Conservationists have joined forces with a company working on one of the world?s largest oil and gas projects to help limit the impact of seismic surveys on endangered whales.

A group working to save the critically endangered western grey whales said Monday that it and the Sakhalin Energy Investment Company had drawn up stringent guidelines for carrying out surveys of the ocean floor in a way that would cause the least damage to the sound-sensitive mammals.

Scientists at the European Space Agency are expecting an important call.

Their comet-chasing probe Rosetta is due to wake from an almost three-year hibernation at 11 a.m. Monday (1000 GMT; 5 a.m. EST) and phone home to say all is well.

Europe will expand its space presence this year through missions with a more practical application for Earthlings -- notably the Galileo constellation of navigation satellites, the European Space Agency (ESA) said Friday.

Six Galileo satellites should be launched this year, the 50th anniversary of Europe's space exploration program, ESA Director-general Jean-Jacques Dordain told journalists in Paris.

More than 1,000 rhinos were poached in South Africa last year, the government said Friday, as strong demand from Asia fueled a 50 percent jump in the illegal slaughter from 2012.

"The total number of rhino poached in South Africa during 2013 increased to 1,004," the environment ministry said in a statement.

A team of archaeologists said Friday they may have found one of the bones of King Alfred the Great, who fought off the Vikings and laid the foundations for the English nation.

Tests showed that a pelvic bone found in a box in a museum in Winchester, southern England, probably belongs to the ninth-century monarch or his son King Edward the Elder, they said.

Scientists said Friday they had mapped ground-level air pollution in China from space for the first time, a feat that should help the fight against a notorious health hazard.

French and Belgian atmospheric scientists used an infrared sensor aboard a European MetOp weather satellite to map plumes of particles and carbon dioxide, sulphur dioxide and ammonia over the north China plain, blanketing Beijing, Tianjin and Hebei province in January 2013.

The next 15 years will be vital in determining whether global warming can be limited to 2C (3.6F) by 2100, with energy and transport presenting the heftiest challenges, according to a draft UN report.

"Delaying mitigation through 2030 will increase the challenges.... and reduce the options," warns a summary of the report seen by Agence France Presse.

Let the robot race begin.

Expectations are high for RoboEarth, a new European-funded system to speed the development of human-serving robots. Scientists from five major European technical universities have gathered in the Netherlands this week for its launch and to demonstrate possible applications.

Japanese space scientists are set to trial a tether they hope will help pull junk out of orbit around Earth, clearing up tonnes of planetary clutter, they said Thursday.

Researchers at The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) have developed what they called an electrodynamic tether made from thin wires of stainless steel and aluminium.

Humans need both sides of their brain for speech, according to a study Wednesday that could rewrite therapy for people verbally impaired by a stroke.

A mainstream theory in neurology is that speech and language are "lateralised" skills -- thus controlled by only one side of the brain, in this case the left.