The science journal Nature called on the Canadian government in an online editorial Friday to "set its scientists free" and allow them to speak about their research.

"It is time for the Canadian government to set its scientists free," Nature said in a rebuke of a "gradual tightening of media protocols for federal scientists" since Prime Minister Stephen Harper's Conservatives won power in 2006.

Radio waves that move like pasta spirals could help unclog the wireless world by boosting the power of radio communications, Italian and Swedish researchers said Friday.

The new way to make radio signals more potent without boosting bandwidth is described in the Institute of Physics and German Physical Society's New Journal of Physics edition of March 2.

The supreme court of Virginia on Friday ruled in favor of a prominent climate scientist, blocking a two-year attempt by state officials to get access to his university emails and grant materials.

The case was brought by state attorney general Ken Cuccinelli, a skeptic of global warming, against the University of Virginia where well known climate scientist Michael Mann taught from 1999 to 2005.

A stolen U.S. space agency laptop containing codes that control the International Space Station did not put the orbiting lab in peril, a NASA spokesman said on Friday.

The unencrypted notebook computer went missing in March 2011 and "resulted in the loss of the algorithms used to command and control the International Space Station," NASA Inspector General Paul Martin told lawmakers this week.

China denied Friday that a dam it was building on a major river in Tibet was impacting the lower reaches of the waterway in India, despite complaints that water-levels there were plunging.

The Brahmaputra has its source in China's southwestern Tibet region where it is known as the Yarlung Tsangpo, and it enters India in the mountainous, remote northeastern state of Arunachal Pradesh, where it is called the Siang.

A man was mauled by a lioness at a wildlife park in Darwin on Friday and rushed to hospital with arm injuries, officials at the facility said.

Peter Davidson had muscle torn from the bone of his arm after apparently putting it through the cage bars.

Australian scientists mapping the Great Barrier Reef will broadcast their findings in partnership with Google, modeled on its "Street View" to spotlight the impact of climate change.

The University of Queensland's Seaview Survey, funded by global insurance giant Catlin, will use custom-designed cameras and diving robots to plumb never-before-seen depths of the reef off Australia's northeast coast.

Two-thirds of China's cities currently fail to meet stricter air quality standards that the government wants to phase in over four years to combat notoriously smoggy skies, a senior Chinese environmental official said Friday.

The State Council, China's Cabinet, on Wednesday issued new limits on pollutants to go into effect nationwide by 2016. It also said major cities must launch programs this year to regularly monitor additional kinds of pollutants for the first time, including fine particles associated with health problems.

Engineering professor Donald Sadoway on Thursday used an old-school chalk board at the prestigious TED gathering to write the formula for a liquid battery that could one day cut the need for new power plants.

"The way things stand, electricity demand must be in constant balance with supply," Sadoway told the tech-savvy audience in southern California.

Oetzi the iceman, whose 5,000-year-old remains were found in the Alps 21 years ago, might have died of a heart attack had he lived longer and was allergic to milk products, new research suggests.

After analyzing raw data gained from a sequencing of Oetzi's DNA, researchers have discovered he was genetically predisposed to cardiovascular disease, and that he already had a hardening of the arteries when he was killed.