U.S. scientists said Monday they have found a way to use discarded corn husks and stalks to make cheap hydrogen fuel that doesn't pollute the environment like fossil fuels.

The advances by a team at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University save time and money while producing a zero-emissions fuel that could speed up the movement toward hydrogen-powered vehicles, said the report in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, a peer-reviewed U.S. journal.

A sushi restaurant in downtown Flagstaff added a Pluto roll to its menu. A yearlong exhibit celebrates the work of the amateur astronomer in the city who discovered the now-dwarf planet in 1930. And a walking tour leads people to the movie theater and restaurant the astronomer visited the night of his big find.

Pluto has taken on new prominence in Flagstaff, where it was spotted by Clyde Tombaugh from Lowell Observatory and where residents have since been fascinated with the icy world. The worldwide attention that followed the discovery meant Flagstaff would be known as more than a railroad, cattle ranching and timber community on the way to the Grand Canyon.

The leader of Turkmenistan on Sunday pledged to streamline water use, a huge problem in the isolated desert nation believed to be among the world's top water wasters.

Some 80 percent of ex-Soviet Turkmenistan is covered by the Karakum desert, one of the driest places on earth.

The world's biggest particle accelerator is back in action after a two-year shutdown and upgrade, embarking on a new mission that scientists hope could give them a look into the unseen dark universe.

Scientists at the European Organization for Nuclear Research, or CERN, on Sunday shot two particle beams through the Large Hadron Collider's 27-kilometer (16.8-mile) tunnel, beneath the Swiss-French border near Geneva.

India's government launched a new air quality index on Monday, under intense pressure to act after the World Health Organization declared New Delhi the world's most polluted capital.

Environment Minister Prakash Javadekar said the government would publish air quality data for 10 cities, amid growing public concern over the impact of air pollution on the health of India's 1.2 billion people.

The world's largest particle smasher restarted Sunday after a two-year upgrade that will allow physicists to explore uncharted corners of what makes up the universe, including dark matter and antimatter.  

"After two years of intense maintenance and several months of preparation for restart, the Large Hadron Collider, the most powerful particle accelerator in the world, is back in operation," the European Organisation for Nuclear Research (CERN) said.

Sky-gazers in part of the Pacific Rim will have the chance to observe an "unusually brief" total eclipse of the Moon on Saturday night.

Weather conditions permitting, the eclipse -- which occurs when the Sun, Earth and Moon are lined up so that the Moon passes through the Earth's shadow -- may be seen in Japan, Australia, and New Zealand as well as western North America.

Protesters on Hawaii's Big Island have been blocking the road to a mountain peak where one of the world's largest telescopes is being built.

Hawaii County police spokeswoman Chris Loos said Thursday that some people have been arrested for blocking the road to the Mauna Kea summit, which is held sacred by Native Hawaiians.

The most common species of ant found on the pavements of New York City and in cities around the world has a taste for human food — more than other ant species found primarily in parks and other green spaces, a study says.

"The ants that live alongside us in our cities also seem to be those same species that can eat the same food that we do, and do so the most," said Clint Penick, a post-doctoral fellow at North Carolina State University and lead researcher of the study published Wednesday in the scientific journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B.

Europe's pioneering probe Rosetta battled breakdowns with navigation and communication with Earth after it ran into blasts of dust and gas from the comet it is tracking, mission control said Thursday.

Swooping close to Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, Rosetta "experienced significant difficulties" last weekend and had to go into safe mode, the European Space Agency (ESA) said.