AUCKLAND, Nov 17, 2007 (AFP) - Amid rapid declines in fish stocks and fears about the impact of climate change, scientists are nearing the end of the first global attempt to take stock of the astonishing range of life in our oceans.

But alongside the discovery of a hairy 'yeti' crab or revelations about the previously unknown migration patterns of the great white shark is the knowledge that these are just a drop in the ocean of what remains undiscovered.

LONDON, Nov 17, 2007 (AFP) - A British scientist who led researchers who created Dolly the Sheep is to abandon cloning using embryos for a rival method which makes stem cells without them, the Daily Telegraph reported Saturday.

Professor Ian Wilmut, of Edinburgh University, gained celebrity but also attracted criticism from some religious groups and pro-life campaigners after being involved in the cloning of the first mammal from an adult cell in 1996.

MANILA, Oct 16, 2007 (AFP) - A swimming sea cucumber, a Nemo-like orange fish and a worm with tentacles sprouting from its head are among dozens of possible new species found during a survey of the Celebes Sea, researchers said Tuesday.

A team of US and Filipino scientists plunged up to five kilometres (three miles) underwater in early October in an area that has been isolated by rising sea levels and may have spawned sea life not found elsewhere.

They collected between 50 and 100 potentially undiscovered species of marine invertebrates and fishes.

LONDON, Oct 16, 2007 (AFP) - A British explorer who was the first man to reach the North Pole solo announced plans Tuesday to lead an expedition to measure the thickness of the Arctic ice caps.

Pen Hadow, 45, who reached the top of the world alone in 2003, will lead a three-person team on the Vanco Arctic Survey mission, which could provide key evidence on climate change.

"The Arctic ice cap is in crisis. It is going to disappear in the lifetime of many people here. The question is: when?" he told reporters as he unveiled the mission in London.

BEIJING, Oct 16, 2007 (AFP) - China will launch its first lunar probe at the end of this month with preparations already in their final stages, a senior official said Tuesday.

Pre-launch tests on the Chang'e I rocket and orbiter were nearly complete and they have been transported to the launch site, the official told state news agency Xinhua.

China is also planning to land a human on the moon and make a series of robotic missions with a view to building a base there after 2020, officials have said. China earlier said it would launch the probe by the end of the year.

CHICAGO, Oct 15, 2007 (AFP) - Gossip may do more to shape a person's opinion than facts they know to be true, even when the chit-chat contradicts the evidence, a study released Monday said.

The findings emerged from a study by German researchers who set out to find how gossip about a person's reputation affects the way people behave towards that individual.

To probe the role of gossip in this context, the researchers set up an experiment where 126 undergraduate students engaged in a series of computer-based games with anonymous partners or adversaries.

DUBLIN, Oct 16, 2007 (AFP) - A prototype wave energy converter has begun harnessing electricity from Atlantic waves off the west coast of Ireland, the Wavebob company said on Tuesday.

A "Wavebob" floating buoy device that automatically adjusts to the size of the waves to maximise the amount of power it produces is undergoing trials off Spiddal, County Galway.

"This is a giant leap forward for renewable energy production in Ireland," said Wavebob chief executive Andrew Parish.

RIO DE JANEIRO, Oct 15, 2007 (AFP) - Paleontologists from Argentina and Brazil on Monday unveiled a new giant dinosaur species that lived 88 millions of years ago in the Patagonia region of Argentina, where they found its fossils.

"It is one of the three largest dinosaur fossils ever discovered in the world and the most complete because we found 70 percent of its skeleton," Argentina's Comahue National University Paleontology Center director Jorge Calvo told reporters.

