Abrolhos Islands to become a national park, Libs announce and other top stories.

• Abrolhos Islands to become a national park, Libs announce

  

  A new quadriplegic centre, a national park and a sealed road at a tourist hot spot have been announced at the Liberal state conference in Perth.WA Premier Colin Barnett said the current Quadriplegic Centre in Shenton Park, which housed 48 people with a disability, was more than 50 years old and needed to be replaced. Fishing huts are among the only signs of human life amid the Houtman Abrolhos Islands off the coast of Western Australia. Photo: Alamy Costing up to $30 million, the new res..

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• Herpes virus carp kill in River Murray may sap essential oxygen, research shows

  

  Herpes virus carp kill in River Murray may sap essential oxygen, research shows Updated August 14, 2016 09:01:39 A rapid kill of carp in the River Murray using a strain of the herpes virus could lead to big side effects for the health of the ecosystem, early research findings have shown.The Federal Government is hoping to release cyprinid herpesvirus-3 at the end of 2018 to reduce huge numbers of the introduced pest.The strain has been proven to kill carp without affect..

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• Minute fraction of your suntan comes from beyond our galaxy

  

  By: IANS | Sydney | Published:August 14, 2016 10:53 am While 10 billion photons a second might sound like a lot, Driver said we would have to bask in it for trillions of years before it caused any long-lasting damage. When you lie on the beach, your skin comes in contact with a minute fraction of radiation from outside our galaxy, say researchers. But radiation from outside the galaxy constitutes only ten trillionths of your suntan, so there is no immediate need for..

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• Elephant with downturned tusks spotted in Malaysia

  

  SABAH: A group of wildlife researchers found an elephant with tusks growing downwards in Malaysia's palm oil plantation on Thursday (August 11). The Wildlife Rescue Unit from the Sabah Wildlife Department had received reports of three elephants in a plantation that needed to be transported out. One was an elephant with tusks that grow downward instead upward like most elephants. The 'rare' elephant is now in the Borneo Elephant Sanctuary while the department decides on the safest place to relea..

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• Earthquake near Bundaberg part of 'cluster' off southern Queensland: Geoscience Australia

  

  Earthquake near Bundaberg part of 'cluster' off southern Queensland: Geoscience Australia Updated August 14, 2016 10:54:54 A magnitude-4.4 earthquake has been detected on the ocean floor off the south-east Queensland coast, Geoscience Australia says.The shallow quake struck at 1:31am about 100 kilometres off the coast between Bundaberg and Gladstone, senior seismologist Phil Cummins said.Dozens of people in areas near the coast from Hervey Bay to Rockhampton have report..

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• Canegrowers' concern about new Reef run-off regulation

  

  CANE growers have warned too much State regulation of their activities to improve water quality may produce the opposite effect for the Great Barrier Reef. The Palaszczuk Government has announced it will pursue “targeted regulatory approaches” including mandating the provision of farm level yield and nutrient data, and farm-based caps to reduce run-off within the Reef catchment.The government will spend $90 million over four years to implement 10 recommendations made by the Great Barrier Reef Wa..

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• First North Americans didn't make migration via Canadian ice-free-corridor

  

  c/o Mikkel Winther Pedersen – Statens Naturhistoriske Museum New research from Denmark may have put the kibosh on the theory that the first North Americans traveled to what would become the continent via an ice-free corridor located in Alaska and Western Canada. As it turns out, making such a trip in those times would have been impossible in more than one way. Scientists have long thought that the migration, which took place during the Ice Age, was facilitated by said ice-free corridor. But b..

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• Backward Orbiting Planet Beyond Neptune Breaks Rules Of Solar System, Niku Can't Be Explained

  

  In the darkness of space, way out past Neptune at the edge of the solar system, there’s something really weird going on and it has astronomers scratching their heads and searching for an explanation. Past Neptune, there’s an object orbiting backwards and at an angle to the rest of the solar system, and that’s really weird, Michele Bannister, Queens University astronomer, tweeted out Monday. “I hope everyone has buckled their seatbelts because the outer solar system just got a lot weirder.” The ..

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