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Saharan silver ant's hairs reflect light to beat the desert heat

ABC Science - Thu, 2016-04-14 14:03
INSECT INNOVATION: Life in the scorching hot Sahara Desert is no problem for an ant that has evolved an effective and stylish heat-repellent system, new research finds.

Internet video chat could help reduce agitation in people with dementia

ABC Science - Thu, 2016-04-14 10:35
AGED CARE: Video chatting with relatives over the internet might be able to reduce the risk of nursing home residents with dementia from becoming agitated or even aggressive, new research suggests.

It’s settled: 90–100% of climate experts agree on human-caused global warming | Dana Nuccitelli

The Guardian - Wed, 2016-04-13 17:00

All-star team with authors of seven previous climate consensus studies collaborate to debunk the ‘no consensus’ myth once and for all

There is an overwhelming expert scientific consensus on human-caused global warming.

Authors of seven previous climate consensus studies — including Naomi Oreskes, Peter Doran, William Anderegg, Bart Verheggen, Ed Maibach, J. Stuart Carlton, John Cook, myself, and six of our colleagues — have co-authored a new paper that should settle this question once and for all. The two key conclusions from the paper are:

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£500,000 tree-planting project helped Yorkshire town miss winter floods

The Guardian - Wed, 2016-04-13 15:00

Slowing the Flow scheme, which saw 40,000 trees planted, reduced peak river flow by 20%, after 50mm of rain fell in 36 hours

Tree planting and other natural approaches have prevented flooding at Pickering in North Yorkshire over Christmas, at a time when heavy rainfall caused devastating flooding across the region.

An analysis of the Slowing the Flow scheme published on Wednesday concludes that the measures reduced peak river flow by 15-20% at a time when 50mm of rain fell on sodden ground in 36 hours. The scheme was set up in 2009 after the town had suffered four serious floods in 10 years, with the flooding in 2007 estimated to have caused about £7m of damage.

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Insulin-producing cells created in a dish for the first time

ABC Science - Wed, 2016-04-13 09:01
DIABETES BREAKTHROUGH: Fully functioning pancreatic cells that produce insulin have been created in the laboratory from human stem cells for the first time.

Diving scientists record 'cloud' of thousands of swarming crabs

The Guardian - Tue, 2016-04-12 22:15

Researchers ‘have no idea’ why red crabs off Panama might be behaving in such a way, says a biologist: ‘Nothing like this has ever been seen’

Descending in a submersible in waters off Panama, scientists noticed something strange happening near the seafloor. It was a drifting fog of sediment, disturbed by something below. Diving deeper, the scientists found the cause: crabs, thousands of them, swarming in a way never before recorded.

“We just saw this cloud but had no idea what was causing it,” said Jesús Pineda, a biologist at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts and the lead author of a paper on the crabs published on Tuesday.

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No more hippies and explorers: a lament for the changed world of cycling | Tom Marriage

The Guardian - Tue, 2016-04-12 16:00

As cycling’s popularity has increased, there has been a cultural shift away from fun and experiences towards a macho world of speed and Strava

I came across an interesting film the other day. It was linked from Sidetracked, a beautiful, outdoors lifestyle-y type magazine. The kind you buy in a bookshop rather than a newsagent, full of long-form journalism and photo essays, not product reviews and top 10 lists.

The video was of one woman, Lael Wilcox, talking about her experience cycling the Arizona Trail. She was racing, trying to get the best time, but on her own in a self-supported attempt.

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Mystery over death of Malaysian python contending for title of world's longest snake

The Guardian - Tue, 2016-04-12 15:21

Snake expert rejects suggestion that the 7.5m python might have killed itself

A python caught in Malaysia and first thought to be the longest snake in captivity has lost both its run at the title and its life.

Two people working for the department that trapped the animal said it was remeasured at 7.5 metres, just 17 centimetres short of first place.

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Invitation to comment on two species listing assessments

Department of the Environment - Tue, 2016-04-12 11:52
The public consultation period for both speices will be open until 27 May 2016.
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Sydney man dies after redback spider bite, although not yet clear bite to blame

The Guardian - Tue, 2016-04-12 10:55

If Jayden Burleigh, 22, did die as a result of the redback bite, it will be the first such fatality in more than 60 years thanks to the introduction of antivenom

A 22-year-old Australian has died after being bitten by a redback spider in what may turn out to be the first such death since the antivenom was introduced 60 years ago.

Jayden Burleigh, from Sydney’s northern beaches, was reportedly bitten while walking on the north coast of New South Wales last week.

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How many places of pi do we need?

ABC Science - Tue, 2016-04-12 10:00
GREAT MOMENTS IN SCIENCE: Pi is a very long and a very important number, but how many decimal places of it do we really need to know? Dr Karl investigates.

The Minister’s Delegate has approved conservation advices for 60 species

Department of the Environment - Mon, 2016-04-11 14:35
Conservation Advices can be found in the relevant species and ecological communities profiles on the Species Profiles and Threats database.
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Great Barrier Reef: David Attenborough ignores politics and appeals to the heart

The Guardian - Mon, 2016-04-11 12:48

Documentarian’s message rings especially loud for Australians, who have the privilege and duty to look after this natural wonder

“Do we really care so little about the Earth on which we live that we don’t wish to protect one of its greatest wonders from the consequences of our behaviour?”

Related: Greg Hunt rebuked by Attenborough film-maker after upbeat verdict on Great Barrier Reef

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Number of tigers in the wild rises for first time in more than 100 years

The Guardian - Mon, 2016-04-11 12:43

There are now 3,890 animals roaming the forests of Asia but the increase may be down to improved survey methods

The number of tigers in the wild has risen for the first time in more than a century, with some 3,890 counted in the latest global census, according to wildlife conservation groups.

The tally marks a turnaround from the last worldwide estimate in 2010, when the number of tigers in the wild hit an all-time low of about 3,200, according to the World Wildlife Fund and the Global Tiger Forum.

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The human face of fracking in North Dakota – in pictures

The Guardian - Sun, 2016-04-10 23:19

In 2006, Eli Reichman began photographing a ranching community in the fracking fields of western North Dakota. For the last decade, he has documented the cultural and social breakdown of an agricultural community being pressured to compromise in order to stay on land originally homesteaded by their ancestors in the early 1900s.

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‘We have a chance to show the truth’: into the heart of Chernobyl

The Guardian - Sat, 2016-04-09 18:00

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.

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Melting ice sheets changing the way the Earth wobbles on its axis, says Nasa

The Guardian - Sat, 2016-04-09 10:35

‘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.

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Earth's spin axis shifted by melting ice sheets, changes in water

ABC Science - Sat, 2016-04-09 09:46
SHIFTING POLES: Shifts in the spin axis of our planet are not only being driven by melting ice sheets but also changes in the relative amount of water stored on the continents, researchers have discovered.

The worm has turned: how British insect farms could spawn a food revolution

The Guardian - Fri, 2016-04-08 22:21

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.

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Northern Territory Demersal Fishery - Application 2016

Department of the Environment - Fri, 2016-04-08 14:38
Application on ecological sustainability - public comment open from 11 April 2016 until 13 May 2016
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