Taiwan has begun testing DNA from shark fins sold in local markets in a bid to protect endangered species such as great whites and whale sharks, an official from the Fisheries Agency said Wednesday.

The efforts come as the island moves to restrict its shark-fin industry, which environmental groups say accounts for the deaths of 73 million sharks each year across the world.

An "unprecedented" surge in debris from last year's Japanese tsunami is washing up on Alaska's coastline, environmentalists about to embark on a major cleanup operation said Tuesday.

Floating material including buoys and Styrofoam has washed up on Montague Island, some 120 miles (190 kilometers) southeast of Anchorage, in volumes that clearly suggest a wave of debris from the March 11, 2011 killer tidal wave.

A powerful solar telescope billed as the largest in Europe opened Monday on Spain's Canary Islands which scientists say will allow them to study the sun in unprecedented detail.

With a mirror diameter of 1.5 meters (4.9 feet), the Gregor telescope will be able to show structures on the sun on scales as small as 70 kilometers (43.5 miles), the Astrophysical Institute of the Canary Islands said in a statement.

Just as wealth and social status are often linked to good health in humans, the animal kingdom too has its benefits for those at the top of the hierarchy, according to a U.S. study out Monday.

After studying 27 years worth of data on baboons in Kenya, researchers found that alpha males were less likely to get sick and recovered faster from injuries than those at the lower rungs of society.

When pregnant rats are exposed to a common crop chemical, their descendants three generations later show more anxiety and stress than the offspring of unexposed peers, U.S. researchers said Monday.

The study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences suggests that the animal model may provide an explanation for the mounting number of cases of anxiety disorders, autism and obesity among humans in recent years.

Emotional stress caused by last year's tsunami caused a part of some survivors' brains to shrink, according to scientists in Japan who grasped a unique chance to study the neurological effects of trauma.

On a quest to better understand post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), the researchers compared brain scans they had taken of 42 healthy adolescents in other studies in the two years before the killer wave, with new images taken three to four months thereafter.

Millions of sky-gazers got the spectacle of a lifetime as a "ring of fire" solar eclipse crossed the Pacific from Asia to the United States, where it triggered whoops at festive viewing parties.

The annular eclipse was visible in western U.S. states from California to Texas late Sunday and in parts of China, Taiwan and Japan on Monday local time, making a 13,600-kilometre (8,500-mile) arc across the Pacific.

Massive extraction of groundwater can resolve a puzzle over a rise in sea levels in past decades, scientists in Japan said on Sunday.

Global sea levels rose by an average of 1.8 millimeters (0.07 inches) per year from 1961-2003, according to data from tide gauges.

The California-based company SpaceX on Saturday scrubbed the launch of its Dragon capsule toward the International Space Station at the last second due to a rocket engine problem.

The abort came a half-second before liftoff due to high pressure in the center engine of the Falcon 9 rocket, forcing a shutdown of the launch attempt. The next try is expected May 22 at 3:44 am (0744 GMT).

Japan joined the commercial space race Friday after its workhorse rocket put a paid-for South Korean satellite into orbit, pitting the country against Russia and Europe in the competition for customers.

But despite a degree of self-congratulation, space officials admitted they had to work hard to lower their prices if they were going to become truly competitive.