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Pripyat, founded for the 49,000-plus Chernobyl nuclear power plant workers and their families, now stands empty within the Chernobyl exclusion zone in northern Ukraine. It was evacuated in 1986 after the explosion at reactor #4 Continue reading...

SEng Victoria Newsletter - April 2013

April Seminar - Brisbane District Cooling System

Mayor of Namie invites Google's cameras in to stop world forgetting twin disasters of tsunami then nuclear meltdown

Two years after Fukushima's triple nuclear meltdown forced tens of thousands of residents to flee, it is possible to take a virtual journey deep into the exclusion zone to one of the towns they left behind.

Google Street View has published striking images of the devastation visited on Namie by the March 2011 tsunami and nuclear meltdown: abandoned homes, shops and restaurants, fields blanketed in grass and weeds.

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Lindt, Thorntons and Guylian come bottom of a league table of chocolate Easter eggs scored on use of unsustainable palm oil

Lindt, Thorntons and Guylian have come bottom of a green ranking of Easter eggs based on their use of palm oil. Divine Chocolate came top, with the Co-operative and Sainsbury's close behind in the survey of more than 70 brands by Ethical Consumer magazine and charity Rainforest Foundation UK (RFUK).

The organisations are launching a campaign in response to the increasing threat that unsustainable palm oil is posing to the world's rainforests, their indigenous wildlife, and the people whose livelihoods depend on the forests. Having destroyed vast areas of forest in countries such as Indonesia, palm oil companies are now planning to expand in the rainforests of the Congo Basin in Africa.

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Technical Seminar 19 March - the Carbon Faming Initiative

Almost 100 million sharks are being killed each year, with fishing rates outstripping the ability of populations to recover, scientists have estimated. Sharks are targeted for their fins for use in shark fin soup, a delicacy in Asia, but as they are slow-growing and slow to reproduce, they are vulnerable to overfishing Continue reading...

SEng Victoria Newsletter

Team of scientists use radiometric dating techniques on Russian cave formations to measure historic melting rates

A global temperature rise of 1.5C would be enough to start the melting of permafrost in Siberia, scientists warned on Thursday.

Any widespread thaw in Siberia's permanently frozen ground could have severe consequences for climate change. Permafrost covers about 24% of the land surface of the northern hemisphere, and widespread melting could eventually trigger the release of hundreds of gigatonnes of carbon dioxide and methane, which would have a massive warming effect.

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Bao Zhenming, who declined to take up the challenge was offered over £20,000 to swim in the contaminated waterway

Widespread outrage against China's environmental issues that began when Beijing's air pollution hit record levels last month has spread to encompass another major public health threat: water pollution.

Last week, an eyeglass-retailer executive from Rui'an City, coastal Zhejiang province, offered the city's environmental protection chief Bao Zhenming more than £20,000 to take a 20-minute dip in a highly polluted local river. The entrepreneur, Jin Zengmin, posted the dare to his microblog beneath pictures showing the waterway overflowing with discarded aluminum cans, polystyrene boxes and paper lanterns. He blamed the river's industrial demise on dumping by a local rubber shoe factory.

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SEng Victoria News

SEng National Newsletter - Issue 1

Welcome to 2013 with SSEE! The Brisbane Floods 2 years on

Golden rice, a new strain that boosts vitamin A levels and reduces blindness in developing countries, could be sown in the Philippines – and is the new battleground crop

Scientists say they have seen the future of genetically modified foods and have concluded that it is orange or, more precisely, golden. Next year, golden rice – normal rice that has been genetically modified to provide vitamin A to counter blindness and other diseases in children in the developing world – could be given to farmers in the Philippines for planting in paddy fields.

Thirty years after scientists first revealed they had created the world's first GM crop, hopes that their potential to ease global malnutrition problems may be realised at last. Bangladesh and Indonesia have indicated they are ready to accept golden rice and other nations, including India, have also said that they are considering planting it.

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In the worst natural disaster Britain experienced during the 20th century, the low-lying housing of England's east coast was devastated by a huge tidal surge, which left 307 people dead and 40,000 homeless. A lack of preparedness was the cause of the huge scale of the disaster, and the emergency response was led by the community, with the majority of search and rescue done before central government became involved Continue reading...

The Python Challenge, an open-invitation competition held by the state's Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, is a one-month snake hunt to catch and kill invasive and prolific Burmese pythons. The contest has drawn hundreds of amateur hunters armed with captive bolt guns and machetes, each hoping to win the $1,000 and $1,500 prizes Continue reading...

The dozen trapped orcas swam free after changing weather conditions cracked the sea ice in northern Canada

A dozen killer whales, trapped and facing near-certain death in the frozen expanse of Canada's Hudson Bay, broke free on Thursday morning, to the vast relief of locals and many thousands monitoring their plight online.

Pictures of the whales clustered around a 10-foot hole in the ice that was their last source of oxygen had set off a desperate search for rescue options.

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A study of motorcyclists shows head-to-toe fluorescent yellow does not always ensure you are visible

A couple of years ago I took a condensed version of the training programme for cycle officers with London's City police, a process which began with my instructor following me to assess my riding as we pedalled through the busy streets. His verdict? Mainly fine, barring what he insisted on terming a "mistake" - that even in early afternoon on a bright April day I was not wearing some sort of high-visibility waistcoat or jacket.

High vis is a vexed subject for cyclists. Probably only helmets and light jumping cause more arguments. Ultimately, of course, what you wear on your bike is personal choice. Full Lycra gimp garb? Office clothes? Nothing at all? Go right ahead. Nonetheless, the debate merits an airing, for two reasons.

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Conservationists also warned that the vast majority caught were juveniles and had never reproduced

The bluefin tuna, which has been endangered for several years and has the misfortune to be prized by Japanese sushi lovers, has suffered a catastrophic decline in stocks in the Northern Pacific Ocean, of more than 96%, according to research published on Wednesday.

Equally concerning is the fact that about 90% of specimens currently fished are young fish that have not yet reproduced.

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It was 1975, Greenpeace's first campaign, and the bodies of six Soviet-slaughtered whales were lying lifeless in the swell. I thought to myself, is humanity really this insane?

The greatest gift that I have ever received is also my great and enduring curse.

It was June 1975 and I was a crew member on the first Greenpeace campaign to protect the whales. It was off the coast of northern California, 60 miles offshore. Before us, spread across the waters like some invading foreign armada, was the Soviet whaling fleet.

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