A verdict in the trial of seven top Italian scientists for manslaughter for underestimating the risks of an earthquake which killed 309 people in L'Aquila, central Italy, in 2009, is expected on Monday.

"The verdict is expected on October 22," said Enzo Musco, a lawyer for Professor Gian Michele Calvi who is one of the defendants.

Efforts to reverse the worrying loss of Earth's dwindling natural resources received a substantial boost on Saturday when a U.N. conference in India agreed to double biodiversity aid to poor countries.

Governments reached an early-morning deal after long nights of tough bargaining in Hyderabad, south India, that once again saw battle lines drawn between developing and affluent states.

Stan Ovshinsky, the self-taught inventor who developed the nickel-metal hydride battery used in the hybrid vehicle industry, has died at his home in suburban Detroit after a fight with cancer. He was 89.

Ovshinsky, who ran Energy Conversion Devices, a car battery development company, also created a machine that produced 9-mile-long sheets of thin solar energy panels intended to bring cheaper, cleaner power to homes and businesses.

Governments are "not on track" to achieve a target of keeping the average global temperature rise below two degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit), the U.N. climate chief said Thursday.

Christiana Figueres, executive secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), told a forum in Singapore that the world was moving in the right direction, but not fast enough.

NASA's Mars rover has swallowed its first scoopful of dirt from the Red Planet's surface -- and found some bright-colored objects that experts briefly thought might be man-made, the U.S. space agency said Thursday.

In an update on Curiosity's two-and-a-half month old mission, NASA said its Chemistry and Mineralogy (CheMin) instrument, deep in the car-sized rover's belly, will analyze the soil to learn more about its make-up.

Now that the dust has settled in the New Mexico desert where supersonic skydiver "Fearless Felix" Baumgartner landed safely on his feet, researchers are exhilarated over the possibility his feat could someday help save the lives of pilots and space travelers in a disaster.

Baumgartner's death-defying jump Sunday from a balloon 24 miles (38.62 kilometers) above Earth yielded a wealth of information about the punishing effects of extreme speed and altitude on the human body — insights that could inform the development of improved spacesuits, new training procedures and emergency medical treatment.

Having denounced evolution as a lie "straight from the pit of hell," Republican Rep. Paul Broun has won himself a new political opponent: Charles Darwin.

An ultraconservative congressman whose district includes the University of Georgia campus, Broun told a Baptist church last month that evolution, embryology and the Big Bang theory were lies spread by scientists out to erode people's faith in Jesus Christ. He also claimed the Earth is roughly 9,000 years, a view held by fundamentalist Christians based on biblical accounts of creation.

Scientists on Wednesday unveiled a DNA map for barley that could spur improvements in yields and stress tolerance in one of the world's most important crops.

One of the first domesticated grains, with its origins in the Fertile Crescent more than 10,000 years ago, barley is the fourth biggest cereal in terms of area and tonnage harvested.

You glimpse a stranger standing in the street. The light is hazy and the person's face and clothing are indistinct. Who is it?

Chances are you will think it is a man -- and the reason for this is a survival reflex, according to an unusual study published on Wednesday.

European astronomers on Wednesday reported they had detected a planet with about the mass of Earth which orbits the closest star to the Sun.

The observation breaks new ground in the hunt for exoplanets -- worlds that exist in other solar systems -- although the planet itself is not "another Earth" as it is located in a scorchingly hot zone.