Shark brains have been found to share several features with those of humans, a discovery which Australian researchers believe could be crucial to developing "repellents" for the killer great white species.

Great white sharks, otherwise known as white pointers and made famous by the horror movie "Jaws", have killed an unprecedented number of surfers and swimmers off Australia's west coast in the past year.

Nearly 1,500 years ago a tsunami triggered by a rockfall swept Lake Geneva, engulfing its shores with a wall of water up to 13 meters (42 feet) high, Swiss scientists reported on Sunday.

The incident suggests Geneva and Lausanne remain vulnerable today, as do other cities on the edge of mountain lakes and high-sided fjords, they said.

South Korea said Monday it would make another attempt to send a satellite into space next month after a scheduled rocket launch last week was cancelled because of a technical glitch.

A Science Ministry statement said the 140-tonne Korea Space Launch Vehicle-1 (KSLV-1) would blast off sometime during a November 9-24 window from the Naro Space Center on the south coast.

Scientists announced Monday the discovery of a new species of lizard fighting to survive among the sand dunes outside Perth in Western Australia.

They fear it is only a matter of time before the six-centimeter (two-inch) long Ctenotus ora, or the coastal plains skink, will be extinct with urban sprawl rapidly closing in.

Earth's largest radio telescope is growing more powerful by the day on this remote plateau high above Chile's Atacama desert, where visitors often feel like they're planting the first human footprints on the red crust of Mars.

The 16,400-foot (5,000-meter) altitude, thin air and mercurial climate here can be unbearable. Visitors must breathe oxygen from a tank just to keep from fainting. Winds reach 62 mph (100 km) and temperatures drop to 10 below zero (minus 25 Celsius).

More than three million years ago, ancient ancestors of humans were walking upright -- but they could still climb trees like monkeys, a study showed Thursday in the U.S. journal "Science."

Based on careful analysis of a pair of shoulder blades -- both exceptionally well-preserved from a skeleton of a three-year-old Australopithecus afarensis girl -- scientists were able to settle a question intensely debated by anthropologists for more than three decades.

Thousands of people in an eastern Chinese city clashed with police while protesting the proposed expansion of a petrochemical factory that they say would spew pollution and damage public health, townspeople said Saturday.

Pollution has become a major source of unrest in China, as members of the rising middle class become more outspoken against environmentally risky projects in their backyards.

Dung beetles wearing tiny silicon boots have let scientists in on a long-guarded secret -- they use the balls of manure they collect as mobile air conditioning units, a study said Thursday.

The ground temperature in the African savannah can reach 60 degrees Celsius (140 Fahrenheit), causing most insects to scramble for shadow spots or flee up blades of grass for relief.

Scientists in Canada have unearthed the first fossils of a feathered dinosaur ever found in the Americas, the journal Science reported on Thursday.

The 75 million year old fossil specimens, uncovered in the badlands of Alberta, Canada, include remains of a juvenile and two adult ostrich-like creatures known as ornithomimids.

South Korea suspended its third attempt to send a satellite into orbit by at least three days Friday, after a helium leak was detected in the rocket just hours before scheduled launch time.

With only a five-day launch window that ends October 30, any further delay could result in a much lengthier postponement, officials at the Naro Space Center told reporters.