A Dutch inventor has come up with what he hopes could be a potentially faster and easier method to screen for coronavirus infections: screaming 🗣️ reut.rs/3sJZsjq 1/4
Instead of unpleasant nasal swab tests, Peter van Wees asks participants to step into an airlocked cabin and to scream, or sing. An industrial air purifier collects all the particles emitted, which are then analyzed for the virus 2/4
Van Wees, a serial entrepreneur, has set up his booth next to a coronavirus testing center on the outskirts of Amsterdam to try his invention out on people who have just been tested 3/4
Van Wees says that although lots of small particles from the person’s clothes and breath are detected, an infection shows up as a cluster. He is working with a private company to marshal evidence for his strategy reut.rs/3sJZsjq 4/4
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The majestic sight of elephants roaming beneath Mount Kilimanjaro has long lured throngs of wildlife-lovers to Amboseli National Park on Kenya’s border with Tanzania. Now, the free movement of the elephants may be under threat - from avocados reut.rs/3kHEsXZ 1/5
Kenyan agricultural company KiliAvo Fresh, which has farms near Amboseli on nearly 175 acres of land, is building nurseries and preparing to grow avocados, whose popularity is growing worldwide due to its high nutritional value. Conservationists are aghast 2/5
They say the plans and an electric fence on the farm will block the crucial Kimana Wildlife Corridor where elephants move between Amboseli, the Tsavo and Chyulu Hills parks, and strangle one of the region’s most beloved and important safari parks 3/5
🦇 As the @WHO reaches its findings on the zoonotic origins of the coronavirus, @jhjanicki and @SimonScarr explain why bats make such ideal hosts for disease-causing viruses tmsnrt.rs/382UG8Q
Bats are a group of flying mammals, with more than 1,300 species in 20 families. They make up approximately 20% of all mammal species and are found all over the world except for the Arctic, the Antarctic and a few oceanic islands 🥶 2/7
Authorities struggled to clear ice and fallen trees from the streets of Madrid, and temperatures in parts of Spain hit record lows after a snowstorm wrought havoc across the country on the weekend reut.rs/3bykpsk 1/5
Early jubilation at the historic snowfall, which saw skiers gliding through the streets and mass snowball fights, gave way to frustration as most public transport remained stalled and pedestrians avoided the icy streets 2/5
More than 800 soldiers have been deployed to help clear the city, where many roads are still blocked after Storm Filomena felled some 150,000 trees, cut supply lines and left supermarket shelves bare 3/5
Wild weather, warming planet: See how in 2020, the fingerprints of climate change appeared around the world👇 reut.rs/2WDrDm7 via @ReutersGraphics 1/7
The year began with wildfires raging across eastern Australia. Sparked in 2019, the blazes burned through more than 37 million acres before being extinguished in March.
Four of the five largest fires in California’s recorded history occurred in 2020 2/7
Climate change is also making cyclones and hurricanes more intense. The last half-century has seen an increasing number of storms, powered by warmer ocean waters, develop into strong tropical cyclones 3/7
Iceberg A68a has been on a slow journey toward cataclysm. The mass broke from the Antarctic peninsula’s Larsen C ice shelf in July 2017, sliding through the water for over two years reut.rs/3a1Dhze via @ReutersGraphics 1/5
And then, like a speed skater, it was on its way. The current propelled the berg on a fast track through what scientists call 'iceberg alley,' a northeast route traveled by chunks of ice that break from the peninsula 2/5
It’s now headed straight for South Georgia Island, a British overseas territory in the southern Atlantic, where within days it could smash into the remote world teeming with wildlife 3/5
Conservationists are rescuing giraffes stranded on an island in Lake Boringo in western Kenya after heavy rains led to the flooding of their rangeland habitat, threatening the animals with drowning reut.rs/33Vo2UC 1/5
Relentless rains have increased lake levels which began to swallow up the peninsula where the giraffes have been living. 'With giraffes undergoing a silent extinction, every one we can protect matters,' said the president of Save Giraffes Now 2/5
The Kenya Wildlife Service in collaboration with the United States-based Save Giraffes Now and Kenya’s Northern Rangelands Trust rescued two of the giraffes with a custom-made steel barge and is working to rescue more from the island 3/5