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‘We have a chance to show the truth’: into the heart of Chernobyl
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.
Continue reading...Melting ice sheets changing the way the Earth wobbles on its axis, says Nasa
‘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.
Continue reading...Earth's spin axis shifted by melting ice sheets, changes in water
The worm has turned: how British insect farms could spawn a food revolution
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.
Continue reading...Northern Territory Demersal Fishery - Application 2016
Modern men have no trace of Neanderthal DNA on their Y chromosome
Why is Honduras the world's deadliest country for environmentalists?
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.
Continue reading...Monster black hole discovered in an unlikely galaxy may be common
South America's prehistoric people spread like 'invasive species'
Supernovae may have played a role in Earth's evolution
Tesla loses latest battle with Ecotricity
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.
Continue reading...Six things we know about the plastic bag charge in England
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:
Tigers declared extinct in Cambodia
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.
Safeguard Mechanism Draft Emissions Intensity Benchmark Guidelines
Safeguard Mechanism Draft Emissions Intensity Benchmark Guidelines
Pig hearts kept alive in baboons for more than two years
Natural Temperate Grassland of the South Eastern Highlands listed in the critically endangered category
Can you make your heart stronger?
Polar bears losing weight as Arctic sea ice melts, Canadian study finds
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.
Continue reading...Ancient 'Kite Runner' carried its young attached to its body by threads
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