Scientists are warning that the devastating drought in Texas could threaten the world's only remaining flock of whooping cranes.

The birds eat blue crabs and berries during their annual migration to the Gulf Coast. The high-protein diet is supposed to sustain North America's tallest bird through the winter and prepare it for the nesting season in Canada. But this year, the drought has made food and water scarce.

Fast-track warming in Europe is making butterflies and birds fall behind in the move to cooler habitats and prompting a worrying turnover in alpine plant species, studies published Sunday said.

The papers, both published by the journal Nature Climate Change, are the biggest endeavor yet to pinpoint impacts on European biodiversity from accelerating global temperatures.

A bureau in charge of monitoring China's frequently smog-choked capital will release more detailed reports, state media said Friday, following a public outcry over the hazards of fine particle pollution.

Beijing's decision to publish the data appeared aimed at appeasing residents' anger over the pollution and a lack of government transparency.

Conservationists in New Zealand were struggling Saturday to save 18 long-finned pilot whales after a mass stranding in which seven of the animals died.

The surviving whales had been refloated but appeared to lack the energy to swim away, the Conservation Department's area manager John Mason said.

Japan says it will soon require atomic reactors to be shut down after 40 years of use to improve safety following the nuclear crisis set off by last year's tsunami.

Concern about aging reactors has been growing because the three units at the Fukushima Dai-ichi plant in northeastern Japan that went into meltdown following the tsunami in March were built starting in 1967. Among other reactors at least 40 years old are those at the Tsuruga and Mihama plants in central Japan, which were built starting in 1970.

The U.S. government wants to start regulating face and hand transplants just as kidneys, hearts and other organs are now, with waiting lists, a nationwide system to match and distribute body parts and donor testing to prevent deadly infections.

It's a big step toward expanding access to these radical operations, especially for wounded troops returning home.

When Stephen Hawking was diagnosed with motor neuron disease aged just 21, he was given only a few years to live. But the British scientist marks his 70th birthday on Sunday, as questioning as ever.

Despite spending most of his life crippled in a wheelchair and able to speak only through a computer, the theoretical physicist's quest for the secrets of the universe has made him arguably the most famous scientist in the world.

Scientists said Thursday they have designed tiny wires, 10,000 times thinner than a human hair but with the same electrical capacity as copper, in a major step toward building smaller, more potent computers.

The advance, described in the U.S. journal Science, shows for the first time that wires one atom tall and four atoms wide can carry a charge as well as conventional wires.

It's one thing to make an object invisible, like Harry Potter's mythical cloak. But scientists have made an entire event impossible to see. They have invented a time masker.

Think of it as an art heist that takes place before your eyes and surveillance cameras. You don't see the thief strolling into the museum, taking the painting down or walking away, but he did. It's not just that the thief is invisible — his whole activity is.

Last March, I embarked on a mini-road trip around Tasmania, an island off the southeast corner of Australia. Tassie, what Aussies affectionately call their smallest state, is a nature-lover's dream, with enough history and culinary delights to satisfy urbanites. While its landscape has similarities to New Zealand's North Island, with lush, rocky, "Lord of the Rings" countryside, it is unequivocally Australian, with carnivorous marsupials, eucalyptus forests and a mellow, rustic spirit.

Tasmania is best explored by car, which can be daunting for independent travelers. Like other Commonwealth countries, motorists in Australia drive on the left, in cars where the driver sits on the right. Yet it is rather easy to "hire" a car in Australia. Foreign drivers licenses in English are honored, and insurance is incorporated into the affordable rental package.