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At best, just 2,500 Indochinese leopards survive today across Southeast Asia. They have been eradicated from 93% of their historic habitat by snares, poachers, deforestation and declines in prey. Can conservationists stop the bleeding before its too late?

Conservationists have long known that it’s hard – and in some cases – nearly impossible to survive as a tiger in Southeast Asia. Burning forests, high human populations and unflagging demand for tiger blood, tiger skin and crushed tiger bone means the big cats have to tread a daily gauntlet of snares, guns and desperate poachers. Now, conservationists are discovering, belatedly, that the same is largely true for leopards.

A sobering new study in Biological Conservation has found that the Indochinese leopard – a distinct subspecies – may be down to less than 1,000 individuals. And in the best-case scenario only 2,500 animals survive – less than the population of Farmsfield village in Nottinghamshire.

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A pink cockatoo, thought to be the oldest bird of its kind in captivity, has died at a US zoo.

Geodynamics makes announcement as solar researchers speak out against cuts to the Australian Renewable Energy Agency

Renewable energy projects in Australia are already being suspended as a result of the two major parties’ plans to effectively abolish the Australian Renewable Energy Agency (Arena).

In an announcement this week to the Australian Stock Exchange, Geodynamics announced it was suspending two large biogas projects in Goulburn, New South Wales, and Mindarra, Western Australia. It told investors it was doing so because of uncertainty surrounding the possibility of getting grant funding for the projects in the future.

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Kit Hill, Tamar Valley Patches of sunlight enhance emerald regrowth in hay and silage fields, and the luminous glow of stubble and uncut corn

Harvesting of cereals is fast these days, hardly noticed by passersby. Close to home, stubble is glimpsed through gateways off narrow lanes encompassed by rank hedge banks overgrown with honeysuckle. Loaders and trailers race to gather the big round straw bales before rain, and there remain some uncut fields of later, spring-sown, barley.

The rare sight of stooks (cut for thatching) prompt boyhood reminiscences: Jack, my husband, drove the Fordson Major, pulling the binder with his father sitting on the back, and our neighbour, Jeff from Yorkshire, was tasked with catching tossed up sheaves and handing them, butt side out, to the expert rick builder for layering around the central vent.

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ACT energy minister says Australian Energy Market Operator's conservative estimates on battery storage value highlights institutional barriers to low-carbon shift.

The biggest issue is still getting the kids to eat them. MNStudio/Shutterstock.com

When it comes to fruit and vegetables, the most common battleground (for parents and public health experts alike) is getting people to eat them. But there’s a battle over semantics too, because many of the things we call “fruit” and “vegetables” … aren’t.

In botanical terms, a fruit is relatively easy to define. It is the structure that develops from the flower, after it has been fertilised, and which typically contains seeds (although there are exceptions, such as bananas).

But while there is no doubt that tomatoes, cucumbers and pumpkins are fruits in the botanical sense, any linguist will tell you that language changes and words take on the meaning that people broadly agree upon and use. We live in a linguistic democracy where the majority rules.

Hence a tomato is still usually called a vegetable – although many people take pride in calling it a fruit, while overlooking other “vegetables” with similar claims to fruit status. If this makes your inner pedant bristle, that’s just tough – trying telling the nearest five-year-old that a pumpkin’s a fruit and see how far you get.

Berries, by definition, are many-seeded, fleshy fruits which are often brightly coloured. They may have a soft or tough outer skin, but they must be fleshy. Oddly, strawberries and raspberries are not really berries at all, because they originate from a single flower which has many ovaries, so they are an aggregate fruit.

True berries are simple fruits that develop from a single flower with a single ovary. Tomatoes and grapes are technically berries, as are avocados, watermelons, pumpkins and bananas. Citrus fruits are also berries and their flesh is renowned for being acidic, which makes the flavour bitter.

Nuts are generally dry, woody fruits that contain a single seed. However, as you might have come to expect by now, things are not always so simple; the word “nut” is often used to describe any woody fruit. So a Brazil nut is actually a seed, whereas the walnut is botanically a “drupe” – a fleshy fruit with a hard inner layer that often persists when the flesh is lost (other drupes include peaches, mangoes and olives).

