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Water is pumped using power from a renewable source, from a low level to a high level and stored. The water acquires potential energy. When released, it drives turbines and generates hydro electricity.

Standard silicon cells only capture infra red light. But there is more energy in other wavelengths hitting solar panels. New materials will capture this light and boost the output of solar cells.

Plastic is a problem. Rh Fitri Faradilla at UNSW is looking for a replacement material, strong and safe, one which will easily break down without causing harm.

Specific temperature-related calls made in the final days before hatching alters the behaviour of the developing chick.

There are fewer numbats than there are pandas or orangutans in the world, and keeping the captive breeding numbats in peak condition is a full time job.

Tidal power | Great British Bake Off | Theresa May on holiday | Michael Gove’s beard | Three feet | Christmas stamps | Knickers

Phil Jones (Letters, 18 August) says that tidal energy cannot possibly provide baseload power, because it offers energy in “four three-hour blocks a day”. Make that 80 three-hour blocks a day: the tide is a wave that takes 20 hours to move around the British Isles. True, one tidal project can’t provide baseload on its own – but Jones asks you to believe that tidal power can’t do it, period. That’s inaccurate.
David Robjant
Bedford

• There is indeed a problem of obesity in this country, and many different suggestions for tackling it (Letters, 19 August). Isn’t it rather counterproductive that a large audience is eagerly anticipating The Great British Bake Off – a programme dedicated to making us eat cake?
Julia Reisz
Walberswick, Suffolk

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Marine experts say mysterious orbs found at Long Rock, near Penzance, are species of urchin stirred up from sandy burrows

With their biomechanical, other-worldly appearance, these orbs look like baseballs reprocessed through the imagination of HR Giger. So their appearance en masse on a beach near Penzance this week left locals uneasy.

“I took one home with me, then panicked and put it in the bin in case it attacked,” said one dog walker who found hundreds on the beach at Long Rock, between Penzance and Marazion. His spaniel refused to go near them, he said.

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Burrowing owls at the Olympics, a pygmy elephant with very special tusks, and a rare white mynah bird are among this week’s pick of images from the natural world

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The success or failure of certain species can be used to predict the future health of an entire ecosystem, research says

The Earth’s biodiversity is under attack. We would need to travel back over 65 million years to find rates of species loss as high as we are witnessing today.

Conservation often focuses on the big, enigmatic animals - tigers, polar bears, whales. There are many reasons to want to save these species from extinction. But what about the vast majority of life that we barely notice? The bugs and grubs that can appear or vanish from ecosystems without any apparent impact?

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A study finds that Australian zebra finches sing to their eggs in hot conditions and these "incubation calls" change the chicks' development.

States agree to develop coal seam gas and make deals more transparent in an effort to increase competition and reduce prices

Gas supplies in Australia will be expanded and suppliers forced to publish previously secret prices under reforms agreed to by state and federal ministers at the Coag energy council meeting in Canberra.

All states except Victoria, which has a blanket ban on coal seam gas, agreed to focus on expanding onshore gas activities. The state government in Melbourne agreed to consider its position.

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National Trust will release 100 of the endangered animals, not seen at Malham tarn in Yorkshire dales for 50 years

Britain’s endangered water voles will reach new heights when they are returned to Yorkshire’s Malham tarn for the first time in 50 years.

Around 100 water voles will be reintroduced on Friday to the National Trust estate in the Yorkshire dales, home to England’s highest freshwater lake, in what the trust says is the highest-altitude reintroduction of the species it has carried out in Britain.

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Kinder Scout, Derbyshire Far from being a dismal, greasy world of chocolate peat, the plateau appeared luxuriantly green

There is something littoral about the northern rim of Kinder Scout, the plateau that includes Derbyshire’s highest point. Its start in life was estuarine. Its famous gritstone cap, abrasive icing on a sedimentary layer cake, began as infill of a vast river delta, a Ganges in north Derbyshire. As I picked my way westwards along this narrow shoreline, between Kinder’s summit plateau and the sky, the setting sun emerged below the level of the cloud. The moors to my right – Howden, Alport and Bleaklow – were suddenly bathed in light.

Related: Country diary: Kinder Scout: A silent brooding crowd on the moor

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A guide is now available for this nationally listed critically endangered ecological community.

A guide is now available for this nationally listed critically endangered ecological community.

AEMO, in presentation to energy ministers, says there was no system security or supply reliability issues in South Australia during July.

Academics say plan to slash number of wild horses is needed to protect delicate Snowy Mountains environment

A plan to cull more than 5,000 brumbies in the Snowy Mountains has received the support of leading scientists from around Australia.

Forty-one scientists from 16 universities have written to the New South Wales premier, Mike Baird, to support the proposed cull of 90% of the brumby population in Kosciuszko national park.

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More evidence emerges of how big utilities game the market in South Australia, and how the fossil fuel industry tried to blame it all on renewables. This comes as energy ministers meet to consider proposals to open up the national gas market.

A new record-low solar bid was set in Chile, while wind projects took 40% of the auctioned power contracts.

Survivor from twin endangered loggerheads is separated by scientists and freed in Mediterranean Sea

Marine biologists in southern Italy have separated conjoined twin loggerhead turtles and released the surviving newborn into the Mediterranean Sea.

The release occurred this week along the beaches of Campania where the endangered loggerheads nest every year.

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