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A14 in Cambridgeshire promised biodiversity net gain of 11.5%, but most of the 860,000 trees planted are dead. What went wrong?
Lorries thunder over the A14 bridge north of Cambridge, above steep roadside embankments covered in plastic shrouds containing the desiccated remains of trees.
Occasionally the barren landscape is punctuated by a flash of green where a young hawthorn or a fledgling honeysuckle has emerged apparently against the odds, but their shock of life is an exception in the treeless landscape.
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Diquat is banned in the UK, EU, China and other countries. The US has resisted calls to regulate it
The herbicide ingredient used to replace glyphosate in Roundup and other weedkiller products can kill gut bacteria and damage organs in multiple ways, new research shows.
The ingredient, diquat, is widely employed in the US as a weedkiller in vineyards and orchards, and is increasingly sprayed elsewhere as the use of controversial herbicide substances such as glyphosate and paraquat drops in the US.
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Exclusive: Letter to government says lower prices for repaired goods would cut waste, create jobs and help households save money
Ministers are facing fresh calls to scrap VAT on all repaired and refurbished electronics, with businesses, charities and community groups arguing the move would help households cut costs and stop electrical goods being binned prematurely.
In a letter to the environment secretary, Steve Reed, the signatories say that removing VAT on repaired electronics should be part of a wider push to cut waste, extend the life of products and develop a “truly circular economy”.
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Combs Moss, Derbyshire: For 50 years, I have been coming here to see breeding waders, now gone or much diminished. We must find a way to arrest this decline
It’s one of my midsummer rituals, if the forecast is right, to climb on to the moorland tops and await sunset. I build in several secondary goals: check if there are lapwings still on eggs in the sheep pasture below the summit (just two); see if there are curlew pairs breeding in the heather (only three).
These exercises add to a personal dataset that is 50 years old. While I can confirm that, in all that time, snipes, curlews, lapwings and golden plovers have bred annually, both redshanks and dunlins have long gone and the other quartet is much diminished. As a result, Combs Moss is steeped in melancholy for me.
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The women are raising larvae of the endangered Taylor’s checkerspot for release into the wild
Trista Egli was standing in a greenhouse, tearing up strips of plantain and preparing to feed them to butterfly larvae.
Of the many things the team here has tried to tempt larvae of the Taylor’s checkerspot – a native of the Pacific north-west – with, it is the invasive English plantain they seem to love the most.
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UK to launch safety study into DIY ‘plug-in’ systems such as Germany’s Balkonkraftwerk as part of plan to triple solar capacity by 2030
From herb boxes and flower pots to washing lines and hanging baskets, residents of Madrid, Berlin and other European cities are well versed at making the most of their compact balconies – even generating power for wifi, the kettle and the TV.
“Balcony solar” allows urbanites to install a small number of panels in the tight space outside apartments, which generate electricity that can be used for the household. Soon flat owners and renters in the UK could be able to use the same “plug-in” technology, which is currently prohibited.
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Rise in sightings prompts call for ban on soil imports, to prevent entry of more species that eat earthworms and degrade soil
They have been invading the UK for years; small mucus-covered animals which hunt in gardens, allotments and greenhouses.
The number of sightings of non-native flatworms has risen sharply over the past few years, and experts have warned they can decimate earthworm populations and degrade soil quality.
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Not only is nuclear essential if we want to reach net zero – it’s the key to tackling poverty, too
Money can buy comfort, but energy makes comfort possible in the first place. Energy is the great enabler of the modern world. It connects the globe by moving people and hauling goods. It loosens the grip of the weather by warming our homes in winter and cooling them in summer. It forges the steel that raises our cities and synthesises the fertilisers that keep half the world’s population from starvation. It increasingly empowers us by electrifying the technologies we rely on daily.
It is also the great enabler of socioeconomic development. Monetary wealth and energy abundance move in lockstep: plot a graph of GDP per capita against energy consumption per capita, and you’ll draw a straight line. Low-energy, high-income nations do not exist. Prosperity and energy are inseparable; you cannot have one without the other.
