Inland

Inland waters in China, such as the Yangtze River, could be a major source of greenhouse gas emissions. Credit: Lishan Ran Inland waters such as rivers, lakes, reservoirs, and ponds may release copious amounts of greenhouse gases, but this possibility is not well understood. In a new review published in theJournal of Geophysical Research: Biogeosciences, Qianqian Yang and colleagues summarize what's known about carbon dioxide…

Gerald Murnane’s novels are so strange, so far from literature’s beaten path, that their very existence – let alone their republication and celebration – seems miraculous. And they are celebrated: the 84-year-old Australian author is a regular favourite for the Nobel prize in literature, and this month sees the reissue of his fourth novel, Inland, first published in 1988 and in the view of JM Coetzee, Murnane’s “most ambitious, sustained and powerful piece of writing”.After his early novels, Tamarisk Row (1974) and A…

The reissue of Australian author Gerald Murnane’s fiction is introducing new readers to this most idiosyncratic and formally adventurous of novelists, now in his 80s. Postmodernism is at a nadir, but Murnane’s nested, self-reflexive narratives may be placed alongside the fabulations of Nabokov, Calvino and Borges, once grouped under that label. Murnane is known for not straying far from Goroke in Victoria – he is the anti-type of globe-trotting literary celebrity – but like those writers, and some of the modernists before…

Left: Satellite image of the submerged northwest shelf region. Right: Drowned landscape map of the study area. Credit: US Geological Survey, Geoscience Australia For much of the 65,000 years of Australia's human history, the now-submerged northwest continental shelf connected the Kimberley and western Arnhem Land. This vast, habitable realm covered nearly 390,000 square kilometers, an area one-and-a-half times larger than New…

People love to hang out around water, especially on hot summer days. And, for those who aren't near the ocean, Australia is blessed with beautiful inland waterways. In New South Wales, the government wants to increase access to these "blue" natural environments, especially for people living far from the coast. One of these swimming sites is Penrith Beach, which has just opened to the public for the summer. This new site in the heart…

As Hurricane Larry lashed Newfoundland in 2021, university students from Halifax headed to a rural area in its track to find out whether the ocean might whip microplastics up into the atmosphere then transport them by air to otherwise pristine communities.The results, you could say, blew their socks off."It was such, like, an astonishing result that we weren't really expecting," said Anna Ryan, a Dalhousie University environmental science masters student and the study's lead researcher. To test their theory, the…

It’s among the nation’s most iconic and heavily utilized passenger rail lines, linking Southern California’s cities via a stunning coastal route. From the grassy headlands of San Luis Obispo to Orange County’s wide-open beaches and San Diego’s oceanside bluffs, the so-called Lossan rail corridor is famous for its breathtaking views of the pounding Pacific.But can it last?Between crumbling bluffs and relentless beach erosion, regular passenger service along the Lossan (short for Los Angeles-San Diego-San Luis Obispo)…

It’s a slippery, shape-shifting creature, this arresting first feature set in Gloucester and the secretive ancient woodlands of the Forest of Dean; a micro-budget production that punches above its weight with the talent involved. Writer-director Fridtjof Ryder is clearly a name to watch; Mark Rylance in a supporting role, is magnificent, and Kathryn Hunter brings a gnarled, earthy quality to a voice performance. Rory Alexander stars as an unnamed young man who, following his mother’s disappearance, is drawn back to his…

As supporting actor and executive producer, Mark Rylance generously supplies some valuable ballast and substance to an interesting, but underdeveloped and underimagined debut work from writer-director Fridtjof Ryder. It’s an atmospheric mood piece set in and around the Forest of Dean which doesn’t quite deliver either as psychological drama or folk horror, and might have been better boiled down to a short film.Rory Alexander plays a troubled young man who has just been let out of a psychiatric facility after what appears…

The great eroto-surrealist David Lynch has gone truffling for another imaginary orifice of pleasure, with results that are fascinating, sometimes very unwholesome, and always enjoyable. His new film can best be described as a supernatural mystery thriller - with the word “mystery” in 72-point bold. A Hollywood star called Nikki Grace, played with indestructible poise and intelligence by Laura Dern, accepts the heroine’s role in an intense southern drama about adultery and murder, working with a roguishly handsome leading…