Feed aggregator

BUSHFIRE FREQUENCY: The number of bushfires per week in Australia increased by 40 per cent between 2008 and 2013, according to a new study, but experts say it's too early to link this to climate change.

GREAT ATTRACTOR: Hundreds of galaxies hidden from view behind the Milky Way have been unveiled in unprecedented detail for the first time by astronomers using Australia's Parkes Radio Telescope.

Female shark that has had no contact with males for more than two years produces two fertile eggs

A female shark that has had no contact with males of its species for more than two years is due to give birth to two babies. The white-spotted bamboo shark arrived at Great Yarmouth Sea Life Centre in 2013, having been evacuated from the badly flooded sister centre in Hunstanton, also in Norfolk.

She has been the only member of her species at the centre in that time and has had no contact with male sharks. But experts at the centre have revealed that she has produced two fertile eggs, which are due to hatch in nine months’ time.

Continue reading...

GREAT MOMENTS IN SCIENCE: Next time you're at the lights, stop to appreciate the humble pedestrian button. The design is so beautiful that even Oscar Wilde would approve, says Dr Karl.

International Shark Attack File notes 98 unprovoked shark attacks – including six fatalities – with US, Australia and South Africa witnessing highest numbers

Sharks attacked people 98 times in 2015, a spike in unprovoked attacks that set a new record as human populations rise, researchers found in an annual global tally released on Monday.

Related: Shark nets used at most beaches do not protect swimmers, research suggests

Continue reading...

Rodents are threatening the unique natural environment of Australia’s sparsely populated Lord Howe Island. But a plan to eradicate the pests by dropping 42 tonnes of poisoned cereal is splitting the close-knit community in half

Described by the UN as “an area of spectacular and scenic landscapes”, Lord Howe Island is nothing if not dramatic. Formed from an inferno of underwater volcanoes more than six million years ago, the 10km long crescent-shaped island sits in a bath of turquoise water, exactly where the warm East Australian Current meets the icy waters of the Antarctic Circumpolar Current.

Those ancient lava flows left a rugged landscape with steep cliffs, which drop off into an ocean which supports the world’s most southerly coral reef. Between those cliffs and the reef lies a calm blue lagoon that laps against a yellow-sand beach.

Continue reading...

RESCUE ROACH: The hard-to-kill cockroach has inspired the development of a soft-bodied robot that can compress itself and crawl into confined spaces, and may help locate people trapped in buildings destroyed by disasters.

A new study finds that NOAA temperature adjustments are doing exactly what they’re supposed to

Congressman Lamar Smith (R-TX) has embarked upon a witch-hunt against climate scientists at NOAA, accusing them of conspiring to fudge global temperature data. However, a new study has found that the adjustments NOAA makes to the raw temperature data bring them closer to measurements from a reference network of pristinely-located temperature stations.

Continue reading...

Application on ecological sustainability - call for public comments open from 9 February 2016 until 9 March 2016.

Application on ecological sustainability - call for public comments open from 9 February 2016 until 9 March 2016.

A court ruling has backed Dover council’s decision to allow builders into an area of outstanding natural beauty

Conservationists and historians are digging in for a last-ditch defence of a sliver of “sacrosanct” ancient Kentish meadow and woods, protected in law but set to be the location for a large housing and leisure development.

The fight for the Farthingloe valley, a long, narrow green strip that extends to the western outskirts of Dover, has been especially bitter. The valley is within the Kent Downs area of outstanding natural beauty and makes up much of the rural hinterland behind the 300ft Shakespeare Cliff, the most westerly of the chalk cliffs at Dover. The cliff is owned by Dover district council and the National Trust owns a portion of land. The valley may have provided some inspiration for a scene in King Lear, which gave rise to the cliff’s name, coined in the 18th century.

Continue reading...

Invisible pollution kills up to 9,000 people a year in the capital. But under government plans, from school gates to shopping streets, Londoners will be breathing dangerous air until 2025. What more can be done?

“In the morning, this traffic island is packed with children and pushchairs and they are about a metre from all the exhausts,” says Shazia Ali-Webber. She is walking her three boys to school in Hackney, the eldest of whom, Zain, is eight and asthmatic.

Crossing choked Mare Street, where the heavy traffic grinds slowly past, is her biggest concern. “Children’s lung development is affected by air pollution: they have smaller lungs for life,” she says. “The government’s new plan says pollution will not fall to legal levels till 2025. But I don’t have time to wait: Zain will be 18 by then. They are condemning a generation of children to ill-health.”

Continue reading...

Battery could revolutionise UK energy market by enabling people to store excess energy generated from rooftop solar panels

The setting is decidedly modest: a utility room in a red-brick house at the end of a cul-de-sac in Wales. But if the hype turns out to be right, this may be the starting point for an energy revolution in the UK.

Householder Mark Kerr has become the first British owner of a Tesla Powerwall, a cutting-edge bit of kit that the makers say will provide a “missing link” in solar energy.

Continue reading...

Engage early – guidance for proponents on best practice Indigenous engagement for environmental assessments under the EPBC Act 1999 aims to improve how proponents engage and consult Indigenous people during the environmental assessment process...

The Commonwealth Environmental Water Holder today released a series of scientific reports analysing the impacts of environmental water during 2014-15, as part of a $30 million investment in monitoring and evaluation projects across the Murray...

Sydney woman posts video on Facebook of spider crawling through her Italian-style packaged salad greens bought at Woolworths

As meat production depletes the world’s resources and compounds the changing climate, eating insects and other creepy crawlies might well be in all our futures. But one Australian woman came closer than the rest of us when she brought home a sizeable spider in her bag of salad greens.

Zoe Perry posted the video of the huntsman shifting around within the “Italian style salad” bag – with the on-screen caption “Jesus” – to Woolworths’ Facebook page on Thursday night.

Continue reading...

HUMAN MIGRATION: The population of Stone Age Europe underwent a radical transformation toward the end of the last Ice Age, according to a study of ancient DNA.

FUNNY NOSES: An ancient herbivore related to the wildebeest had a bizarre nose that was similar to a dinosaur that lived tens of millions of years earlier, researchers have found.

The debate about helmet use is too often toxic, puts off new riders and obscures more important issues, argues the founder of Vulpine

Let me begin with a story.

Last night I walked into a pub and spotted a guy with two empty pint glasses in front of him. He had a lovely fresh third pint poised at his trembling lips. Fantastic, just what I was looking for.

Continue reading...

LAND MANAGEMENT: The use of fire by Aborigines to modify their environment had little if any impact on the natural erosion processes that shaped parts of south-eastern Australia, a new study has found.