WASHINGTON, Oct 7, 2007 (AFP) - National Basketball Association results and standings after Sunday's games:

SUNDAY, OCTOBER 7TH RESULTS
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

TORONTO 93, LOTTOMATICA ROM 87

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
NATIONAL BASKETBALL ASSOCIATION SUBSTANDINGS
THROUGH SUNDAY, OCTOBER 7TH
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

EASTERN CONFERENCE
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

ATLANTIC DIV. W L PCT GB
------------- - - --- --

BOSTON 1 0 1.000 -
TORONTO 1 1 .500 1/2
NEW JERSEY 0 0 .000 1/2
NEW YORK 0 0 .000 1/2
PHILADELPHIA 0 0 .000 1/2

STOCKHOLM, Oct 8, 2007 (AFP) - The 2007 Nobel prize season kicks off Monday with the announcement of the medicine prize and runs through October 15, with the fight against climate change tipped for the prestigious Peace Prize.

As is tradition, the Nobel prize committees are keeping mum ahead of the much-awaited announcements, leaving observers to engage in a wild guessing game.

PARIS, Sept 30, 2007 (AFP) - European Neanderthals, modern man's ill-fated cousins who died out mysteriously some 28,000 years ago, migrated much further east than previously thought, according to a study released Sunday.

Remains from the slope-browed hominid have previously been found over an area stretching from Spain to Uzbekistan, but the new study extends the eastern boundary of their wanderings another 2,000 kilometres (1,250 miles) deep into southern Siberia, just above the western tip of what is today China.

WASHINGTON, Sept 27, 2007 (AFP) - Scientists have sequenced the DNA in the hair of woolly mammoths dating back 50,000 years, paving the way to further research on many extinct species, according to a study published Thursday.

'Hair shafts are a promising source of DNA,' said the authors of the study from the University of Pennsylvania and the University of Copenhagen, published in the September 28 edition of Science.

TOKYO, Sept 27, 2007 (AFP) - Japanese researchers have succeeded in producing see-through frogs, letting them observe organs, blood vessels and eggs under the skin without performing dissections.

'You can see through the skin how organs grow, how cancer starts and develops,' said the lead researcher Masayuki Sumida, professor at the Institute for Amphibian Biology of state-run Hiroshima University.

MONTREAL, Sept 26, 2007 (AFP) - Global warming is believed to be softening the harsh Arctic environment, causing the algae population in Canada's northernmost lake to spike over the past two centuries, researchers said Wednesday.

The team, led by Laval University scientists Warwick Vincent and Reinhard Pienitz, found aquatic life in Ward Hunt Lake, located on island north of Ellesmere Island, increased 500-fold during the period.

The changes occurred at a speed and range 'unprecedented in the lake's last 8,000 years,' the researchers said in a statement.

PARIS, Sept 26, 2007 (AFP) - Two of Britain's best known scientists proposed Wednesday to curb global warming by sowing the world's oceans with thousands, perhaps millions, of giant vertical pipes 100-to-200 meters deep.

'We need a fundamental cure for the pathology of global heating,' wrote James Lovelock and Chris Rapley in a letter to the British journal Nature. 'Emergency treatment could come from stimulating the Earth's capacity to cure itself.'

PARIS, Sept 26, 2007 (AFP) - Science took a big step toward a new era of super-fast quantum computing Wednesday when researchers announced the first successful transfer of data between artificial atoms across a length of cable.

Two teams of physicists in the United States demonstrated a process that could one day be the foundation of mass-produced quantum computers exponentially faster that even the largest supercomputers in use today.

WASHINGTON, Sept 25, 2007 (AFP) - Men with deep voices have more children, probably because they attract more mates, the lead author of what is said to be the first study to examine the relationship between voice and number of offspring said Tuesday.

'We found a relationship between men's voice pitch and the number of children born to them, but not in the children's mortality rate,' said Coren Apicella, a graduate anthropology student at Harvard University, who spent six months in northern Tanzania last year studying the nomadic, hunter-gatherer Hadza people.

LONDON, Sept 25, 2007 (AFP) - An overwhelming majority of the global population believes it is 'necessary' for the world to take action on climate change within the next few years, according to a poll released on Tuesday.

Some 65 percent of the 22,182 people questioned in 21 countries for the BBC World Service poll agreed it was necessary to 'take major steps starting very soon' to combat global warming, while a further 25 percent said modest action was needed 'in coming years.'

