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Temperatures could smash June record in England and Wales set in 1976; red alerts in France after 19 heat deaths
Here are the UK temperature milestones that could be passed during the current heatwave, according to data published by the UK’s Met Office.
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Half a century on, Britain braces for temperatures up to 40C as global heating brings yet more extreme weather
The summer of 1976 is seared on to national memory as one of record heat. Harvests failed, farmers despaired, Britain imported an extra million tonnes of grain, food prices rose by 12%, taps ran dry, and each day, 250 people died from heat-related deaths.
The heatwave, which began 50 years ago on Tuesday, brought 15 consecutive days where the peak temperature was above 32C. Half a century later and 32C no longer feels shocking.
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Energy secretary expected to argue that UK clean economy is booming as private sector pledges over £100bn of investment
Ed Miliband is to say that the UK must stick to net zero targets to deliver jobs and growth, as speculation surrounds the energy secretary’s role under a new prime minister.
He will make the speech as data shows more than £100bn in green investment has been pledged by private sector companies in this parliament.
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The country’s biggest tree – named Heaven Sword of the Da’an River – is a carbon-storing behemoth hosting whole neighbourhoods of wildlife. But this and other giant trees are under threat
The higher you climb up the gigantic, millennia-old trees of Taiwan’s forests, the more layers of habitat and life emerge. On the forest floor, ferns thrive in the moist shade. Flying squirrels and owls sleep inside the hollow tree trunks. Yellow bell-shaped rhododendron flowers spring from the lower tree canopy. Higher still, dense lichen spread. Up in cloud-drenched branches, a rare, hardy orchid, Bulbophyllum ciliisepalum, can be spotted.
“In one tree, every species has their preferred location,” says Dr Rebecca Hsu, assistant researcher at the Taiwan Forestry Research Institute. “Every metre the temperature, the wind, the sun, the light is different.”
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Queen’s University, Belfast:The corvids in the branches above me spring a surprise – there’s a black crow among them
The rain hurries me to shelter at the woods’ edge, but I’m scarcely under the branches of a mature sycamore when the canopy starts to thrash. Abrasive voices erupt from the foliage as a rabble of crows dispute. One leaps into a gap between the leaves, crouching, its ash-grey body low over a branch and fanning its black tail. The throat inflates to bray the bird’s anger. In response, the object of its fury hops on to the branch above it, all the while giving as good as it gets. Something niggles me about that one – I squint, then blink in surprise. It’s a black crow.
As a bookish youngster growing up in rural County Fermanagh, it took a while for me to grasp that the crows I encountered in real life were not, in fact, black. The hooded or grey crow is the common crow across all of Ireland. With its two-tone livery of grey torso and black extremities, it’s a handsome bird. The “hoodie” is also found in the north of Scotland. The closely related all-black carrion crow is a far more familiar sight throughout the rest of Britain, with sparse numbers along the east coast of Northern Ireland.
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People trained to experience world as otters, salmon and other River Tone creatures for pioneering research
What does a kestrel make of the dog sniffing in the long grass below? Why does an exhausted salmon pause before a weir? How will an otter experience the rumble of a passing train?
Eighteen people have spent six weeks swimming, slithering and soaring as otters, salmon, earthworms, red deer and kestrels in an attempt to better document the risks for wild animals in our human-dominated landscape.
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Prime minister was forced to row back on some policies despite strong support among voters for climate action
Keir Starmer has faced a problem no Labour government has needed to deal with before. His energy and climate policies – core to solving the cost of living crisis – have come under attack from opposition parties, which have made dismantling the agenda one of their top priorities, second only to immigration, in their pitch to voters.
This is new in British politics, where a cross-party consensus on the climate and environment has held at least since the days of Margaret Thatcher. She warned the UN of the climate crisis in 1988; David Cameron in 2006 urged voters to “vote blue, go green”; Theresa May enshrined in law the requirement to reach net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050; Boris Johnson championed the Cop26 UN climate summit in Glasgow in 2021; even Rishi Sunak only tried a partial rollback of green policies as a last desperate throw before calling an election.
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Is it an alien? A dinosaur? Is it going to kill us all? Our writer hits Ashdown Forest for the Big One Hundred celebrations – and finds its magic enchanting new generations
The rolling idyll of heath and forest, spinney and stream that gave us the Heffalump, the Woozle and, most famously of all, Winnie-the-Pooh, has a new fantastical resident. Creeping through the bracken, making strange cooing and purring noises, is a shapeshifting creature with a huge tubular nose and eyes inspired by adders. It shimmies with iridescent patches and the psychedelic purple of flowering heather in high summer.