We all know fruits are good for us, but why are they typically more appetising than vegetables (certainly to kids)? Fruits are often the means by which seeds are dispersed and so the plant, in competition with other plants, needs to attract the right insect, bird or mammal to spread its seeds. This is why fruits are often brightly coloured and rich in nutrition (or at least high in sugar). It is not just humans who like a flash of colour and a soft, sweet sugar hit.

On the other hand, in the case of many leafy vegetables, plants need to protect their leaves from grazing animals and insects. The leaves are valuable and productive assets and so contain chemicals that are often unpalatable. They may be bitter or very strongly flavoured, which may explain why kids are inclined to stay away from them. Luckily, proper cooking and good recipes can often save this situation.

Now eat your veggies

So if fruits are, with a few exceptions, seed-bearing organs, what are vegetables? Here the definition is less clear, because the word “vegetable” has no real botanical meaning.

To a botanist, if the word vegetable is used at all, it would simply mean any plant, in much the same way that plants are collectively referred to as “vegetation”. So we could apply the term vegetable to almost any part of any plant if we wanted to. Hence the term tends to encompass a wide range of foods, particularly green leafy ones.

Cabbage, lettuce, zucchini and cucumber are all described as vegetables (despite the latter two being fruits), and the term has generally come to refer to a specific group of plant parts that are commonly used as foods in various societies. Of course, different cultures eat different parts of different plants. But, generally speaking, in Anglophone cultures the term vegetable is used for plant materials used to make a main meal, while fruits are typically associated with breakfast or dessert.

Alleged veg. NK/Shutterstock.com

Among the group that is loosely classed as vegetables, there are some interesting and diverse structures. Bulbs, such as onions and garlic, are highly modified shoots that develop as fleshy underground organs from which new plants can develop. They are a form of asexual reproduction, a natural kind of cloning.

The bulb contains all of the ingredients required for the production of a new plant, such as roots, leaves and flower buds. The food reserves it contains – usually starch or sugar – allow a new plant to develop rapidly at the appropriate time, hence the sweetness of onions and the fact that they caramelise so beautifully. Bulbs such as garlic can also contain pungent defensive chemicals to ward off insects or fungi.

The flowers and stems of many vegetables can also be tasty and nutritious. The flowering heads of broccoli and cauliflower are prized, as are the stems of celery and rhubarb. Once again the richness and diversity of flavours arise from the different chemicals that the plants produce to protect their valuable assets from the ravages of grazing by insects and other animals.

Tubers are formed from swollen stem or root tissue, and it’s relatively easy to distinguish between the two because stem tubers have buds, or “eyes”. Potatoes are typical stem tubers, whereas carrots are root tubers. All tubers are storage organs and last only a year. They are rich in starch, which is often readily converted to sugar to fuel the plant’s growth.

These plant-nourishing characteristics also make tubers very nutritious for us. What’s more, their high fibre content and homogeneous internal structure mean they can be cooked in a wide variety of ways: boiled, mashed, chipped, baked or roasted – even though you and I might not necessarily see “eye to eye” on which is tastiest (with all due apologies for the cheesy potato pun).

While the definitions may be debated and the words may have different meanings for different people, one thing is undeniable: whichever way you slice it, fruit and veggies are very good for you. So eat up.

Gregory Moore does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond the academic appointment above.

As part of the ACT Government’s push towards its “100% Renewables” target, commercial production has begun at Victoria's new Ararat wind farm.

Alinta chief says cost estimates for closing Hazelwood and Loy Yang coal plants "grossly underestimated," shouldn't be subsidised.

CO2 emissions from burning natural gas for electricity in US will surpass those from burning coal - the globe’s chief climate polluter.

Cutting funding to ARENA, which is both fulfilling Australia’s climate obligations and driving innovation and energy affordability, would be a tragic error.

