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There's a new theory to explain why whales beach themselves in large numbers

‘His blubber shook like Jell-o,’ says researcher of the attack on newborn orca by unrelated 32-year-old male

Scientists in the Canadian province of British Columbia have documented what is believed to be the first reported case of an orca whale killing an infant of the same species.

“We knew right away that this was a remarkable event,” said Jared Towers, a Cetacean researcher with Fisheries and Oceans Canada, of the encounter he and two colleagues witnessed in December 2016.

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Mining for lignite - or brown coal - in Greece is a huge industry. Together with Germany and Poland, the country accounts for more than one-third of the world’s coal production. But for residents of villages in the extraction areas of West Macedonia, it has many impacts, from displacement to health problems. Photographs and research by Anna Pantelia

Thick dust suspended in the atmosphere makes it hard to see the sun over Ptolemaida, a city 500 kilometres north-west of Athens in the West Macedonia region, known for its brown coal (lignite) mines and power stations.

Kostas works as a guard for the state-owned Public Power Corporation (PPC), like his father before him. “My father died of cancer when I was 12,” he says. “Four other men from his shift lost their lives from cancer.”

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About 150 animals wash up on a beach south of Perth, prompting a major rescue effort.

Rescue operation under way to save 15 beached whales in Hamelin Bay near Augusta on state’s south-west coast

More than 150 whales have washed ashore in Western Australia, of which about 75 have died.

A rescue operation is under way in Hamelin Bay, near the town of Augusta on the state’s south-western tip, with volunteers and vets trying to keep the surviving short-finned pilot whales alive before deciding when to herd them out to sea. About 50 of the whales are on the beach and 25 are in the shallows.

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'Social licence to operate' is a term describing how much community support a project or company has. As the Northern Rivers CSG experience shows, failing to get it can have costly impacts for firms. Hanabeth Luke, Lecturer, Southern Cross University Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.

How do the competing battery storage rollouts compare? Is the Marshall plan better than the Tesla proposal embraced by Weatherill?

Grid-scale battery storage is taking off in Australia but it is still a struggle for investors to get value from their services. The contracts for the new Victoria big batteries explain why.

It's not worth getting too excited about the many technical deficiencies in the proposed National Energy Guarantee and the poverty of the vision that underlies it.

Tony Burke says if the Greens back the plan, the ‘largest removal’ of a conservation area will be locked in for a decade

Labor has blasted the Greens for not lining up immediately behind their commitment to disallow controversial new marine park management plans proposed by the Turnbull government this week.

The shadow environment minister, Tony Burke, told Guardian Australia the government had been intent for four years “on the largest removal of area from conservation in history”.

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Whatever shape the shift to renewables takes, energy storage will be the Swiss Army knife for electricity grids – a tool for any task.

Ground broken at 80MW Victoria wind farm – fruition of Melbourne project involving 14 universities, cultural institutions, corporations and Councils.

Computing giant says it now contracts enough renewables to "send Marty McFly back in time in a DeLorean" after sealing 315MW Virginia solar farm PPA.

The dream of carbon capture and storage (CCS) continues to keep coal industry and its political backers hopeful for the future. But at what cost?

Agreements between the Commonwealth and state governments that protect native forests are based on hopelessly out-of-date information. It's a huge mistake to renew them without assessment. David Lindenmayer, Professor, The Fenner School of Environment and Society, Australian National University Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.

Schneider Electric has launched new services to assist businesses in the adoption of low-cost renewable energy.

Students will be graded numerically on a scale from 9 to 1.

A new museum dedicated to IK Brunel reveals the man behind the carefully cultivated public image.

British scientists think DNA could be used to solve a global problem - where to store all our data.

VR has suffered from an image problem, so could very high resolution headsets be the answer?