Poppet, a puppet made by costume designer Jack Irving and brought to life by a team of 10 award-winning puppeteers, is performing for schoolchildren in Ashdown Forest, East Sussex. The primary school class squeal with delighted fear as the purple apparition transforms itself from caterpillar to bird to munching monster in sinuous moves.
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Ten people affected in different ways by extreme weather are taking a case against the federal government to the UN
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As flood waters rose in Brisbane’s West End in February 2022, Brendon Donohue was trapped alone in his second-storey apartment for 10 days. The 33-year-old is legally blind and his movement is limited by Peters plus syndrome. He received evacuation alerts on his phone in the middle of the night. But with the lift, intercom and front entrance shut down he had no safe way out of the building.
“It was terrifying,” he says. “The whole street was badly impacted with water. The power went out, which made me not able to contact anyone. I ran out of food but couldn’t get any into the building.”
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A national heatwave plan has been activated to help people stay cool during the Netherlands’ increasingly hot summers
Households in Amsterdam are being urged to hang their curtains outside their windows as health experts recommend simple hacks to moderate the heatwave rolling across the Netherlands, where homes were built for old-fashioned damp and coldish northern European weather.
In a viral social media post last week, Eline Coolen, the heat coordinator at the city’s public health institute, urged sweaty city-dwellers to rig up temporary curtain rails or drape curtains or sheets outside to stop the sun’s rays reaching their large windows.
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Fibromialgija je složen poremećaj koji prvenstveno karakterizira kronična raširena bol, umor i drugi fizički i kognitivni simptomi. Iako pogađa milijune ljudi diljem svijeta, temeljni biološki mehanizmi još nisu u potpunosti shvaćeni. Sada studija Sveučilišta u Barceloni sugerira da neuroimune promjene u središnjem živčanom sustavu mogu igrati ključnu ulogu u razvoju i napredovanju ovog stanja.
Pijenje voćnog soka i pića zaslađenih šećerom od djetinjstva do odrasle dobi može biti povezano s povećanim rizikom od razvoja visokog krvnog tlaka (hipertenzija) u odrasloj dobi, pokazuje nova studija. Naime, pokazalo se, da prehrambene navike u ranom životu mogu imati trajne zdravstvene posljedice.
Kreatin, organska kiselina koju sportaši i bodybuilderi popularno uzimaju kao dodatak prehrani, pojačava kritičnu klasu imunoloških stanica koje aktiviraju i pripremaju ključne borce protiv raka u tijelu, tvrdi nova studija.
Nova studija pokazala je da preoperativna radioterapija za metastaze u mozgu ne samo da izravno cilja tumorske stanice, već može i aktivirati imunološke putove koji tumore čine prijemčivijima za imunoterapiju.
Prema istraživanju koje je uključivalo starije osobe s depresijom koje primaju standardnu njegu, dodavanje probiotičke terapije dovelo je do umjerenog, ali značajnog smanjenja simptoma depresije i anksioznosti u usporedbi s dodavanjem placeba.
Istraživanje provedeno u SAD-u otkrilo je povećanje prejedanja pri uzimanju hormonskih pilula u obliku oralnih kontraceptiva - no ne kod svih žena. Ovo je prva velika studija promjena simptoma povezanih s prejedanjem uz upotrebu oralnih kontraceptiva.
Masažni pištolji dobri su za rad na bolnim mišićima, no trebali biste izbjegavati njihovu primjenu u blizini očiju, upozorava nova studija. Naime, mladić je zadobio puknuće mrežnice i hematome u očima nakon što je više puta primjenio masažni pištolj u blizini oka i izravno na oko.
Žene su imale manju vjerojatnost da će doživjeti srčani udar (infarkt miokarda) ili razviti srčane bolesti ako su dizale utege dva ili više sati tjedno, pokazala je nova studija. Što su češće dizale utege, to je njihov rizik od srčanih bolesti manji.
Nova genska terapija uspješno je korištena za liječenje smrtonosne bolesti jetre u djetinjstvu pomoću miševa koji modeliraju ovu bolest, pokazala je nova studija. Sindrom artrogripoze, bubrežne disfunkcije i kolestaze (ARC) je smrtonosni genetski poremećaj obično uzrokovan nedostatkom proteina VPS33B, a djeca s dijagnozom ovog stanja rijetko žive dulje od prve godine života.
Zemlje s visokim prihodima koje su sredinom 2000-ih započele široko rasprostranjenu primjenu cjepiva protiv humanog papiloma virusa (HPV) doživjele su značajan pad slučajeva raka vrata maternice, što označava značajno postignuće u medicini.
