changing the way the Earth wobbles on its polar axis, a new Nasa study has found.

Melting ice sheets, especially in Greenland, are changing the distribution of weight on Earth. And that has caused both the North Pole and the wobble, which is called polar motion, to change course, according to a study published on Friday in the journal Science Advances.

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Categories: Around The Web

Earth's spin axis shifted by melting ice sheets, changes in water

ABC Science - Sat, 2016-04-09 09:46
SHIFTING POLES: Shifts in the spin axis of our planet are not only being driven by melting ice sheets but also changes in the relative amount of water stored on the continents, researchers have discovered.

The worm has turned: how British insect farms could spawn a food revolution

The Guardian - Fri, 2016-04-08 22:21

With meat prices expected to soar, agricultural entrepreneurs believe invertebrate livestock can provide the protein we need. But will the mainstream ever be ready to eat mealworms?

It could be the tumbledown, moss-covered drystone walls marking the boundaries of land that has been farmed since the arrival of the Norse settlers. Or the gentle meanderings of the river Eden through the shadows of the Cumbrian fells. Or the proximity of the Settle-Carlisle railway line. All in all, Thringill Farm seems an unlikely setting for a 21st-century food revolution.

Yet just past the 17th-century farmhouse, an incongruous sound offers a clue of unusual goings-on. From behind the large wooden door of a heavily insulated room in the corner of an outbuilding comes the distinctive rhythmic chirping of crickets. The mating call, more usually heard in the Mediterranean than in the Pennines, reveals the location of the UK’s first edible-insect farm.

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Categories: Around The Web

Northern Territory Demersal Fishery - Application 2016

Department of the Environment - Fri, 2016-04-08 14:38
Application on ecological sustainability - public comment open from 11 April 2016 until 13 May 2016
Categories: Around The Web

Modern men have no trace of Neanderthal DNA on their Y chromosome

ABC Science - Fri, 2016-04-08 10:03
MISSING Y CHROMOSOME: The disappearance of the Neanderthal Y chromosome from modern humans may be due to genetic incompatibilities that led to miscarriages, suggests the first-ever analysis of the male Neanderthal sex chromosome.

Why is Honduras the world's deadliest country for environmentalists?

The Guardian - Thu, 2016-04-07 23:12

The environment is the new battleground for human rights, and activists are getting caught in the crossfire – particularly in Honduras, where two were killed last month

Since her mother’s murder a month ago, Bertha Isabel Zuniga Cáceres has scarcely had time to grieve. The 25-year-old student is adamant that her mother, Berta Cáceres Flores, will not become just one more Honduran environmental activist whose work was cut short by their assassination.

“Development in Honduras cannot continue happen at the expense of indigenous peoples and human rights,” says Zuñiga Cáceres, who met today with members of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) and Honduran officials in Washington DC to call for an independent investigation into her mother’s killing. She also requested greater protection for her family and members of the Council of Popular and Indigenous Organizations of Honduras, the human rights group her mother co-founded.

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Categories: Around The Web

Monster black hole discovered in an unlikely galaxy may be common

ABC Science - Thu, 2016-04-07 13:02
BIG SURPRISE: The discovery of a monster black hole 17 billion times more massive than the sun in a modestly-sized galaxy, raises suspicions supermassive black holes may be more common than originally thought.

South America's prehistoric people spread like 'invasive species'

ABC Science - Thu, 2016-04-07 12:45
HUMAN COLONISATION: The colonisation of South America by prehistoric people occurred in two distinct phases of population growth that resembled an invasive species, a study reveals

Supernovae may have played a role in Earth's evolution

ABC Science - Thu, 2016-04-07 09:26
SUPERNOVAE SHOWERS: The Earth was bombarded by debris from a series of stellar explosions with the closest supernova occurring about 2.3 million years ago, two new studies indicate.

Tesla loses latest battle with Ecotricity

The Guardian - Thu, 2016-04-07 00:25

Advertising watchdog dismisses complaint from US electric car maker about UK company’s green energy claims

Tesla, the US electric car and battery maker, has lost the latest round of a long-running spat with UK energy company Ecotricity.

The company, owned by billionaire Elon Musk, had lodged a complaint with the UK’s Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) about claims on Ecotricity’s website that it supplies “Britain’s greenest energy” and “greenest electricity”. On Wednesday, the ASA dismissed the complaint - agreeing with Ecotricity that the claims are correct.

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Categories: Around The Web

Six things we know about the plastic bag charge in England

The Guardian - Thu, 2016-04-07 00:01

It’s been six months since the 5p charge was introduced for single-use plastic bags. So what have we learned?

It is six months since the introduction of the 5p charge for single-use plastic carrier bags in England, the last part of the UK to implement a charge. Here are six things we have learned since then:

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Tigers declared extinct in Cambodia

The Guardian - Wed, 2016-04-06 19:38

Conservationists say Indochine tigers are ‘functionally extinct’ as they launch action plan for reintroduction

Tigers are “functionally extinct” in Cambodia, conservationists conceded for the first time on Wednesday, as they launched a bold action plan to reintroduce the big cats to the kingdom’s forests.

Cambodia’s dry forests used to be home to scores of Indochinese tigers but the WWF said intensive poaching of both tigers and their prey had devastated the numbers of the big cats.

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Categories: Around The Web

Safeguard Mechanism Draft Emissions Intensity Benchmark Guidelines

Department of the Environment - Wed, 2016-04-06 15:43
Consultation on draft guidelines for developing emissions intensity benchmarks under the safeguard mechanism is now open. Comments close 6 May 2016.
Categories: Around The Web

Safeguard Mechanism Draft Emissions Intensity Benchmark Guidelines

Department of the Environment - Wed, 2016-04-06 15:43
Consultation on draft guidelines for developing emissions intensity benchmarks under the safeguard mechanism is now open. Comments close 6 May 2016.
Categories: Around The Web

Pig hearts kept alive in baboons for more than two years

ABC Science - Wed, 2016-04-06 12:22
CROSS-SPECIES TRANSPLANTATION: A team of US and German scientists has kept transplanted pig hearts alive in baboons, primate cousins of humans, for a record 2.5 years.

Natural Temperate Grassland of the South Eastern Highlands listed in the critically endangered category

Department of the Environment - Wed, 2016-04-06 11:38
The Minister has approved the inclusion of the Natural Temperate Grassland of the South Eastern Highlands in the critically endangered category.
Categories: Around The Web

Can you make your heart stronger?

ABC Science - Wed, 2016-04-06 09:17
GREAT MOMENTS IN SCIENCE: Dr Karl puts his finger on the pulse of research that suggests your heart can become stronger if it runs out of sync for a short while before its rhythm is restored.

Polar bears losing weight as Arctic sea ice melts, Canadian study finds

The Guardian - Tue, 2016-04-05 23:05

Between 1984 and 2009 the weight of female bears in Ontario fell by over 10% while climate change meant they had 30 fewer days a year to hunt seal on ice

Three decades of melting sea ice has led to significant weight loss among the world’s southernmost population of polar bears, new data from Canadian researchers suggests.

“It’s a red flag,” said Martyn Obbard, a scientist with the Ontario provincial government and co-author of a recently published study in the journal Arctic Science.

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Categories: Around The Web

Ancient 'Kite Runner' carried its young attached to its body by threads

ABC Science - Tue, 2016-04-05 13:44
FOSSIL FIND: A tiny arthropod from 430 million years ago dubbed the 'Kite Runner' stashed its young in individual capsules tethered to its body.

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