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Hundreds of Indigenous delegates are discussing the future of their peoples in a historic meeting at Uluru, but what the nation's leaders advocate for?

Stop the Machine aims to put an end to methods of farming that are endangering biodiversity and wildlife the world over

We can feed an extra 4 billion people a year if we reject the bloated and wasteful factory farming systems that are endangering our planet’s biodiversity and wildlife, said farming campaigner Philip Lymbery on Monday night, launching a global campaign to Stop the Machine.

At present, 35% of the world’s cereal harvest and most of its soya meal is fed to industrially reared animals rather than directly to humans. This is a “wasteful and inefficient practice” because the grain-fed animals contribute much less back in the form of milk, eggs and meat than they consume, according to Lymbery, the chief executive of Compassion in World Farming (CIWF). “The food industry seems to have been hijacked by the animal feed industry,” he said.

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Changes in food distribution and not falling ocean temperatures could hold key to shift towards giant lengths

The blue whale has a body the length of a jet airliner, a heart the size of a car, and a tongue the same weight as an elephant.

Now researchers say they might have solved the mystery of why baleen whales – a group that includes these blue beasts, the largest animals on the planet – became so large.

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Exclusive: Britons fail to eat 178m bags of salad every year, say Tesco and government waste body Wrap, in study highlighting food waste

Britons throw away 40% of the bagged salad they buy every year, according to the latest data, with 37,000 tonnes – the equivalent of 178m bags – going uneaten every year.

The figures from the government’s waste advisory body Wrap are being published on Wednesday by the supermarket giant Tesco to highlight that prepared salads are still among the UK’s most wasted household foods. Past studies have shown that the average UK family throws away £700 of food each year.

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Crowds cheer as ‘Big Don’, a massive sea turtle, is released off the Florida Keys on World Turtle Day after being rehabilitated from injuries from an encounter with a fishing line. The 200-pound (91 kilogram) loggerhead turtle was nursed back to health with antibiotics, vitamins and a healthy diet of squid and fish

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Australian Energy Regulator loses costly Federal Court battle to control how much NSW network operators can charge for power.

Wenlock Edge, Shropshire This is the cow parsley moment, its blossom making foamy bow waves against hawthorn hedges along the road

The lanes are luminous with the white pulse of May: cow parsley, hawthorn, hogweed, garlic, stichwort. In fields there are pale lambs and dandelion clocks and stands of horse chestnut in candle. White on green. Green on white.

It is evening and the birds are fractious. I am listening to an old story so nearly forgotten that its retelling sounds strange and new.

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Queensland has officially become the Solar State with new figures confirming that combined solar rooftops are now Queensland’s largest power station.

AGL today announced the appointment of Melissa Reynolds to the newly created role of Chief Customer Officer and the promotion of Richard Wrightson to the position of Executive General Manager, Wholesale Markets.

National Transport Commission (NTC) and Austroads publish national guidelines to support Australian autonomous vehicle trials.

Clean Energy Innovation Fund completes $26m capital raising, easily surpassing its $20 million target with help from some big investors.

New contract signed in Arizona reveals record low price for large scale solar in US, and a stunning reduction in the price of battery storage. The new combined solar and storage deal of below 4.5c/kWh cuts previous prices by more than 60 per cent and is far cheaper than a peaking gas plant.

The results for Ausnet underline case for a rethink on who should pay for new grid connections. This would force a proper consideration of distributed generation at the time the network extension is built.

What’s that you say? Australia has ‘clean coal power stations’? Well, it depends how you define ‘clean coal’.

Donald Trump’s 2018 budget would eliminate agencies within the Department of Energy that fund energy technology projects.

Coalition seeks feedback on proposed funding for Port Augusta solar tower plant, but already appears to have agreed to equity funds rather than a loan.

Power Purchase Agreement to provide Competitive Solar Electricity Rates to United States Air Force for 25 Years.

Flamingos expend less energy standing on one leg than in a two-legged stance, scientists confirm.

