Climate change will trigger harsher and more frequent heat waves in the next 30 years regardless of the amount of Earth-warming carbon dioxide we emit, a study said Thursday.

But targets adopted today for curbing greenhouse gas emissions will determine whether the pattern stabilizes thereafter, or grows even worse.

Australia's carbon pollution would increase by at least nine percent by 2020 under the policies of the conservative opposition, breaching global commitments, new pre-election modelling showed Thursday.

The modelling, published by Australia's independent Climate Institute thinktank, showed that "under all (opposition) coalition scenarios Australia's emissions continue to increase to 2020 and beyond".

Scientists said Tuesday they had used stem cells to grow human heart tissue that contracted spontaneously in a petri dish -- marking progress in the quest to manufacture transplant organs.

A team from the University of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, used induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells generated from human skin cells to create precursor heart cells called MCPs.

Scientists said Wednesday they had discovered two new species of a strange bone-devouring worm thriving in the mysterious waters that surround the Antarctic continent.

The Osedax worms feed on the bones of dead whales that settle on the sea floor, fulfilling an important recycling role, said a study published in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B.

Dwarf minke whales have been tagged and tracked in Australia's Great Barrier Reef in a world-first pilot study which hopes to solve the mystery of where they spend the summer.

Scientists at James Cook University in Queensland state are taking part in the effort, also involving researchers from Alaska, which tagged four of the whales last month and is now tracking their southerly progress down the east coast of Australia.

Stuffed shrimp are decor rather than dinner for some of the folks who have caught the really big sort — invasive Asian tiger shrimp — in the Gulf of Mexico or along the East Coast.

Sometimes the shrimp become both food and a wall display. Joe Strange of Joe's Taxidermy in Houma said he mounted three last year, dining on the meat he removed from the two smallest, about 7 and 10 inches ( 20 and 25 1/2 centimeters) long.

A design for a super-fast transport system dubbed "Hyperloop" -- carrying passengers in pressurized tubes at near-supersonic speeds -- has been unveiled by inventor and entrepreneur Elon Musk.

Musk, who heads electric carmaker Tesla Motors (Xetra: A1CX3T - news) and private space exploration firm SpaceX, released a 57-page document describing the project, which he claimed could connect Los Angeles and San Francisco in 35 minutes.

There may be a scientific explanation for the vivid near-death experiences, such as seeing a shining light, that some people report after surviving a heart attack, U.S. scientists said Monday.

Apparently, the brain keeps on working for up to 30 seconds after blood flow stops, according to a study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The mass extinction of large animals in the Pleistocene era caused today's dearth of soil nutrients, scientists said Sunday, and warned of further damage if modern giants like the elephant disappear.

The Pleistocene epoch, which dated from about 2.6 million to 11,700 years ago, saw large animals dubbed megafauna take over domination of the planet from extinct dinosaurs, only to die out en masse themselves.

Coastal waters off California are getting more acidic. Conifer forests on the lower slopes of the Sierra Nevada mountains have moved to higher elevations over the past half-century.

Climate change is affecting natural resources in California, the most populous state in the U.S., a report released Thursday found.