China's largest desert freshwater lake has shrunk by one-third in the last 13 years, state media said Thursday, as the country's breakneck modernization continues to damage the environment.

Northern China's Hongjiannao Lake covers 32.16 square kilometers (12.86 sq miles), less than half its size in 1969 and two-thirds of its area in 2000, Xinhua news agency said.

It's crunch time for a comet from the fringes of the solar system as it hurtles toward a close encounter with the sizzling sun.

Comet ISON is expected to get closest to the sun at 1837 GMT (1:37 p.m. EST) on Thursday.

A rare full skeleton of a huge diplodocus dinosaur sold in Britain for £400,000 ($630,000, 470,000 euros) on Wednesday, an auction house said.

Nicknamed Misty, the 150-million-year-old fossil was bought to go on public display, said Summers Place Auctions in Billingshurst, southern England.

A Jordan-based scientific research project whose members include Iran and the Palestinian Authority has chosen an Israeli as vice president, the candidate's university confirmed.

Scientists from states participating in the project elected Eliezer Rabinovici, a physics professor at Jerusalem's Hebrew University, as vice-president of the Synchrotron-light for Experimental Science and Applications in the Middle East (SESAME), the university told AFP.

Authorities in the capital have destroyed more than 500 open-air barbecues "to cut PM2.5" — the tiny particulate matter in the air that can enter deep into the lungs.

Photos carried by state media showed workers on Tuesday cutting pieces of metal with sparks flying as city wardens looked on.

Close examination of the seahorse has shown that the cute little fish is a master of stealth, using streamlined features in its head to sneak up on its prey, scientists reported on Tuesday.

At first glance, the seahorse is an unlikely candidate for hunter of the year.

U.S. astrophysicists are split over what will happen when the comet ISON passes near the sun Thursday, but a majority think it will break apart.

Comets are frozen balls of space dust left over from the formation of stars and planets billions of years ago.

The United States is spewing 50 percent more methane — a potent heat-trapping gas — than the federal government estimates, a new comprehensive scientific study says. Much of it is coming from just three states: Texas, Oklahoma and Kansas.

That means methane may be a bigger global warming issue than thought, scientists say. Methane is 21 times more potent at trapping heat than carbon dioxide, the most abundant global warming gas, although it doesn't stay in the air as long.

China will launch its first ever moon rover early next month, state media said Tuesday, with the vehicle named "Jade Rabbit" in a nod to Chinese folklore.

The name derives from an ancient Chinese myth about a white rabbit which lives on the moon as the pet of Chang'e, a lunar goddess who swallowed an immortality pill.

The private U.S. company SpaceX Monday postponed the launch of a rocket carrying a telecoms satellite.

The launch with a Falcon 9 rocket had been scheduled for Monday from Florida. But the company said it has delayed it until Thursday because of unexpected readings in the fuel system.