The United Arab Emirates, one of the world's most arid countries, is striving to capture every drop of rain it can wring from the clouds that pass over the desert nation.

In the blazing sunshine at Al-Ain airport, a twin-propeller Beechcraft stands ready to fly into action at a moment's notice on a cloud-seeding mission.

NASA's discovery of Earth-like exoplanet Kepler-452b, nicknamed "Earth 2.0", has social media buzzing about the chances of finding a faraway world, possibly with alien life or key resources such as water.

Science or fiction? The experts respond.

Almost 350 years ago, Dutch inventor and scientist Christiaan Huygens observed that two pendulum clocks hanging from a wall would synchronize their swing over time.

What causes the phenomenon has led to much scientific head-scratching over the centuries, but no consensus to date. 

Astronomers hunting for another Earth have found the closest match yet, a potentially rocky planet circling its star at the same distance as our home orbits the Sun, NASA said Thursday.

Named Kepler 452b, the planet is about 60 percent larger than Earth. It could have active volcanoes, oceans, sunshine like ours, twice as much gravity and a year that lasts 385 days, scientists said.

A fossil of a four-legged snake uncovered in Brazil has shed new light on the origins of snakes as land burrowers, not sea creatures, a study said Thursday.

This ancestor of modern day snakes is the first of its kind and was found in Brazil's Crato Formation.

Scientists say they have sequenced the genome of the brown kiwi for the first time, revealing that the shy, flightless bird likely lost its ability to see colors after it became nocturnal tens of millions of years ago.

Inspection of the kiwi's DNA also showed greater diversity than in other birds in genes responsible for smell, indicating that New Zealand's national animal can probably detect a wider range of odors — another useful adaptation for a species that prefers living in the dark.

The Galapagos Islands, celebrated for their breathtaking biodiversity, could face a major threat from "El Nino," the weather system known to wreak havoc every few years.

The archipelago sustains a vast variety of plant and animal life, and has been recognized as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Astronauts from Russia, Japan and the United States Thursday docked successfully with the International Space Station after a two-month delay, despite a minor hiccup.

The Soyuz TMA 17M rocket -- carrying cosmonaut Oleg Kononenko, U.S. astronaut Kjell Lindgren and Kimiya Yui of Japan -- blasted off from the Baikonur cosmodrome on schedule after a two-month delay caused by the failure of a Russian rocket during an unmanned resupply mission.

Scientists said Wednesday they had created a rice variety with starchier grains that emits less methane, a step towards the twin goals of feeding more people and curbing global warming.

The cultivation of rice, a staple starch for billions of people, is also mankind's major emitter of methane, a potent climate-altering gas.

French actress Brigitte Bardot has condemned an Australian plan to cull two million feral cats to stop them harming native animals, a proposal animal rights groups said Wednesday was unlikely to be successful.

Feral cats have been identified as the main culprit behind Australia's high rate of mammal extinction, with more than 10 percent of species wiped out since Europeans settled here two centuries ago.