Combination of solar plus storage to be cheaper than grid based power in Australia within the next year, meaning most of the energy use from households will be "hidden" from the networks. Time to think differently about the grid, and help consumers "share" energy.

Batteries were the runaway winner last week as the UK published the results of its contest to provide power that can be dispatched quickly.

With just over 70 days left until the general election, presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump offer voters two very different visions for the country’s energy agenda and the future of renewables.

African forest elephants have an extremely slow birth rate, putting them under greater pressure from poaching, a study suggests.

U.S. innovator partners with Australian businesses to launch technology to harness solar energy to cut costs and carbon emissions of cold storage facilities and supermarkets.

From a curious fox to a hungry hornbill, these stunning scenes represent some of the world’s best nature photography

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A "smart energy" revolution could help ensure that the UK does not suffer blackouts, according to National Grid's new UK chief.

A healthy devil. Menna Jones

For the past 20 years, an infectious cancer has been killing wild Tasmanian devils, creating a massive challenge for conservationists. But new research, published today in Nature Communications, suggests that devils are evolving rapidly in response to their highly lethal transmissible cancer and that they could ultimately save themselves.

Cancer is usually a disease that arises and dies with its host. In vertebrates, only two known types – Canine Transmissible Venereal Cancer in dogs and Devil Facial Tumour Disease (DFTD) – have taken the extraordinary evolutionary step of becoming transmissible. These cancers can grow not just within their host but can spread to other individuals. Because the cancer cells are all descendants of one mutant cell, the cancer is effectively immortal.

To grow in the new host, the tumour cell must evade detection and rejection by the immune system. Both the devil and dog transmissible cancers have sophisticated mechanisms for hiding from the host’s immune system. Our research suggests that the devil is nevertheless evolving resistance to the disease.

Ecological disaster

The Tasmanian devil is too important to lose – and this would seem careless following the extinction of the thylacine, the world’s largest marsupial predator, in the 1930s. Since the thylacine’s extinction, devils have stepped up to the role of top marsupial predator, keeping numbers of destructive feral cats at bay in Tasmania. With the decline of the devils, invasive species have become more active.

Since it was first detected in northeastern Tasmania in the mid-1990s, DFTD has spread slowly southward and westward. It will reach all parts of Tasmania within a few years; only the far northwest coast and parts of the southwest are still disease-free.

Devil Facial Tumour Disease has spread across the island over two decades. Menna Jones

Devil populations have declined by at least 80%, and by more than 90% in some areas within six years of local disease outbreak.

DFTD kills most devils at sexual maturity. Before the disease arrived, most devils produced three litters over their lifetime. Most now raise only one.

The cascading effects of the loss of Tasmania’s top predator on the rest of the ecosystem could lead to loss of further species. Already, feral cats have increased activity and small mammals on which cats prey have declined.

Cats may also be preventing recovery of the eastern quoll. Brushtail possums behave as if devils were already extinct, grazing freely on pasture in the open.

Evolution in action

Our research has been a truly international effort. We used data collected by Menna Jones at the University of Tasmania since 1999. This archive of tissue samples now represents one of the best resources globally for studying evolution of an emerging infectious disease in wildlife.

Andrew Storfer at Washington State University and Paul Hohenlohe at the University of Idaho compared the frequency of genes in devils in regions before DFTD arrived to devils 8-16 years after DFTD arrived.

We identified significant changes in two small regions in the DNA samples of devils from regions with DFTD. Five of seven genes in the two regions were related to cancer or immune function in other mammals, suggesting that Tasmanian devils are indeed evolving resistance to DFTD. Evolution is often thought of as a slow process, but these changes have occurred in as few as 4–8 generations of devils since disease outbreak.

Devils are surviving at our long-term sites, despite models that predicted extinction. Previously, studies have shown that devils with lower rates of DFTD showed specific changes in their immune response. Our genetic results might explain why.

New infectious diseases put strong pressure on their hosts to evolve, leading to rapid changes in resistance or tolerance. Rapid evolution requires pre-existing genetic variation. Our results are surprising because Tasmanian devils have low levels of genetic diversity.