WASHINGTON, Sept 24, 2007 (AFP) - Microbes that cause salmonella came back from spaceflight even more virulent and dangerous in an experiment aboard the US space shuttle Atlantis, according to a study published on Monday.

The experiment by microbiologists at Arizona State University sent tubes with salmonella bacteria on a shuttle flight in September 2006 to measure how space flight might affect disease-causing microbes.

PARIS, Sept 24, 2007 (AFP) - From post-coital cannibalism to love at first sight, the sex life of the African jumping spider is full of surprises, according to a new study.

But none is more unexpected than this, say researchers who studied the blood-gorging Evarcha culicivora up close and personal: while virgin females are attracted to meatier mates, a bit of experience sees them switch to smaller partners.

AMSTERDAM, Sept 22, 2007 (AFP) - Most of the universe -- 96 percent, to be exact -- is made of dark matter and energy whose composition we simply do not fathom, a Nobel laureate told physicists gathered this week to explore the intersection of the infinitely small and the infinitely large.

'We think we understand the universe, but we only understand four percent of everything,' said James Watson Cronin, who won the 1980 Nobel for physics by proving that certain subatomic reactions escape the laws of fundamental symmetry.

LONDON, Sept 21, 2007 (AFP) - Britain has stockpiled enough plutonium to replicate the nuclear bomb attacks on Japan in 1945 thousands of times over, the country's top science academy said Friday.

The Royal Society said the amount of separated plutonium, most of which is the by-product of reprocessed spent fuel from nuclear power stations, has almost doubled in the last 10 years to more than 100 tonnes.

WASHINGTON, Sept 20, 2007 (AFP) - The velociraptor, the fierce scaly-skinned dinosaur made popular by the film 'Jurassic Park,' actually had feathers, according to a study published Thursday in the journal Science.

Scientists have long been aware that many dinosaurs had feathers, but scientists who made a fresh examination of a collection of velociraptor bones found indications of quill knobs where feathers may have been anchored.

WASHINGTON, Sept 20, 2007 (AFP) - Scientists have identified the genetic blueprint of a parasite that causes disfigurement and debilitating diseases, an advance which could lead to new treatments, research released Thursday said.

The parasite, Brugia malayi (B. malayi), has incapacitated and disfigured more than 40 million people worldwide, according to the World Health Organization.

CHICAGO, Sept 20, 2007 (AFP) - Scientists have known for decades that drastically reducing calories -- but not nutrients -- can prolong the lives of everything from yeast to mice and monkeys, but they didn't know why, until now.

In a study released Thursday, US researchers suggest that the link between food restriction and longevity may be a molecular response to the stress from cutting back calories.

That reaction preserves critical cellular functions, helping the body to fight off age-related diseases.

MOSCOW, Sept 20, 2007 (AFP) - Evidence obtained by an Arctic research expedition this summer supports Moscow's view that a ridge of sub-sea territory that stretches to the North Pole is an extension of Russia, a government ministry said on Thursday.

In a statement the natural resources ministry said that preliminary data obtained during the 'Arctic 2007' expedition confirmed that a ridge known as the Lomonosov ridge 'is part of the adjoining Russian continental shelf.'

PARIS, Sept 19, 2007 (AFP) - Sexual relationships between humans may be complicated but they are nothing compared to the bizarre sex life of the African bat bug, the British weekly New Scientist reports in next Saturday's issue.

Renowned among entomologists for a particularly horrible form of reproduction, these insects have now been found to show 'what could be the most extreme form of transexualism yet discovered,' it says.

PARIS, Sept 19, 2007 (AFP) - Methane released from wetlands turned the Earth into a hothouse 55 million years ago, according to research released Wednesday that could shed light on a worrying aspect of today's climate-change crisis.

Scientists have long sought to understand the triggers for an extraordinary warming episode called the Palaeocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM), which occurred about 10 million years after the twilight of the dinosaurs.

