Environment news

• Brazil museum fire: Prized 'Luzia' fossil skull recovered

  20-10-2018 14:03 via bbc.co.uk
  It was feared that Luzia, a 12,000-year-old fossil, had been totally lost in the Brazil fire.
  
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• Minor earthquakes detected near fracking site in Lancashire

  20-10-2018 14:01 via theguardian.com
  One tremor was magnitude 0.3, the level beyond which experts say fracking has to proceed with cautionA series of small earthquakes have been detected in Lancashire close to the site where major fracking operations began this week.The British Geological Survey, which provides impartial advice on environmental processes, recorded four tremors in the vicinity of the energy firm Cuadrilla’s site on Preston New Road near Blackpool on Friday. Continue reading...
  
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• ‘We'll have space bots with lasers, killing plants’: the rise of the robot farmer

  20-10-2018 09:00 via theguardian.com
  Tiny automated machines could soon take care of the entire growing process. Fewer chemicals, more efficient – where’s the downside?In a quiet corner of rural Hampshire, a robot called Rachel is pootling around an overgrown field. With bright orange casing and a smartphone clipped to her back end, she looks like a cross between an expensive toy and the kind of rover used on space missions. Up close, she has four USB ports, a disc-like GPS receiver, and the nuts and bolts of a system c
  
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• Poralia rufescens jellyfish spotted off coast of California

  20-10-2018 08:03 via bbc.co.uk
  The Poralia rufescens is swimming off the coast of southern California in the Pacific Ocean.
  
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• £7m crowdfunding bid for Orkney tidal energy turbine launches

  20-10-2018 08:00 via theguardian.com
  Scheme launched by ethical investment platform Abundance offers 12% interestA “green” investment that pays 12% interest and involves putting your money into a major tidal energy project was launched this week.But that high rate indicates this is a great deal riskier than putting your money into a high street savings account, with no compensation if things go wrong. So this is not one for the risk-averse. Continue reading...
  
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• Plastic recycling industry's problems costing councils up to £500,000 a year

  20-10-2018 07:00 via theguardian.com
  Chinese ban on waste imports is significantly affecting UK councils’ ability to collect and recycle plasticMajor problems in the plastic recycling industry are costing local councils in England up to £500,000 extra a year, as they struggle to deal with the continuing fallout from import bans imposed by countries who are no longer able to take the UK’s waste. A survey by the Local Government Association (LGA) revealed nearly half of councils who responded (52) say China’s
  
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• Country diary: my baby and I move through different landscapes

  20-10-2018 06:30 via theguardian.com
  Airedale, West Yorkshire: My six-week-old daughter still can’t see very well, but her sense of smell is fierce, and we can both hear the magpies, which are everywhereShe’s only six weeks old but I’m sure she can smell the smothering perfume of the rosebay willowherb that crowds the lake edge. A new baby’s senses develop lopsidedly, out-of-sync: our daughter’s eyesight is still finding focus – she can’t see the wood pigeons bombing across the pale dishwat
  
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• Blast-off for BepiColombo on mission to Mercury

  20-10-2018 03:57 via bbc.co.uk
  Europe and Japan celebrate the successful launch of a quest to visit the closest planet to the Sun.
  
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• 'Fake moon'

  20-10-2018 01:48 via bbc.co.uk
  The sci-fi plan would use giant mirrors in space to light city streets, but scientists are sceptical.
  
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