Evolution doesn’t just act on the devils; it also also acts on the disease. The disease evolves to not kill the host before it can spread to another host, but also to overcome the host’s defences. Over the long term, pathogen (the cause of the disease) and host usually evolve to live together as rabbits and Myxoma virus have evolved together.

Our results suggest that devils in the wild may save themselves though evolution. However, it is essential for managers to develop strategies that help the devils do so. For example, releasing fully susceptible devils that have had no exposure to the disease into populations where resistance is developing is likely to be counterproductive.

DFTD presents a unique opportunity to study the early stages of the evolution of a new disease and transmissible cancer with its animal host. Ultimately, through future research, we may understand how cancers can become transmissible and how their hosts respond.

Menna Elizabeth Jones receives funding from the Australian Research Council, the US National Science Foundation and the Save the Tasmanian Devil Appeal.

Andrew Storfer receives funding from US National Science Foundation

Hamish McCallum receives funding from the US National Science Foundation, the Australian Research Council and the Queensland Government.

Paul Hohenlohe receives funding from the US National Science Foundation and the US National Institutes of Health.

Rodrigo Hamede receives funding from University of Tasmania Foundation, the US National Science Foundation and the Save the Tasmanian devil Program. School of Biological Sciences, University of Tasmania. Australia

The Victorian government has announced it will permanently ban unconventional gas, often produced through the controversial process of hydraulic fracturing or “fracking”. Legislation to implement the ban will be introduced this year.

This ban follows a 2015 report on unconventional gas. Following extensive review, committee members were split over whether to implement a full ban or extend the moratorium on onshore gas development by five years.

The ban announced by the government won’t apply to offshore gas. The government will also legislate to extend a moratorium on onshore conventional gas until 2020. Any future decision to approve onshore conventional gas exploration and production will be subject to review by an expert panel.

So will the ban make a difference?

Where did the ban come from?

The moratorium has been in place since 2012. It applies to all types of onshore gas (tight, shale, coal seam and conventional gas) and to any approval for fracking, exploration drilling activities and the use of chemicals us in fracking.

Last year the Victorian government examined the ban and consulted farmers and other landholders, environment and community groups, the gas industry, gas market analysts, hydrogeologists, manufacturers, tourism operators, local governments and the general public.

The final report was the product of more than 1,600 submissions over a six-month period, as well as the findings of the Victorian Auditor-General Report on Unconventional Gas.

The rationale for the ban comes from two core factors. The first is the significant degree of community concern about the social and environmental impacts of onshore unconventional gas, particularly those associated with hydraulic fracturing.

Secondly, the future economic benefits connected with unconventional gas development did not appear, from the findings of the reports, to outweigh those risks. Indeed, the final report found that it was unlikely that strong unconventional gas reserves were present in large commercial and extractable qualities in Victoria’s brown coal fields.

On the other hand, any development would be highly likely to have a dramatic effect on the region’s agriculture and tourism sectors.

Can fracking be permanently banned?

The existing regulatory framework does not recognise any ban on onshore unconventional gas. Indeed, the provisions in the Mineral Resources Sustainable Development Act explicitly include exploration and mining licences for coal seam gas projects.

However, these regulatory frameworks are being completely overhauled. It is clear that the new provisions will introduce a permanent prohibition on unconventional exploration and development in Victoria. The scope and nature of the ban will depend upon the wording of these provisions.

Any law that is introduced cannot be overridden at the national level because the ownership and management of all onshore minerals and hydrocarbons, including gas, are vested in the state.

Pros and cons

The ban will end the strong environmental concerns that continue to exist around unconventional gas production. It will also alleviate some of the emerging conflicts over land allocation and water usage that have emerged between regional food, tourism and energy sectors.

The ban will also ease climate concerns connected with the generation of energy from fossil fuels. In Australia, fugitive emissions from coal mining, oil and gas production account for approximately 8% of Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions.

Gas extraction, whether conventional or unconventional, can result in significant methane seepage. To date, very few baseline studies are available to compare seepage from drilling and fracking with natural methane seepage.

