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Britain's best places to take off on a butterfly safari
The purple emperor and chequered skipper await, whether you just fancy a flutter or metamorphose into a full-blown spotter
The purple emperor butterfly, a rather eccentric 1950s schoolmaster called Ian Heslop once declared, is the ultimate “big game”. A renowned collector, he boasted of catching as many emperors as he had shot elephants (four) but said that no exotic African beast gave him “so much joy as the seeing of my first emperor safely in the net”.
It is no longer acceptable to shoot elephants or catch purple emperors but Heslop was on to something – the overlooked adrenal pleasure of a butterfly safari. Chasing butterflies, to photograph or simply to enjoy, may seem like a whimsical pastime but can be surprisingly thrilling.
Continue reading...Has the Chernobyl disaster affected the number of nuclear plants built?
Thirty years on from one of the worst radiation leaks in history, several countries have moved to phase out nuclear energy production altogether, and experts say another accident would kill the industry
Related: Chernobyl nuclear disaster 30th anniversary – in pictures
This week marks 30 years since an accident at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in Ukraine led to a huge leak of radiation across eastern Europe.
Continue reading...Sea lion found on farm 50 miles inland dies after release into ocean
The 160kg animal swam and waddled its way to the ranch in Washington state but has failed to survive the sea, biologists say
A sea lion that baffled scientists after being found in the driveway of a cattle ranch about 80km (50 miles) from the ocean in Washington state has been found dead two weeks after being released into the sea.
The male California sea lion was released into Puget Sound on 15 April after it apparently swam and waddled its way to the ranch near Oakville, the Tacoma News Tribune reported.
Continue reading...Genes linked to increased chance of having non-identical twins identified
VW and Shell accused of trying to block EU push for electric cars
Industry giants’ call for biofuels over electric and fuel-efficient cars puts Europe’s carbon emissions targets at risk, say experts
VW and Shell have been accused of trying to block Europe’s push for electric cars and more efficient cars, by saying biofuels should be at heart of efforts to green the industry instead.
The EU is planning two new fuel efficiency targets for 2025 and 2030 to help meet promises made at the Paris climate summit last December.
Continue reading...Rowan Williams calls on Cambridge University to divest from fossil fuels
Former archbishop of Canterbury says the university should withdraw its £5.8bn fund from from oil, coal and gas on ethical and financial grounds
Rowan Williams has called on the University of Cambridge to divest from fossil fuels, arguing that climate change is “a life-and-death question”.
The former archbishop of Canterbury and master of Magdalene college made his comments in a foreword to a 74-page report on divestment by student campaign group Cambridge Zero Carbon Society.
Continue reading...Secret of how peacocks hypnotise the ladies revealed
Invitation to comment on listing assessment for Fregata andrewsi (Christmas Island frigatebird)
Teeth marks evidence that early humans were eaten by animals
Could carbon farming be the answer for a 'clapped-out' Australia?
Farmers signing up for the carbon emissions reduction fund have to meet strict guidelines but there is significant profit and energy savings to be made
This week the Clean Energy Regulator (CER) will hold the third emissions reduction fund auction and farmers across Australia will move to the forefront of efforts to rescue a “clapped-out” country.
Australian farmers have long bought and sold their wares at auction. Sale yards were the hub of country towns and the din of a moleskin-clad auctioneer shouting over the bleating and mooing of fattened livestock has long been a familiar rural backdrop.
Continue reading...Montserrat's last two mountain chicken frogs to be reunited to save species
Conservationists pin hopes of the species’ survival on breeding the Caribbean island’s last known male and female in the wild
In what could be a fairytale ending, conservationists are hoping to reunite the last two remaining wild mountain chicken frogs living on Montserrat and help their species breed on the Caribbean island for the first time since 2009.
A project led by the Durrell Wildlife Conservation Trust will next month take the last remaining female and “translocate” her into the territory of the last remaining male as part of a 20-year recovery plan for the species, one of the world’s largest and rarest frogs that exists on just two Caribbean islands, Montserrat and Dominica.
