Living microbes that cause disease in humans and host antibiotic-resistance genes carried 1,200 miles
Microbes that cause disease in humans can travel thousands of miles on high-level winds, scientists have revealed for the first time.
The winds studied carried a surprising diversity of bacteria and fungi, including known pathogens and, some with genes for resistance to multiple antibiotics. Some of the microbes were shown to be alive – in other words, they had survived the long journey and were able to replicate.
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Breaking Waves: Ocean News
09/09/2024 - 14:00
09/09/2024 - 13:30
Vanuatu, Fiji and Samoa want international criminal court to class environmental destruction as crime alongside genocide
Three developing countries have taken the first steps towards transforming the world’s response to climate breakdown and environmental destruction by making ecocide a punishable criminal offence.
In a submission to the international criminal court on Monday, they propose a change in the rules to recognise “ecocide” as a crime alongside genocide and war crimes.
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09/09/2024 - 10:00
Eels use tail-first technique to back up digestive tract of fish towards oesophagus before coming out of gills
It sounds like the plot of a horror movie – a predator swallows its prey only for the creature to burst out of its captor’s body. But it seems Japanese eels do just that.
Scientists in Japan have discovered that when swallowed by a dark sleeper fish, the eels can escape.
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09/09/2024 - 09:21
Animal rights groups had claimed beluga named Hvaldimir, which was found dead last month, had been shot
A beluga whale that rose to fame in Norway after its unusual harness prompted suspicions that the creature was trained by Russia as a spy died after a stick became stuck in its mouth, police have said.
The lifeless body of the whale, named Hvaldimir – a combination of the Norwegian word for whale and the first name of the Russian president, Vladimir Putin – was found floating in the sea on 31 August by a father and son fishing in Risavika Bay, southern Norway.
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09/09/2024 - 07:26
Chongqing authorities say cloud seeding to break heatwave did not cause winds that sent laundry flying
It was the talk of the town. After the authorities sought to break a long-running heatwave in Chongqing by using cloud-seeding missiles to artificially bring rain, the Chinese megacity was blasted by an unusual weather event – an underwear storm.
Termed “the 9/2 Chongqing underwear crisis”, an unexpected windstorm on Monday brought gusts of up to 76mph (122km/h), scattering people’s laundry from balconies on the city’s high-rises. Douyin, China’s sister app to TikTok, was filled with videos of pants and bras flying through the skies, landing in the street and snagging on trees.
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09/09/2024 - 06:00
Louisianans say a major accident at a sprawling Marathon refinery caused health issues. The company insists there were ‘no offsite impacts’
At 8.04am on 25 August last year, Darnell Alboudoor watched a plume of black smoke blanketing the sky and rolling in the direction of her family home.
A stench like burning oil filled the air on that piping hot summer morning, as Alboudoor, 54, looked in the direction of the sprawling petroleum refinery, which sat a few hundred feet from her back yard. She called 911.
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09/09/2024 - 05:00
Solar power could enable 400 million Africans without water to tap into groundwater aquifers. However, we must ensure smaller projects do not lose out in the rush for new technology
It’s a truly dreadful irony: for many of the 400 million people in sub-Saharan Africa who lack access to even a basic water supply, there is likely to be a significant reserve in aquifers sitting just a few metres below their feet.
Groundwater – the water stored in small spaces and fractures in rocks – makes up nearly 99% of all of the unfrozen fresh water on the planet. Across the African continent, the volume of water stored underground is estimated to be 20 times the amount held in lakes and reservoirs.
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09/09/2024 - 04:36
Support for government’s environmental legislation offered in exchange for protections that deliver ‘immediate, tangible impacts’
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Greens and crossbench senators have told the government not to “hide behind” Peter Dutton and Gina Rinehart and instead work with them on a better deal for the environment.
The Greens environment spokesperson, Sarah Hanson-Young, and independent senators David Pocock and Lidia Thorpe offered to support legislation to establish a new environment protection authority (EPA) and a separate new agency to manage environmental information, if the government agreed to a series of proposals to strengthen environmental protections.
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09/09/2024 - 04:00
Climate crisis is driving key predators from their homes and threatening an already embattled ecosystem
Sharks are deserting their coral reef homes as the climate crisis continues to heat up the oceans, scientists have discovered.
This is likely to harm the sharks, which are already endangered, and their absence could have serious consequences for the reefs, which are also struggling. The reef sharks are a key part of the highly diverse and delicate ecosystem, which could become dangerously unbalanced without them.
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09/09/2024 - 03:00
Moules frites are a staple, but the majority of the shellfish eaten in the country are imported. Previous attempts to farm them have foundered – but a bumper harvest this year suggests the ‘delicate’ Belgian mussel is here to stay
It is harvest day at the Westdiep sea farm and the crew are bringing their haul on to the boat: 12-metre long ropes laden with clusters of blue mussels. Bobbing on the water just three nautical miles off the Belgian coast, the four-man crew on the little red Smart Farmer use a crane to hoist the ropes on deck. The mussels go on to a steel conveyor belt, straight into the “declumper”, a machine that will break up bunches of molluscs into smaller groups.
It may look like a typical late summer scene on the Belgian North Sea coast, but the mussel harvest is a novelty. Although Belgium is renowned for its moules frites, it has long struggled to cultivate the shellfish for its national dish on a commercial scale. Of the estimated 20,000 tonnes of mussels Belgium consumes each year, most are imported from Zeeland in the Netherlands.
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