Land within the Arctic circle is likely to experience explosive "greening" in the next few decades as grass, shrubs and trees thrive in soil stripped of ice and permafrost by global warming, a study said on Sunday.

Wooded areas in the Arctic could increase by as much as 52 percent by the 2050s as the so-called tree line -- the maximum latitude at which trees can grow -- shifts hundreds of kilometers (miles) north, according to computer simulations published in the journal Nature Climate Change.

British police said Saturday they have stepped up security around wildlife parks after conservationists warned their critically-endangered black rhino were being targeted by poachers.

The Aspinall Foundation, a wildlife charity which runs two animal parks in Kent in southeastern England, has also appealed for volunteers to help keep watch for any suspicious activity.

Salvage teams on Saturday removed the last piece of a U.S. Navy ship that was stuck on a UNESCO World Heritage-listed coral reef in the Philippines for more than 10 weeks, the coast guard said.

The stern of the USS Guardian was lifted off the Tubbataha Reef after the 68-meter (223-foot) vessel was sliced into portions for easier removal, Philippine coast guard spokeswoman Lieutenant Greanata Jude said.

French and South African biologists will dive to deep-sea caves in the Indian Ocean next month in a bid to locate the coelacanth, the "living fossil" fish whose history predates the dinosaurs, France's National Museum of Natural History said on Friday.

The "Gombessa" expedition, named after a local term for the coelacanth, will run from April 5 to May 15, exploring locations in the Jesser Canyon, 120 meters (390 feet) below the waters of Sodwana Bay, where the strange fish is believed to live.

Canadian researchers have developed a ground-breaking method which may ultimately enable excess energy created by wind turbines and solar panels to be stored for later use.

Two researchers at the University of Calgary report in the journal Science that they have invented a relatively inexpensive way of using rust to act as a catalyst for capturing energy through the electrolysis of water.

China is to build two extra research stations in Antarctica, where it currently has three facilities, the State Oceanic Administration confirmed on Friday.

A summer base, to be used between December and March, will be built between two of its existing stations -- Kunlun and Zhongshan -- on the frozen continent, the official Xinhua news agency said.

They appear in the desert in southwest Africa and persist for decades: so-called fairy circles, or puzzling rings of grass with a barren center.

Now a new study, published Thursday in the U.S. journal "Science," purports to end the enigma and explain just what is going on: it's the work of termites.

A groundbreaking solar-powered Swiss aircraft is ready to make a coast-to-coast flight across the United States, its creators said Thursday.

The experimental Solar Impulse plane, which has made several trips since its maiden flight in 2009, will take off on May 1 on a transcontinental tour split in five stages.

A new Russian-American crew arrived at the International Space Station (ISS) on Friday after an express trip from Earth of under six hours, the fastest ever journey to the orbiting laboratory.

A NASA astronaut and two Russian cosmonauts opened the hatches of their Soyuz-TMA spaceship and floated into the ISS to a warm welcome from the three incumbent crew, live pictures broadcast on Russian television showed.

Physicists announced further proof Wednesday for a theory that mysterious particles called neutrinos which go "missing" on the journey from the Sun to Earth are in fact shape-shifting along the way, arriving undetected.

The evidence: a muon-type neutrino dispatched from the CERN research laboratory near Geneva had arrived as a tau neutrino at the INFN Gran Sasso Laboratory in Italy, 730 kilometers (450 miles) away, they said in a statement.