PARIS, Sept 19, 2007 (AFP) - The 1.77-million-year-old remains of three adults and a teenager unearthed in the Caucasus point to a far greater variation in early humans than once suspected, according to a study released Wednesday.

But the bones also reveal a species with a startling mix of primitive and advanced features that does not fit neatly into any evolutionary continuum, an ambiguity sure to spark debate among scientists.

PARIS, Sept 19, 2007 (AFP) - A man's testicles could one day provide a plentiful and accessible supply of adult stems cells to help him fight off disease or regenerate damaged organs, according to a study published Wednesday.

Researchers at Weill Cornell Medical College in New York have already isolated the multi-purpose cells in mice, and successfully coaxed them to grow into cardiac cells, brain cells and working blood vessel tissue.

SYDNEY, Sept 19, 2007 (AFP) - The world's native languages are dying out at an unprecedented rate, taking with them irreplaceable knowledge about the natural world, according to a National Geographic study.

The study identified five global 'hot spots' where languages are vanishing faster than anywhere else -- eastern Siberia, northern Australia, central South America, the US state of Oklahoma and the US Pacific Northwest.

TAIPEI, Sept 19, 2007 (AFP) - A group of Canadian scientists is working on an ambitious project to create a global database of up to half a million of the world's species using DNA barcoding technology.

The scientists are hoping to raise 150 million dollars to fund an initial five-year stage of what they describe as the biodiversity equivalent of launching a rocket to the moon.

DNA barcoding, a technique for characterising a species using only a short DNA sequence, has wide-ranging implications for health and the environment.

CHICAGO, Sept 18, 2007 (AFP) - Providing healthy people with an antiretroviral drug to protect them against HIV infection could drastically slow the spread of the virus in sub-Saharan Africa, US researchers said Tuesday.

In a best-case scenario, the drug could prevent three million new HIV cases in this part of Africa over a 10-year span, even if it was only made available to the most sexually active individuals, the investigators said.

STOCKHOLM, Sept 18, 2007 (AFP) - Lung cells grown from mouse embryo stem cells have been successfully implanted into the lungs of mice, a breakthrough that could one day help humans with sick lungs, researchers said on Tuesday.

The experiment was conducted by a team of scientists from London's Imperial College and is a 'global breakthrough' that 'opens up exciting new horizons for the treatment of lung disease,' a statement from the European Respiratory Society's (ERS) annual congress in Stockholm said.

DHAKA, Sept 18, 2007 (AFP) - A new strain of rice may be able to resist floods that destroy vast tracts of paddy fields in Bangladesh each year, offering hope to millions of poor farmers, researchers say.

The farmers lose their rice crops when fields are submerged by annual floods triggered when rivers, fed by heavy monsoon rains and melting Himalayan glaciers, burst their banks.

PARIS, Sept 17, 2007 (AFP) - Cyprian honey bees under attack by predator hornets have evolved a grisly and lethal way of fighting back which scientists have called 'asphyxia-balling,' according to a study published Monday.

An intruding hornet looking for a snack in a beehive may suddenly find itself enveloped inside a buzzing ball of black-and-yellow worker drones. The bees squeeze in tightly around the abdomen -- where hornets breath -- until the would be aggressor dies of suffocation.

PARIS, Sept 16, 2007 (AFP) - Smell is in the nose of the beholder as much as beauty is in the eye, according to a study released Sunday showing for the first time that variations in a single gene can determine whether a scent is perceived as fair or foul.

It has long been known that smell and taste -- which are essentially the same thing -- are highly subjective. The fragrance that one person finds sublime could make someone else queasy, and one man's wine of the gods can be another man's plonk.

A third person might not smell anything at all.

WASHINGTON, Sept 14, 2007 (AFP) - Hundreds of experts in DNA barcoding meet in Taiwan next week for a major conference on this young, cutting-edge science which could have wide-ranging implications for health and the environment.

Major advances in this field could be used to improve public health, consumer protection and food safety and will be discussed by some 350 experts from 46 countries at the seminar in Taipei from Tuesday to Thursday.