Heat stress from global warming may be having an impact on outdoor work productivity in hot regions like northern Australia, Southeast Asia and the southern United States, a study said Sunday.

In recent decades, rising temperatures and higher humidity reduced labour capacity, on paper at least, by 10 percent during the hottest months, it says.

Scientists said Sunday they had found traces of a micro-continent hidden underneath the Indian Ocean island of Mauritius.

The slab, dubbed Mauritia, was probably formed around 61-83 million years ago after Madagascar split from India, but eventually broke up and became smothered by thick lava deposits, they said.

Austrian skydiver Felix Baumgartner broke three world records when he jumped from the edge of space in October, the World Air Sports Federation confirmed on Friday.

The Swiss-based federation, also known as the FAI, said Baumgartner notched up the world's maximum vertical speed record, as well as the highest exit altitude and vertical distance of freefall.

Here's a test of your dinosaur knowledge: Did Tyrannosaurus rex stand upright, with its tail on the ground?

The answer: No. But a lot of young people seem to think so, and the authors of a study are blaming toys like Barney and other pop influences for that misconception.

Two rare Malayan sun bears have been rescued in Cambodia after being discovered in an abandoned garment factory, a zoo official said Friday.

The male and female bears were rescued by officials from the Phnom Tamao Zoo and the Wildlife Alliance, who found them in the factory in southern Kandal province last week, according to zoo director Nhek Rattanak Pich.

Conservationists on Thursday called for sanctions against the world's top offender nations in the illegal ivory trade to tackle a surge in poaching of African elephants.

Wildlife groups WWF and TRAFFIC issued a joint call for governments due to meet in Bangkok next month under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) to take action against host country Thailand as well as Nigeria and the Democratic Republic of Congo.

It brought the world Skype, Europe its first capital with free public transport, and now Estonia is touting the globe's first fast-charging network for electric vehicles.

But its launch this week was overshadowed by public outrage over skyrocketing electricity prices since power market deregulation here in January.

A new study of Asia's Coral Triangle, which contains nearly 30 percent of the world's reefs, shows that when it comes to ensuring a rich and diverse range of species, size matters.

"The study suggests that marine protected areas should be as large and diverse as possible," Peter Etnoyer, a marine biologist at the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), said in a statement Thursday.

India said on Thursday it will send a $70 million space mission to Mars this year to study the red planet's atmosphere.

The unmanned Mars orbiter mission, to be launched in October by the Indian Space Research Organisation, will undertake a 300-day journey to the planet to collect data about its climate and geology.

A small boat with four cases of California wine has left South Carolina and will submerge the wine in the ocean for three months to age it.

California-based Mira Winery is experimenting to see how the motion, temperature and light in the ocean may affect the aging of the wine.