The white mustard plant, having added spice to our lives for centuries, may soon be put to a very different use -- in the fight against chemical weapons, scientists said Wednesday.

Tests in the lab showed that mustard plants grown in soil contaminated with the deadly nerve agent VX, absorbed the toxin via its roots and held traces of it for at least 45 days.

Australian researchers are working on fighting out-of-control bushfires with explosives, likening the process of using the soundwave produced by a blast to blowing out a candle.

Exotic sea creatures called comb jellies may reshape how scientists view early evolution — as their genes suggest nature created more than one way to make a nervous system.

These beautiful but little-known translucent animals often are called "aliens of the sea," for good reason. Somehow, they rapidly regenerate lost body parts. Some even can regrow a very rudimentary brain.

Japan is scheduled to launch a new mapping satellite on Saturday that will be used to survey damage from natural disasters and changes affecting rain forests.

The Advanced Land Observing Satellite-2 (ALOS-2) will be released by the nation's H-IIA rocket, which will lift off shortly after noon (0300 GMT) Saturday, according to the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA).

Skywatchers in the United States and Canada could see a one-of-a-kind meteor shower late Friday night and early Saturday, astronomers say. 

Never before have astronomers witnessed the debris trail behind this particular comet, and a sea of white lights could dash across the night sky for hours.

One of California's worst droughts in decades could cost the US state's farmers $1.7 billion, a study warned, a week after alarmingly early wildfires forced tens of thousands of homeowners to evacuate.

The drought could leave 14,500 workers without jobs in California's Central Valley, known as America's food basket for providing vast supplies of fruit, vegetables and meat.

Sea level rise is threatening the majority of NASA's launch pads and multi-billion dollar complexes famous for training astronauts and launching historic missions to space, scientists said on Tuesday.

From Cape Canaveral in Florida to mission control in Houston, the U.S. space agency is busily building seawalls where possible and moving some buildings further inland.

Under the cover of night, activists patrol key poaching sites in southeast Cyprus, described as an ecological disaster zone for endangered migratory birds on their Mediterranean stopover.

A South African animal rights group on Tuesday accused an elephant park of cruelty after "horrific" video footage emerged of abusive training methods used on baby elephants.

"The footage shows elephant calves and juvenile elephants being chained, roped and stretched, shocked with electric cattle prods and hit with bull hooks," the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (SPCA) said.

Britain is offering 10 million pounds (almost $17 million) to whoever can solve one of humanity's biggest scientific challenges — once the public has decided what it is.

The Longitude Prize is inspired by a 1714 contest to find a way of pinpointing a ship's location at sea. John Harrison's winning invention, the marine chronometer, revolutionized navigation.