Women want to settle down while men prefer to play the field, right?

Not quite, said a study Wednesday that challenged long-held views of sexual selection.

The New Zealand navy was involved in a high-seas standoff with two suspected poaching ships in Antarctic waters Wednesday after the vessels used "evasive tactics" to thwart boarding attempts, officials said.

Foreign Minister Murray McCully said the naval patrol vessel HMNZS Wellington had been monitoring three "illegal fishing vessels" in the Southern Ocean this week which were sailing under the flag of Equatorial Guinea.

Coastal developments in northeast Asia are threatening the survival of Australian migratory shorebirds, a study has found, with some species experiencing population declines of up to 75 percent over the last two decades.

Some 36 migratory shorebird species, numbering between three to eight million, fly to Australia each summer from breeding sites in the Russian and Alaskan Arctic.

A giant prehistoric reptile that patrolled the waters off Scotland 170 million years ago has been identified by scientists, they said Monday.

The creatures, which resembled a menacing dolphin and grew up to 14 foot (four metres) long, were identified by fossils from the Isle of Skye in northwest Scotland.

Plenty of research has shown that learning a second language can boost brainpower, but a new study out Monday suggests that the effects extend to those who begin in middle childhood.

The study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences showed that people who began learning English around age 10 and were immersed in the language, meaning they heard and used it in daily life, showed improvements in the structure of the brain's white matter compared to people who grew up speaking only English and did not learn a second language.

Fish exposed to low levels of bisphenol A (BPA), a common chemical used in plastics, canned goods and cash register receipts, showed evidence of hyperactive behavior, according to research published Monday.

However, some experts warned that the results do not prove that the chemical affects humans the same way, and that more research is needed.

SpaceX's unmanned Dragon cargo ship arrived Monday at the International Space Station, carrying 2.6 tons of food and supplies for the astronauts at the orbiting research laboratory.

"We have captured Dragon," NASA commentator Rob Navias said as the space station's robotic arm, operated by commander Barry "Butch" Wilmore, grappled the spacecraft at 5:54 am (1054 GMT), according to NASA's television broadcast.

China's bold plan to land an unmanned spaceship on the moon before returning to Earth has moved another step forward with a test craft shifting into lunar orbit to conduct further tests, state media reported Sunday.

The service module of a lunar orbiter that flew back to Earth in November had been sitting in a position that brought in into sync with Earth's orbit, known as the second Lagrange point. It had separated from the orbiter in November.

SpaceX on Saturday blasted off its Falcon 9 rocket on an historic recycling mission, after propelling the Dragon cargo ship toward the International Space Station.

The rocket launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida at 4:47 am (0947 GMT) and was to be followed minutes later by an attempt to guide the rocket's first stage down to a controlled landing on a platform in the Atlantic Ocean.

Environmental activist group Sea Shepherd said Friday it has been chasing a "poaching" ship for three weeks amid heavy ice flows in an attempt to stop the crew from illegal fishing in the Southern Ocean.

Peter Hammarstedt, the captain of Sea Shepherd's lead ship, Bob Barker, said his crew has been pursuing the Nigerian-flagged boat Thunder for 22 days, in what the group said is the world's longest sea chase of an alleged poaching vessel.