Two science projects — one to map the human brain, the other to explore the extraordinary properties of the carbon-based material graphene — were declared the winners Monday of an EU technologies contest and will receive up to €1 billion ($1.35 billion) each over the next 10 years.

The projects were selected from four finalists that been chosen from 26 proposals.

Japan launched two intelligence satellites into orbit on Sunday amid growing concerns that North Korea is planning to test more rockets of its own and possibly conduct a nuclear test.

Officials say the launch Sunday of the domestically produced HII-A rocket went smoothly and the satellites — an operational radar satellite and an experimental optical probe — appear to have reached orbit.

Heat from large cities alters local streams of high-altitude winds, potentially affecting weather in locations thousands of kilometers (miles) away, researchers said on Sunday.

The findings could explain a long-running puzzle in climate change -- why some regions in the northern hemisphere are strangely experiencing warmer winters than computer models have forecast.

The Brazilian government says it's undertaking a four-year, $33 million study of its vast Amazon rainforest to compile a detailed inventory of the plants, animals and people that live there.

Environment Minister Isabella Teixeira on Friday signed an accord with the country's national development bank, which is funding the study. The government says the inventory will help in formulating environmental policies aimed at preserving the forest and preventing deforestation.

Dung beetles use light from the Milky Way to roll their balls of precious dung out of the way of competitors, scientists reported on Friday.

Even though they have just a tiny brain and weak eyes, the beetles use the progressive gradient of light in the skies, provided by the galaxy's mass of stars, to ensure they roll the balls in a straight line and do not circle back to rivals at the dung pile.

A plunge in the world's population of frogs and toads may be blamed, at least in part, on farm pesticides, researchers in Germany said on Thursday.

Tests of fungicides and insecticides, when used at recommended dilutions, killed 40 percent of frogs after seven days, and in one case, 100 percent of them after just one hour, they said.

Illegal trade in wildlife products like ivory and rhino horn must be treated as a serious crime in order to end the devastating poaching of protected species, the head of U.N. wildlife trade regulator CITES said Thursday.

"This is serious crime, and you need serious resources and serious penalties" to address it, CITES Secretary General John Scanlon told reporters in Geneva.

Fears that most of the Earth's species will become extinct before they have even been discovered by science are "alarmist", according to an international study released on Friday.

Researchers set out to examine estimates that there were 100 million species globally and they were dying out at a rate of five percent every decade, meaning many would disappear before scientists had a chance to discover them.

European probes this year will return a treasure trove of data from explorations into the Big Bang, water on Mars and climate change, European Space Agency (ESA) chief Jean-Jacques Dordain said on Thursday.

"2013 will yield an extraordinary harvest" of knowledge about space, Dordain predicted at a start-of-year press conference.

Scientists in Britain on Wednesday announced a breakthrough in the quest to turn DNA into a revolutionary form of data storage.

A speck of man-made DNA can hold mountains of data that can be freeze-dried, shipped and stored, potentially for thousands of years, they said.