The ban is likely, however, to have a negative impact on supply, which may affect domestic gas pricing. This is particularly the case if the moratorium on onshore conventional gas production continues and no policy is implemented requiring gas producers to reserve a percentage of produced gas for domestic usage.

The 2015 Gas Market Report, released in March this year, showed that the nexus between international gas prices and east coast LNG production for export, domestic demand and domestic gas prices has become increasingly complex.

Theoretically, eastern Australia has enough reserves to supply the domestic and export markets for the next 20 years. But if the market is divided into the north (Queensland and Cooper Basin) and the south (Victoria and New South Wales) there is unlikely to be enough reserves in the south to meet forecast demand, particularly following the ban.

This will inevitably require the development of more gas reserves in other areas of the south, or imports from the north. If international gas prices and demand support more east coast LNG production, things will get worse as this supply will not be available in the north.

Victoria will, however, continue to utilise gas exploration and production in offshore gas wells in Bass Strait. There are 23 offshore platforms in the strait and ExxonMobil has held these titles for many years.

The offshore gas wells have traditionally supplied most of Victoria’s domestic gas market. Consequently, if the ban did apply to offshore gas exploration and production, it would have a profound effect on domestic gas supply.

Such a ban is, however, unlikely. First, it could not apply to offshore wells located beyond the territorial sea because these come under Commonwealth jurisdiction.

Second, a ban could not be applied retrospectively. Hence it would not affect established offshore title holders who have been supplying the domestic gas market for many years.

Samantha Hepburn does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond the academic appointment above.

The following is an open letter to parliamentarians from 182 members of Australia’s solar research community.

Dear Members of Australia’s 45th Parliament,

The federal government is proposing to strip the Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA) of most of its funding, and with it its ability to make grants. This is an existential threat to renewable energy research, innovation and education in Australia.

We call upon all political parties to support the retention of ARENA.

The solar photovoltaic (PV) industry now provides one quarter of all new generation capacity installed worldwide each year and is growing at 20-30% per year. Together, PV and wind energy constitute half of all new generation capacity installed worldwide, and all new generation capacity installed in Australia.

A renewable energy revolution is in progress and Australia is currently at the forefront. However, debilitation of ARENA directly threatens our leadership position.

For 30 years there has been an Australian renewable energy funding agency in one form or another. This has led to phenomenal success in generation of technology and provision of education. The worldwide PV industry owes its existence in large measure to Australians who were supported by grants from government renewable energy agencies.

Billions of dollars of benefits have accrued to Australia in the form of dramatically reduced costs of PV systems, rapidly growing renewable energy business activity in Australia, reduced greenhouse gas emissions, royalties, shares and international student fees. For example, the Australian-developed PERC solar cell has annual sales of $10 billion and will soon dominate the worldwide solar industry.

If ARENA is debilitated then hundreds of people would lose their jobs within a year or two. In the longer term, Australia’s leadership in solar energy would vanish. This would be completely at odds with the government’s innovation agenda and its commitment at the Paris climate conference to double clean energy R&D by 2020 under the international Mission Innovation program, and with the ALP’s Climate Change Action Plan launched in 2015 at UNSW Australia, and reinforced by Opposition Leader Bill Shorten at ANU also in 2015.

Support for research and innovation at universities lies at the heart of accelerated growth of the renewable energy industry. It supports later-stage commercialisation directly through technology development. Additionally, university research groups underpin education and training of engineers and scientists.

Echoing the words of another prime minister of a decade ago, Malcolm Turnbull has described budget repair (in which cuts to ARENA are lumped) as a “fundamental moral challenge” because debt should not be passed onto our children and grandchildren.

How ironic if parliament fails to appreciate the many costs to future generations of failing to address climate change now with solutions such as renewable energy.

