Japanese women are no longer the world's longest living, their longevity pushed down in part by last year's devastating earthquake and tsunami, according to a government report Thursday. The top of the global life expectancy rankings now belongs to Hong Kong women.

The annual report by Japan's health ministry said the expected lifespan for Japanese women slipped to 85.90 years in 2011 from 86.30 the year before, mainly due to disease and other natural causes of death. The life expectancy for men also declined slightly, from 79.55 to 79.44.

Snakes evolved their curious body shape on land, not in water, and are probably the descendants of small burrowing lizards, scientists have deducted from 70-million-year-old fossil remains.

Closely examining jaw, tooth and spinal fragments of Coniophis, biologists in the United States concluded it was the most primitive animal of its kind -- the missing link in snake evolution.

U.S. scientists have been able to help blind mice see again by injecting a chemical that makes them sensitive to light, according to a study released on Wednesday.

The findings in the journal Neuron offer hope of a treatment that could one day help people who suffer from the most common forms of blindness, such as macular degeneration and retinitis pigmentosa.

Scientists say there has been a freak event in Greenland this month: Nearly every part of the massive ice sheet that blankets the island suddenly started melting.

Even Greenland's coldest place showed melting. Records show that last happened in 1889 and occurs about once every 150 years.

Australian scientists said Wednesday cavers had stumbled upon a vast network of tunnels containing fossils that could offer key insights into species' adaptation to climate change.

The limestone caves in Australia's far north contained what University of Queensland paleontologist Gilbert Price described as a "fossil goldmine" of species ranging from minute rodents and frogs to giant kangaroos.

The Swiss sun-powered aircraft Solar Impulse landed back home in Switzerland late Tuesday after completing the final leg of its historic transcontinental flight.

The high-tech aircraft was greeted by an enthusiastic crowd of supporters at Payerne airport in western Switzerland two months after it took off from there on May 24 on a journey that took it from Europe to North Africa and back.

A community of French earthworms has been discovered stealthily colonizing a farm in Ireland, possibly aided by global warming to thrive so far north of their natural habitat, a study said.

No clash seems to be looming as the French worms prefer to eat a different part of the soil as their Irish cousins, according to a report Wednesday in the Royal Society Journal Biology Letters.

The sleepy South African town of Carnarvon has more churches than ATMs, but science is breathing new life into the far-flung farming center.

The former 19th-century mission station is the closest town to a science and astronomy hub that is forming in the arid central Karoo region where the Square Kilometer Array (SKA) mega-telescope will be built.

Sally Ride, the first American woman to journey into space, died on Monday after a 17-month battle with pancreatic cancer, her foundation announced. She was 61.

Ride first launched into space in 1983 aboard the Challenger shuttle, taking part in the seventh mission of U.S. space shuttle program.

Modern humans were likely a greater threat to the Neanderthals than major natural events like extreme cold weather or volcanoes, according to British-led research released on Monday.

The study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, was based on an analysis of volcanic ash that showed the largest known eruption in Europe came after traces of the Neanderthals had largely disappeared.