The point where the roiling ocean meets the fury of a hurricane's winds may hold the key to improving storm intensity forecasts — but it's nearly impossible for scientists to see.

That may change this summer, thanks to U.S. federal funding and a handful of winged drones that can spend hours spiraling in a hurricane's dark places. The drones will be transmitting data that could help forecasters understand what makes some storms fizzle while others strengthen into monsters.

U.S. President Barack Obama on Tuesday launched a push to get girls interested in science and technology, warning the country would miss out if it did not attract women to those fields.

"There's so much talent to be tapped if we're working together," Obama said at the annual White House Science Fair, where students from elementary to high school present winning projects.

A Japanese scientist and a German-born biophysicist were on Tuesday named joint winners of the prestigious $1 million Shaw Prize for their pioneering research into molecular production.

Kazutoshi Mori and Peter Walter received Asia's highest scientific honour in recognition of their contribution to the understanding of how several diseases can be better treated, organisers said. 

Russia has sent a European communications satellite into orbit from a floating platform in the Pacific Ocean, after the last launch in 2013 ended with the satellite plunging into the sea.

The Zenit-3SL rocket blasted off at 2209 GMT on Monday from the Odyssey launch pad and reached its orbit around an hour later, said the Sea Launch international consortium, 95 percent of which is controlled by Russia.

Dutch police on Tuesday arrested six Greenpeace activists after they chained a Russian oil drilling platform destined for the Arctic to a dock to prevent it from leaving a Netherlands port.

"Police have arrested six of our activists. They are still in custody but we don't know what the charges are," protest coordinator Faiza Oulahsen told AFP.

Klaus Meier lists three reasons for generating his own electricity in his family hotel in Germany's southern city of Freiburg -- "cost savings, energy efficiency, climate protection".

Like a growing number of German small businesses, home-owners, schools, hospitals and industrial plants, Meier has opted for energy self-sufficiency.

Atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations have crossed a new threshold, the U.N.'s weather agency said Monday, highlighting the urgency of curbing manmade, climate-altering greenhouse gases.

In April, for the first time, the mean monthly CO2 concentration in the atmosphere topped 400 parts per million (ppm) throughout the northern hemisphere, which pollutes more than the south, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) said. 

Japan's nuclear regulator on Monday approved a plan to freeze the soil under the crippled Fukushima nuclear plant to try to slow the build-up of radioactive water, officials said.

The Nuclear Regulation Authority examined plans by Tokyo Electric Power Co (TEPCO) to construct an underground ice wall at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant starting in June, regulatory officials said.

A cruise ship heading for New York this month struck and killed a whale and dragged it into the Hudson River, part of a higher-than-usual rate of strikes along the Eastern Seaboard for this time of year, a federal agency said.

There were three recent whale strikes recently, including one in which a cruise ship hit a sei whale and did not discover it until it reached port, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said.

Stocks of organic carbon buried deep underground could pose a global warming threat if disturbed by erosion, farming, deforestation, mining or road-building, a study warned Sunday.

Scientists from the United States and Germany discovered one such reserve in Nebraska, up to 6.5 metres (21 feet) under the surface, composed mainly of vast quantities of burnt plant material.