Daimler is planning to build its second battery storage system manufacturing facility in Germany.

The last thing the spider saw before everything went black. Flickr/Nicola Albertini, CC BY-NC-ND

This is an article from Curious Kids, a new series for children. The Conversation is asking kids to send in questions they’d like an expert to answer. All questions are welcome – serious, weird or wacky!

If a huge huntsman spider is sucked into a vacuum cleaner, can it crawl out later? I really, really need to know. – Lucy, age 8, Ivanhoe.

Editor’s note: for such an important question, we consulted two experts – a vacuum cleaner design expert and a spider expert.

Simon Lockrey, industrial design research fellow and former vacuum cleaner design engineer: It certainly could, depending on the vacuum cleaner.

If there is a clear way out, the huntsman could make its escape when the vacuum is turned off. That’s assuming the spider survived being sucked up, that there were surfaces it could stick to, and there were gaps big enough to squeeze through.

However, sometimes escape is not possible. This is because some vacuum cleaners have internal “doors” that only open on the way in, and not the way out. Think of a trap door that only opens one way! We had those in some of the vacuums I helped to design.

Not all vacuums have this feature. It is mainly for machines that have short openings and get tipped up a lot, such as hand-held vacuums. So without that one-way door, a spider may have a chance to escape.

But the big question is whether a spider would even survive being sucked into a vacuum cleaner at all. Put it this way: when a spider enters a high-speed cyclonic machine, it may be travelling super quick. Speeds vary depending on the model. However, there are new digital motors that can rotate five times quicker than a Formula 1 engine – that’s 120,000 revolutions per minute!

Probably a spider’s best bet would be to lay low until the vacuum cleaner is emptied, and then make a getaway from the bin it is emptied into.

Maggie Hardy, spider expert: When a spider is sucked up by a vacuum cleaner, it first needs to avoid being killed by the low pressure that sucks air and dirt into the vacuum. And second, the spider will have to heal from any damage (scratches, or even lost legs) caused by travelling through the brushes, hoses and chambers inside the vacuum cleaner.

We know spiders can survive in low pressure (like you find in a vacuum) and in low gravity, thanks to some research carried out in space by NASA.

The very first spiders in space were sent for an experiment designed by an American high school student named Judith Miles, in 1973. She wanted to find out how the “spidernauts” would respond to weightlessness in low gravity, because spiders on Earth use both wind and gravity to properly construct their webs. Two more spidernaut experiments were conducted on the International Space Station in 2008 and 2009, and you can compare the results you get on Earth with what the astronauts found in space.

Spiders in space.

The most recent study, in 2011, found that with some practice spidernauts build webs that are very similar to the ones spiders build on Earth.

Spiders have an exoskeleton (their skeleton is on the outside of their body). Spider movement depends on them being able to inflate and deflate their legs, so if they lose a leg sometimes there isn’t enough pressure for them to move their legs. If a spider loses one or more of its legs it will usually regrow them in the next moult (the next time they shed their exoskeleton).

Spiders are a delightful and important part of the natural world, and if they are in your house they are generally lost.

You can build your own spider hospital, in case you do find an injured spider in or around your home. Of course, first you should check with an adult or an expert to make sure the spider isn’t dangerous, and never pick up a spider with your hands – have an adult use a large piece of cardboard, or a plastic container.

How to make a spider hospital.

Hello, curious kids! Have you got a question you’d like an expert to answer? Ask an adult to send your question to us. You can:

* Email your question to curiouskids@theconversation.edu.au
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Please tell us your name, age and which city you live in. You can send an audio recording of your question too, if you want. Send as many questions as you like! We won’t be able to answer every question but we will do our best.

Simon Lockrey worked for Dyson as a design engineer from 2007-2009. He has not received any funding from Dyson in his subsequent academic role at RMIT. He does receive funding from various government, NFP/ NGO, and industry partners for research on sustainability, innovation and design.

Maggie Hardy has received funding from The University of Queensland and UniQuest Pty Ltd.