The Brazilian government says it's undertaking a four-year, $33 million study of its vast Amazon rainforest to compile a detailed inventory of the plants, animals and people that live there.

Environment Minister Isabella Teixeira on Friday signed an accord with the country's national development bank, which is funding the study. The government says the inventory will help in formulating environmental policies aimed at preserving the forest and preventing deforestation.

Dung beetles use light from the Milky Way to roll their balls of precious dung out of the way of competitors, scientists reported on Friday.

Even though they have just a tiny brain and weak eyes, the beetles use the progressive gradient of light in the skies, provided by the galaxy's mass of stars, to ensure they roll the balls in a straight line and do not circle back to rivals at the dung pile.

A plunge in the world's population of frogs and toads may be blamed, at least in part, on farm pesticides, researchers in Germany said on Thursday.

Tests of fungicides and insecticides, when used at recommended dilutions, killed 40 percent of frogs after seven days, and in one case, 100 percent of them after just one hour, they said.

Illegal trade in wildlife products like ivory and rhino horn must be treated as a serious crime in order to end the devastating poaching of protected species, the head of U.N. wildlife trade regulator CITES said Thursday.

"This is serious crime, and you need serious resources and serious penalties" to address it, CITES Secretary General John Scanlon told reporters in Geneva.

Fears that most of the Earth's species will become extinct before they have even been discovered by science are "alarmist", according to an international study released on Friday.

Researchers set out to examine estimates that there were 100 million species globally and they were dying out at a rate of five percent every decade, meaning many would disappear before scientists had a chance to discover them.

European probes this year will return a treasure trove of data from explorations into the Big Bang, water on Mars and climate change, European Space Agency (ESA) chief Jean-Jacques Dordain said on Thursday.

"2013 will yield an extraordinary harvest" of knowledge about space, Dordain predicted at a start-of-year press conference.

Scientists in Britain on Wednesday announced a breakthrough in the quest to turn DNA into a revolutionary form of data storage.

A speck of man-made DNA can hold mountains of data that can be freeze-dried, shipped and stored, potentially for thousands of years, they said.

South Korea confirmed Thursday that it will make another bid on January 30 to put a satellite in orbit and join an elite club of global space powers that includes China, Japan and India.

The Ministry of Education, Science and Technology said the much-anticipated launch -- postponed twice last year -- was scheduled to take place between 3:55pm and 7:30pm (0655 and 1030 GMT) next Wednesday.

A genetic switch allowed dogs to adapt to a starch-rich diet and evolve from meat-munching wolves into Man's leftover-loving best friend, scientists said Wednesday.

Comparing the genetic code of the domestic dog to that of its wolf cousins, a team of researchers from Sweden, Norway and the United States found several telling differences.

All but about 50 of hundreds of research chimpanzees belonging to the National Institutes of Health should be retired to the national sanctuary in northwest Louisiana, and all of them should have plenty of room to play and climb, an NIH committee recommended Tuesday.

The NIH Council of Councils Working Group approved the proposal, which also calls for major cuts in grants to study chimps in laboratories and no return to breeding the great apes for research.