Floral nectar contains a bouquet of natural chemicals that may help fight parasite infection in bumble bees, a study said Wednesday.

The findings throw up clues for helping honey bee colonies battling mysterious but catastrophic decline.

By the standards of outer space, it was the closest call yet recorded: a star that zoomed past our solar system 70,000 years ago at a distance of eight trillion kilometers, or five trillion miles.

An international team of astronomers said Tuesday the dim star probably passed through the solar system's distant cloud of comets, known as the Oort Cloud.

The tiny hut sculpted out of mud at the edge of the sea is barely large enough for Bokul Mondol and his family to lie down in. The water has taken everything else from them, and one day it almost certainly will take this, too.

Saltwater long ago engulfed the 5 acres where Mondol once grew rice and tended fish ponds, as his ancestors had on Bali Island for some 200 years. His thatch-covered hut, built on public land, is the fifth he has had to build in the last five years as the sea creeps in.

Japan has made "significant progress" in cleaning up the crippled Fukushima nuclear plant, a U.N. review mission said Tuesday as it again advised the country to consider discharging treated water into the sea.

"Japan has made significant progress since our previous missions" in 2013, said Juan Carlos Lentijo, who led a review mission from the International Atomic Energy Agency.

The acceleration climate change and its impact on agricultural production means that profound societal changes will be needed in coming decades to feed the world's growing population, researchers at an annual science conference said.

According to scientists, food production will have to be doubled over the next 35 years to feed a global population of nine billion people in 2050, compared with seven billion today.

Amateur astronomers have spotted two strange, cloud-like plumes high over Mars, deepening the mystery of what constitutes the Red Planet's atmosphere, a study said Monday.

The phenomenon was observed on March 12, 2012 over the "terminator", the boundary between day and night on Mars.

On a typical February day in west Africa, Cape Verdeans are taking time to cool down as the island nation is buffeted by a rare unseasonal downpour.

For the scientists gathered in the archipelago's capital Praia, however, the rain is a worrying portent of the changing climate to which underdeveloped Africa is becoming increasingly vulnerable.

Clad in a gray hooded wetsuit, Eric Billips straps on his scuba tank, grabs a pole spear and nods at his dive buddy as they step feet-first off the boat and disappear with a splash into sparkling blue waters off the Florida Keys.

The lionfish hunt is on.

The European Space Agency (ESA) on Sunday said it had destroyed its last supply ship to the International Space Station, bringing a seven-year venture to a successful close.

The last of five robot delivery vessels that ESA pledged for the U.S.-led ISS project, the Georges Lemaitre, burned up in a suicide plunge into Earth's atmosphere, the agency said.

The vast majority of scientists -- 87 percent -- think they should play an active role in debates on public policy, according to a poll of U.S. scientists released Sunday.

Forty-three percent of those queried by the Pew Research poll also felt it was important to engage with the media.