Puddles with extremely high radiation levels have been found near water storage tanks at Japan's crippled Fukushima nuclear plant, its operator said Tuesday, as it moved to contain the latest of several toxic water threats.

The radiation level, measured around 50 centimeters (20 inches) above the toxic water surface, was about 100 millisieverts per hour, Tokyo Electric Power (TEPCO) said.

An Argentinian veterinarian has designed a cheap and simple device that could revolutionize cattle husbandry on the pampas by preventing pregnant cows from reaching the slaughterhouse.

Enrique Turin, a professor at the National University of Northwestern Buenos Aires, designed and is producing what he says is the world's first bovine intra-uterine device.

German power company RWE is shutting six domestic plants and rival E.ON is threatening to relocate to Turkey as the sector tots up the cost of the government's energy policy turnaround.

Ever since Chancellor Angela Merkel announced a phase-out of nuclear energy over the next decade and pledged to generate as much as 80 percent of the country's electricity from renewables by 2050, big question marks have been hanging over the future of coal and gas-fired plants in Germany.

The world's 136 largest coastal cities could risk combined annual losses of $1 trillion (750 billion euros) from floods by 2050 unless they drastically raise their defenses, a study warned Sunday.

Current losses are about $6 billion per year, with four cities -- Miami, New York and New Orleans in the United States and Guangzhou in China -- incurring 43 percent of the costs, according to a report in the journal Nature Climate Change.

A fossil of the oldest known ancestor of modern rats -- an agile creature that could climb, burrow and eat just about anything -- has been unearthed in China, scientists said Thursday.

The newly named species Rugosodon eurasiaticus had flexible ankles for tree-climbing and sharp teeth that could gnaw both animals and plants, according to the U.S. journal Science.

A lap-sized critter that looks like a mix between a raccoon and a teddy bear was unveiled Thursday as the first new carnivore in the Western Hemisphere in 35 years.

Scientists say the olinguito has actually been around for ages, in zoos, museums and in the forests of Ecuador and Colombia, but was mistaken for its larger cousin, the olingo.

NASA said Thursday it cannot fix its hobbled planet-hunting Kepler Space Telescope and is considering what sort of scientific research it might be able to do at half-capacity.

"Today, we are reporting we do not believe we can recover three-wheeled operations, or Kepler's original science mission," said Paul Hertz, NASA Astrophysics Division director.

The White House is going green. Solar panels are being installed on parts of the residence, a U.S. official said Thursday -- making good on a pledge that dates back to 2010.

With President Barack Obama and his family vacationing in Martha's Vineyard for a week, workers equipped with cranes have been buzzing around the home in downtown Washington.

Scientists said Wednesday they were surprised to witness a chimpanzee and an orangutan swimming and diving in water -- a skill that primates were thought to have lost long ago.

Evolutionary researchers Renato and Nicole Bender made the astonishing observation while filming two primates raised in captivity in the United States.

Scientists said Wednesday they had created a window coating that can be switched electrically to regulate the amount of heat and light that enters a building.

A team of molecular and material scientists from the United States and Spain created a transparent film using nanocrystals -- microscopic clusters of atoms that can change the wavelength of light.