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Steve Reed says changes to living standards are happening and will make a big difference to trust in government
It was probably easier for Steve Reed to feel more cheerful about Labour’s most torrid week in government while sitting on bales of hay in the blazing sunshine about 40 miles from Westminster.
The environment secretary might have sympathised with Rachel Reeves and Liz Kendall – he has experience of bearing the flak for some of the government’s most controversial decisions on family farm taxes – but at Hertfordshire’s Groundswell festival, named the Glastonbury for farms, he may simply have been happy not to be pelted with manure by unhappy farmers.
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Following the destruction from 2010’s Deepwater Horizon oil spill, an anti-drilling coalition took action with HB 1143 – and got it signed by DeSantis
The giant and catastrophic Deepwater Horizon oil spill, also known as the BP oil spill, didn’t reach Apalachicola Bay in 2010, but the threat of oil reaching this beautiful and environmentally valuable stretch of northern Florida’s Gulf coast was still enough to devastate the region’s economy.
The Florida state congressman Jason Shoaf remembers how the threat affected the bay.
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Novo istraživanje pronašlo je vezu između određenih faktora rizika za krvne žile u srednjoj životnoj dobi - posebno visokog krvnog tlaka, dijabetesa i pušenja - i rizika za demenciju.
Djeca rođena planiranim carskim rezom, no ne i hitnim carskim rezom, imaju povećan rizik od razvoja akutne limfoblastične leukemije (ALL) kasnije u životu, pokazuju rezultati istraživanja provedenog u Švedskoj.
Novi način uzgoja matičnih stanica mogao bi im pomoći da oslobode više signalnih proteina koje koriste za popravak tkiva, potencijalno poboljšavajući buduće tretmane, pokazuje nova studija.
Izgleda da, kratka 10-minutna šetnja odmah nakon unosa glukoze može biti učinkovita u snižavanju vršnih razina glukoze u usporedbi s mirovanjem i 30-minutnom odgođenom šetnjom, pokazuje nova studija.
Američki znanstvenici su otkrili kako protein BACE1 dugo povezivan s Alzheimerovom bolešću pomaže širenju raka pluća u mozak – otkriće koje daje nadu da bi se postojeći lijekovi za Alzheimerovu bolest mogli prenamijeniti u sprječavanju širenja raka.
Poznato je da virus hepatitisa E (HEV) uzrokuje tešku upalu jetre. Sada su njemački znanstvenici uspjeli dokazati da može inficirati i stanice bubrega i tamo se replicirati. Nažalost, antivirusni lijekovi poput ribavirina manje su učinkoviti u bubrezima nego u jetri.
Rezultati nove studije pokazali su da se odrasle osobe s lošim životnim navikama suočavaju sa značajno većim rizikom od fibrilacije atrija, što sugerira da bi zdrave životne navike mogle biti ključne za sprječavanje ove česte aritmije.
Zamjena rafiniranih žitarica cjelovitim žitaricama predstavlja jednostavan način kako se može smanjiti rizika od hipertenzije, pokazuje nova studija. Naime, pokazalo se da konzumacija 200 g cjelovitih žitarica dnevno (poput 2 zdjele zobenih pahuljica) smanjuje rizik od hipertenzije za 22%.
Nova studija je pokazala da žene s neplodnošću povezanom s endometriozom imaju četiri puta veću vjerojatnost začeća u usporedbi sa ženama s neplodnošću iz drugih uzroka, uključujući ovulacijsku disfunkciju, faktore jajovoda i neobjašnjivu neplodnost.
Žene u dobi od 65 i više godina i dalje imaju povećan rizik od raka vrata maternice uzrokovanog humanim papiloma virusom (HPV), sugeriraju nalazi nove studije. No, većina smjernica trenutno preporučuje prekid probira za bolest kod žena u dobi od 65 i više godina ako su prethodno imale normalne rezultate testova obriska. Ipak, globalni slučajevi raka vrata maternice rastu među ženama u ovoj dobnoj skupini.
