uvečaj veličinu pisma
Photo: Vivian Grisogono
But there are alternatives....
The radical project is an attempt to preserve wildlife in one of Europe’s most light-polluted countries, but can they persuade local people they will still feel safe?
Two yellowing street lamps cast a pool of light on the dark road winding into the woods outside Mazée village. This scene is typical for narrow countryside roads in Wallonia in the south of Belgium. “Having lights here is logical,” says André Detournay, 77, who has lived in the village for four decades. “I walk here with my dog and it makes me feel safe and gives me some protection from theft.”
Belgium glows like a Christmas decoration at night, as witnessed from space. It is one of the most light-polluted countries in Europe, with the Milky Way scarcely visible except in the most remote areas.
Continue reading...
Born of student disquiet after the 2008 crash, the group says it is reshaping economists’ education
As the fallout from the 2008 global financial crash reverberated around the world, a group of students at Harvard University in the US walked out of their introductory economics class complaining it was teaching a “specific and limited view” that perpetuated “a problematic and inefficient system of economic inequality”.
A few weeks later, on the other side of the Atlantic, economics students at Manchester University in the UK, unhappy that the rigid mathematical formulas they were being taught in the classroom bore little relation to the tumultuous economic fallout they were living through, set up a “post-crash economics society”.
Continue reading...
Vast flocks of birds return to Somerset and a rare grebe turns an ordinary walk into something special
After weeks of heavy rain, Cheddar reservoir in Somerset is finally full again – of water, and of birds. Thousands of coots, hundreds of gulls and ducks, and dozens of great crested grebes crowd the surface, some already moulting into their smart breeding plumage, crests and all.
They feed almost constantly, building up energy reserves for the breeding season. Among the throng are some less familiar visitors: a flock of scaup, the males bulkier than the nearby tufted ducks, with pale grey backs that catch the light. Flocks of goosanders dive frequently for food, the colourful males looking like a cormorant in extravagant drag.
Continue reading...
Kincraig, Badenoch: The Loch Insh Old Kirk is a compelling place, and yet, like the copious wildlife here, it is on the edge of existence
The snow has retreated to the tops of the Cairngorms and the last fragments of ice are crumbling at the edges of Loch Insh. In a muddy landscape, an old white church rises on a knoll on the northern shore. The simple stone building with its bell tower and arched windows dates to 1792, though the site was established by early monks from Iona, probably as far back as the seventh century. Indeed, some sources claim this as the site of longest continuous Christian worship in Scotland.
Those early monks would have built a stone cell here as a dwelling and a base for evangelising. A later chapel was dedicated to St Adamnan – the ninth abbot of Iona and Columba’s biographer – and a rough granite font remains from that time. The monks rang a bell to announce worship and the kirk still holds a bronze bell dating to AD900, one of only five left in Scotland. Resonant with legends, the bell was believed to have the power of healing and was once stolen and carried to Scone Palace – but it flew home, tolling the chapel’s name all the way over the Drumochter Pass.
Continue reading...
Exclusive: Analysts say there will be oil spill catastrophe that could be far bigger than Exxon Valdez disaster
Decrepit oil tankers in Iran’s sanctions-busting shadow fleet are a “ticking time bomb”, and it is only a matter of time before there is a catastrophic environmental disaster, maritime intelligence analysts have warned.
Such an oil spill could be far bigger than the 1989 Exxon Valdez disaster that released 37,000 tonnes of crude oil into the sea, they said.
Continue reading...
In Lancashire, I met people living with dangerous levels of Pfas, including in their food. The government is failing them
Last week, on the morning the government published its Pfas action plan, I got a worried phone call from a woman called Sam who lives next door to a chemical factory in Lancashire. Sam had just been hand-delivered a letter from her local council informing her that after testing, it had been confirmed that her ducks’ eggs, reared in her garden in Thornton-Cleveleys, near Blackpool, are contaminated with Pfas.
Pfas – per- and poly-fluoroalkyl substances, commonly known as “forever chemicals” due to their persistence in the environment – are a family of thousands of chemicals, and I have been reporting on them for years. Some, including those found in the eggs Sam and her family have been eating, have been linked to a wide range of serious illnesses, including certain cancers.
Continue reading...
Release into Helman Tor reserve marks historical first for keystone species hunted to extinction in UK 400 years ago
Shivering and rain-drenched at the side of a pond in Cornwall, a huddle of people watched in hushed silence as a beaver took its first tentative steps into its new habitat. As it dived into the water with a determined “plop” and began swimming laps, the suspense broke and everyone looked around, grinning.
The soggy but momentous occasion marks the first time in English history that beavers have been legally released into a river system, almost one year after the government finally agreed to grant licences for releases.
Continue reading...
Emissions have plunged 75% since communist times in the birthplace of big oil – but for some the transition has been brutal
Once the frozen fields outside Bucharest have thawed, workers will assemble the largest solar farm in Europe: one million photovoltaic panels backed by batteries to power homes after sunset. But the 760MW project in southern Romania will not hold the title for long. In the north-west, authorities have approved a bigger plant that will boast a capacity of 1GW.
The sun-lit plots of silicon and glass will join a slew of projects that have rendered the Romanian economy unrecognisable from its polluted state when communism ended. They include an onshore windfarm near the Black Sea that for several years was Europe’s biggest, a nuclear power plant by the Danube whose lifetime is being extended by 30 years, and a fast-spreading patchwork of solar panels topping homes and shops across the country.
