The acceleration of climate change is stressing mountain plants in Europe and driving them to migrate to higher altitudes, according to a study released Thursday by U.S. researchers.

The plant migration is also decreasing species diversity, the study's authors said in the April 20 edition of the journal Science.

Seismologists say last week's powerful earthquake off western Indonesia increased pressure on the source of the devastating 2004 tsunami: a fault that could unleash another monster wave sometime in the next few decades.

"The spring was pushed a little bit tighter," said Kerry Sieh, director of the Earth Observatory of Singapore.

China says 16 endangered finless porpoise have been found dead since the beginning of the year, due in part to what experts suspect is water pollution and climate change, state media reported.

The freshwater porpoise -- which is known in Chinese as the "river pig" -- mainly lives in China's Yangtze River and two lakes linked to the waterway, and the deaths have raised concern the rare animal is headed for extinction.

Discovery on Thursday will become the first spaceship of the retired U.S. shuttle fleet to enter its permanent home as a museum artifact, marking a solemn end to the 30-year U.S. space flight program.

A team of about 20 veteran astronauts who flew to space aboard Discovery will surround the celebrated spacecraft and escort it to a branch of the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum outside the U.S. capital.

A University of California San Diego scientist was able to use his math and physics knowledge to argue his way out of a $400 traffic ticket.

In a paper titled "The Proof of Innocence," senior research scientist Dmitri Krioukov successfully appealed his failure-to-stop ticket by explaining that he may have appeared to an officer that he didn't stop when he actually did, according to the Los Angeles Times .

The fact that land-bound dinosaurs laid eggs is what sealed their fate of mass extinction millions of years ago while live birthing mammals went on to thrive, scientists said Wednesday.

In a new explanation for mammals' evolutionary victory over dinosaurs, researchers said a mathematical model has shown that infant size was the clincher.

Scientists have discovered a new shrimp-like species in a gypsum cave in southeastern New Mexico, only a few dozen miles from the famous caves at Carlsbad Caverns National Park.

The species of amphipod was unknown before being discovered about a month ago in the Burton Flats area east of Carlsbad, said Jim Goodbar, the Bureau of Land Management's senior cave specialist. The agency announced the discovery Tuesday.

A university in Russia's Chechnya claimed on Tuesday to have found an unprecedented stash of giant fossilized dinosaur eggs in a remote mountainous area of the North Caucasus region.

The Chechen state university uploaded photos of the egg-shaped protrusions on a rock face discovered in the region's south on its website, calling them a "sensational find" and Russia's main channels showed the remote site Tuesday.

Two new species of frog have been discovered in fast-disappearing forests in the Philippines, boosting hopes for the survival of the country's rich but threatened wildlife, scientists said Tuesday.

The new discoveries are a mottled brown frog with red eyes and a broad yellow stripe running down its back, and a yellow-green one not much bigger than a human thumb, British-based Fauna and Flora International said.

French scientists said Monday they have found evidence proving the stereotype that people who sport tattoos and piercings are heavier drinkers.

Alcohol tests performed on nearly 2,000 young men and women frequenting bars in the west of France showed a strong correlation between body art and boozing, they said.