The Environment

This month, an iceberg roughly the size of Luxembourg slammed into an Antarctic glacier known as the Mertz Ice Tongue. Then, last week, a Rhode Island-sized section of the Mertz Ice Tongue finally snapped off. Some scientists are excited about the new research opportunities this ice reconfiguration opens up, but others worry that the newly freed ice will significantly threaten life in the ocean.

Earth lacks a living neural network that connects all living things, as seen in Avatar's Pandora. But apparently some bacteria at least grow their own tendrils or nanowires to form a giant natural battery, Danish researchers report in this week's issue of the journal Nature.

Pollution and ravenous Asian carp may threaten the U.S. Great Lakes, but the Obama administration has now put forth a four-year, $475-million rescue plan that would clean up the huge lake ecosystem and institute a "zero tolerance policy" against future incursions by invasive species, AP reports.

With an unexpected lack of snow making skiers' lives miserable at this year's Olympics, Vancouver is smartly following the trend of going greener than the Olympics before it. Carbon offsets and recycling bins are as old school as a 720 on the snowboard half pipe, so the Canucks had to get a bit more creative to ensure the 2014 games in Russia take place in a world where snow still falls over Sochi in February.

In an effort to save endangered quolls from extinction, University of Sydney biological scientist Stephanie O'Donnell is feeding them poisonous cane toad sausages. The sausages, made from minced cane toad legs, are laced with a chemical designed to make the quolls feel sick. After their unpleasant experience with the sausages, quolls are likely to avoid eating poisonous cane toads in the wild. Research has suggested that a quarter of quolls will avoid eating a cane toad if they have sampled one of these sausages.

Australia has hosted a wide range of weird creatures, from rabid wombats to Yahoo Serious. And now, the Australian government wants to see what other interesting critters are hiding out on that island. To that end, they are funding a series of expeditions to the outback that the Environment Minister has labeled "Bush Blitz".

The first results from a comprehensive study of the health and abundance of the platypus population in the Murrumbidgee catchment in eastern Australia show that despite a tough environment, platypuses continue to survive. Charles Sturt University (CSU) researcher in the School of Animal and Veterinary Sciences, Dr Joanne Connolly is leading the charge to uncover the lifestyle of this shy, nocturnal mammal.

An Antarctic ice core has revealed a link between drought conditions in south-west Western Australia and increased snowfall in Antarctica. Australian Antarctic Division glaciologist, Dr Tas van Ommen, has analysed a 750 year old ice core from Law Dome in East Antarctica.

Figuring out how to recycle TPS reports and office printouts appears to have become a passion for Japanese engineers, as DigInfo News has discovered in recent days. If the "White Goat" machine that converts paper sheets into toilet paper failed to appeal, consider this supposedly eco-friendly printer that can erase old documents and reuse them up to 1,000 times per special page.

Australian Federal Liberal leader, Tony Abbott, yesterday announced his policy alternative to Kevin Rudd’s Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS). While Abbott will be using the next few days to sell the policy to the public, it has already drawn at best a lukewarm response from the academic community.

Abbott’s policy can be broadly divided into two components:

• Setting a goal of reducing Australia’s carbon emissions by 5 per cent by the year 2020;
  

The first map of a rumen methanogen DNA sequence as created by researchers at PGgRC was published in the journal PLoS One, giving scientists worldwide a major new opportunity to identify methods for cutting methane emissions from cows. Rumen methanogens are the bacteria responsible for the methane produced by livestock. The bacteria – of which there are a number of species – live in the gut of ruminant livestock, removing the hydrogen and carbon dioxide released as grass and other plant materials are broken down.

The all-in-one system to simultaneously produce clean electricity and drinking water will be developed through a $1.12 million research project, conducted with industry partner Greenearth Energy.
The project was officially launched last week at http://www.rmit.edu.au “ target=”_blank”>RMIT’s

Bundoora campus by Victorian Energy and Resources Minister, Peter Batchelor. At the launch, Mr Batchelor said it was crucial for industry, academia and governments to work together to make advances in the area of renewable energy and drinking water.

Weeds have evolved a new form of resistance to the world's most important herbicide, glyphosate, according to research led by Colorado State University. Dr Todd Gaines, now of the WA Herbicide Resistance Initiative (WAHRI) in the University of Western Australia's School of Plant Biology, warns that the glyphosate resistant weed populations could impact the use of glyphosate for the cultivation of the global food and fibre crops: rice, wheat, soybeans, maize and cotton.

In these times of climate change and concerns about ever increasing energy consumption, what does it take to encourage people to use less energy? The results of a two year project by Charles Sturt University (CSU) researchers who looked at ways of influencing students’ energy saving behaviour show that it’s the introduction of simple things such as shower timers, night lights, and energy use meters that can make a marked difference.

As geologists probe the world’s rocky sediments for spots to safely store carbon dioxide underground, engineers are working on the first step of the process: separating pure CO2 from noxious smokestack emissions. An enzyme in our blood already has the trick down, however, and it captures nearly one kilogram of CO2 every day. Now a US company is trying to replicate the method.