Yours sincerely,

UNSW Australia: Benjamin Phua, Henner Kampwerth, Mark Keevers, Ziv Hameiri, Catherine Chan, Craig Johnson, Kyung Kim, Li Wang, Mark Silver, Trevor Young, Richard Corkish, Robert Patterson, Binesh Veettil, Christopher Whipp, Dirk Konig, Renate Egan, Bram Hoex, Joyce Ho, Simba Kuestler, Martin Green, David Payne, Robert Taylor, Shira Samocha, Supriya Pillai, Timothy Lee, Udo Romer, Belinda Lam, Natasha Hjerrild, Evatt Hawkes, David Jewkes, Thalia Arnott, Leslie Lay, Muriel Watt, Carlos Vargas, Nathan Thompson, Robert Dumbrell, Daniel Lambert, Nicholas Shaw, Nathan Chang, Anita Ho-Baillie, Ben Wilkensen, Ned Western, Yan Zhu, Lingfeng Wu, Stuart Wenham, Ran Chen, Thilini Ishwara, Steven Limpert, Rolando Vargas, Brett Hallam, Allen Barnett, Santosh Shrestha, Xiaowei Shen, Xiaojing Hao, Saratchandra Tejaswi, Fangzhao Gao, Zhongtian Li, Ivan Perez Wurfl, Qiangshan Ma, Alec Tan, Murad Tayebjee, Ya Zhou, Liam Parnell, Luke Marshall, Jack Colwell, Mable Fong, Alan Yee, Lawrence Soria, Kian Chin, Kamala Vairav, Nancy Sharopeam, Graeme Lennon, Zoe Hungedfold, Bernhard Vogal, Jill Lewis, Ya Zhou, Erny Tsao, Feng Qingge, Yin Li, Thorsten Trupke, Alison Wenham, Ashraf Uddin, Chang Yan, Kaiwen Sun, Yajie Jiang, Yuansim Liao, Marjorie Owens, Shujuan Huang, Sassan Vahdani, Jialiang Huang, Brianna Conrad, Zi Ouyang, Jae sun Yun, Alex Li, Kate Lindsay, Nitin Nampalli

Australian National University: Andrew Blakers, Tom White, Marco Ernst, Fiona Beck, Jie Cui, Andres Cuevas, Erin Crisp, Chris Samondsett, Yimao Wan, Hemant Halmodi, Moshen Goodarzi, Sienpheng Phang, The Duong, Yiliang Wu, Xiao Fu, Kylie Catchpole, Chong Barngkin, Daniel Macdonald, Andrew Thompson, Josephine McKeon, Chang Sun, Kristen Anderson, Anyao Liu, Bin Lu, Matthew Staks, Bruce Condon, Jun Fpeng, Thomas Ratcliff, Hang Sio, Shakir Rahman, Judith Harvey, Klaus Weber, Ingrid Haedrich, Di Yan, Rowena Menkedow, Dale Grant, William Logie, Teck Kong Chong, Hieu Nguyen, Daniel Walte, Sachin Surve, Mark Savvnoeas, Harry Qian, N. Kaines, Nandi Wu

Monash University: Yi-Bing Cheng, Yasmina Dkhissi, Niraj Lal, Jianfeng Lu, Liangcong Jiang, Shannon Bonke, Wei Li, Gaveshana Sepadage, Wemon Mao, Feng Li, Xiangfeng Lin, Udo Bach, Dison Hoogeveen, Iacopo Benesperi, Francsco Paglia, Bin Li, Jiansong Sun, Chanjie Wang, Chunkiu Ng, Maxime Fournier, Boex Tan, Kira Rundel, David Mayeuleg, Jacek Jasieniak, Rebeeca Milhuisen, Masrur Morshed, Kedar Deshmukh, Susaha Frier, Mathias Rothmann

University of Melbourne: Ken Ghiggino, Roger Dargaville, Yann Robiou du Pont, Alex Nauels, Kate Dooley, Malte Meinshausen, Martin Wainstein

Other: Alan Pears (RMIT), Nicola Ison (UTS), Rhett Evans (Solinno), Michelle McCann (PV Lab Australia), Keith McIntosh (PV Lighthouse)

Andrew Blakers works for the Australian National University, which receives research funding from ARENA.