Continue reading...
US courts, scholars and Democrats are pushing back against the president’s aggressive drive to boost fossil fuels
Donald Trump’s aggressive drive to boost fossil fuels, including dirty coal, coupled with his administration’s moves to roll back wind and solar power, face mounting fire from courts, scholars and Democrats for raising the cost of electricity and worsening the climate crisis.
Four judges, including a Trump appointee, in recent weeks have issued temporary injunctions against interior department moves to halt work on five offshore wind projects in Virginia, New York and New England, which have cost billions of dollars and are far along in development.
Continue reading...
Birdwatchers flock to Montréal for rare sighting of ‘vagrant’ bird that has made its home during a bitterly cold winter
On a quiet Montréal street of low-rise brick apartment buildings on one side and cement barrier wall on the other, a crowd has gathered, binoculars around their necks and cameras at the ready. A European robin has taken up residence in the neighbourhood, which is sandwiched between two industrial areas with warehouses and railway lines and, a few blocks away, port facilities on the St Lawrence River.
Ron Vandebeek from Ottawa, Ontario, is here on a frigid February morning hoping to see the rare bird, which was first spotted at the beginning of January.
Continue reading...
Propisivanje acetilsalicilatne kiseline prilikom prvog prenatalnog pregleda svim trudnicama povezano je s ukupnim smanjenjem razvoja teške preeklampsije, pokazuju rezultati nove studije. Preeklampsija je ozbiljna komplikacija trudnoće koja uključuje trajno visoki krvni tlak i znakove oštećenja organa poput proteina u mokraći ili abnormalnosti jetre.
Znanstvenici sa Case Western Reserve University napravili su značajan napredak u razumijevanju Barrettovog jednjaka, prekanceroznog stanja koje dramatično povećava rizik od razvoja adenokarcinoma jednjaka, jednog od najbrže širećih i najsmrtonosnijih oblika raka.
Posljednjih godina mnogi medijski izvještaji i utjecajni ljudi na društvenim mrežama naglašavali su opasnosti od konzumiranja previše ugljikohidrata. Iako prehrana bogata ugljikohidratima može biti štetna, konzumiranje previše masti može uzrokovati više zdravstvenih problema, tvrdi nova studija.
Dijabetes tipa 2 i visoki krvni tlak (hipertenzija) dijele genetsku vezu, pokazuje novo istraživanje. Naime, ljudi s jednim stanjem imaju veću vjerojatnost da će razviti drugo stanje.
Znanstvenici sa Åbo Akademi Universityi identificirali su novu molekularnu promjenu kod pacijenata s rakom debelog crijeva i razvili genetski model bolesti koji stvara tumore u debelom crijevu, slične onima koji se vide kod pacijenata. Ovaj novi model pomaže znanstvenicima da bolje razumiju kako se bolest razvija i podržava potragu za novim tretmanima.
Nova studija upozorava da dugotrajna primjena inhibitora protonske pumpe (PPI) može oštetiti apsorpciju hranjivih tvari. Inhibitori protonske pumpe su klasa lijekova koja uključuje lijekove poput omeprazola, pantoprazola, rabeprazola, lansoprazola i esomeprazola. Koriste se za liječenje želučanih poremećaja. Njihova neprimjerena primjena dulje od preporučenih od strane liječnika može uzrokovati nutritivne nedostatke, poput anemije, i ugroziti zdravlje kostiju.
Rezultati nove studije otkrivaju kako imunološke stanice u mozgu odraslih osoba mogu regulirati stvaranje novih neurona. Ovo otkriće vodi do novog razumijevanja kako imunološke stanice mogu utjecati na neurogenezu odraslih, proces stvaranja novih neurona u mozgu. Neuroni su temeljni prijenosnici informacija u mozgu, a imunološke stanice provode nadzor i šalju poruke novim neuronima.
Prema rezultatima nove studije, izgleda da vremenski ograničeno hranjenje - oblik povremenog posta - značajno smanjuje simptomatsku aktivnost bolesti i sustavnu upalu kod odraslih s Crohnovom bolešću i prekomjernom tjelesnom težinom ili pretilošću. Ovo je prva studija koja pokazuje da jedenje samo unutar 8-satnog prozora može smanjiti aktivnost Crohnove bolesti za 40% i nelagodu u trbuhu za 50% u samo 12 tjedana, u usporedbi sa standardnim rasporedom prehrane.
Skupina lijekova koji se često koriste za liječenje dijabetesa također može pomoći u zaštiti bubrega koji stare, tvrdi nova studija. Naime, nedavno objavljena studija je testirala lijekove nazvane SGLT2 inhibitori kod afričke tirkizne killifish, male ribe koja živi samo 4 do 6 mjeseci. Budući da ribe tako brzo stare, znanstvenici su mogli promatrati ekvivalent desetljeća starenja organa u samo nekoliko tjedana. Rezultati su pokazali da ribe kojima su davani spomenuti lijekovi imaju zdravije bubrege kako stare.
Nova studija sugerira da bi tjelesna aktivnost nakon liječenja poremećaja srčanog ritma znanog kao fibrilacija atrija mogla značajno smanjiti rizik od povratka atrijske fibrilacije (AF), nudeći pacijentima jednostavan i jeftin način podrške dugoročnom zdravlju srca.