Continue reading...It's getting steamy in the hedgerow
Wenlock Edge Hawthorns push their little cheesy shuttlecocks, oaks are in their bronze
Cuckoo pint, lords and ladies, Jack-in-the-pulpit – these names are medieval nudges and winks about genitalia and sex. They belong to wild arum, a trick flower that jumps out of the earth with a bawdy country humour that mocks the righteous and revels instead in the rude phwoar! of April. The cruellest month, according to T S Eliot, and maybe we’ll pay for these few glorious sunny days, but we’ll make the most of them until then.
It’s getting steamy in the hedgerow. For months, trees stood in companionable silence throughout a blowy winter that leaked into a dour early spring; now they fizz with a green static as buds pop and a million leaves inflate. Hawthorns push their little cheesy shuttlecocks, oaks are in their bronze; blackthorn has been snowing for weeks, and the purple dangles of ash are out. Small birds, skirmishing through disputed branches, travel in song between trees in the neutral air.
Continue reading...Single cell slime mould can 'learn'
Monster black hole formed by trio of colliding galaxies stuns scientists
'It was anarchy': a family reflects on the Chernobyl disaster, 30 years on
Three generations explain how their lives were transformed by the nuclear explosion in 1986
It was just a regular day for Anastasia Fedosenko. It was spring, a busy time for local farmers. Nobody told her about the explosion at first.
“It was only on the third day that they said something had happened at the Chernobyl plant, but nobody knew what exactly. They evacuated pregnant women and mothers with children under five, but the rest of us just continued our normal routine, feeding and milking cows,” the 73-year-old recalls.
Continue reading...Ikea starts selling solar panels in UK stores
Swedish firm is optimistic of sales despite recent cuts to solar incentives
Solar panels will join tea lights and spider plants on sale at Ikea stores from Monday, despite huge government cuts to solar subsidies for homeowners.
Shoppers will be able to order panels online and at three stores, initially Glasgow, Birmingham and Lakeside, before the so-called Solar Shops appear in all the Swedish company’s UK stores by summer’s end.
Continue reading...Solar Impulse 2 lands safely in San Francisco after historic flight over Pacific
Plane powered only by sun flies over Golden Gate Bridge after spending 56 hours coming from Hawaii on riskiest leg of its journey around the world
A solar-powered plane accomplished a 56-hour, record-setting flight over the Pacific Ocean, flying by San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge and landing in Mountain View, California late Saturday night.
Related: Solar Impulse: round-the-world flight to continue after raising €20m
Continue reading...If consumers knew how farmed chickens were raised, they might never eat their meat again
The year 2012 marked a leap forward for animal welfare in the European Union. Farmers were no longer allowed to keep egg-laying hens in barren battery cages smaller than an A4 sheet of paper. Instead, the minimum requirement now is that hens are kept in a cage the size of an A4 sheet of paper, with an extra postcard-sized bit of shared space that allows them to scratch and nest. These are known as enriched cages.
Animal welfare campaigners would like to see them abolished too, saying they barely make a difference to the birds’ ability to express their natural behaviour and live free from stress. Around half of the eggs we eat are still produced in caged systems.
Continue reading...River on fire in Greens MP's video is natural, not fracking, says CSIRO
Jeremy Buckingham says scientists ‘making excuses’ for CSG industry after footage shows him touching off sheet of flame on the Condamine river
The CSIRO has defended its independence after a Greens MP, whose footage of burning methane on a Queensland river went viral, accused the government-funded research body of “making excuses” for the coal seam gas industry.
Jeremy Buckingham, a member of the New South Wales parliament’s upper house, posted the video, which showed him lighting the surface of the Condamine river with a barbecue lighter and sending flames licking around the boat, on his Facebook page on Friday. By Sunday it had been shared 13,000 times and had 2.2m views.
Continue reading...SENG seminar - Transition to Low Carbon Economy, May 2016
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