China will next year attempt to land an exploratory craft on the moon for the first time, state media reported, in the latest project in the country's ambitious space program.

China's third lunar probe will blast off in the second half of 2013, the state Xinhua news agency reported late Monday. Other reports said it would land and transmit back a survey of the moon's surface.

Scientists said Sunday they had unraveled the mechanism by which Earth-warming carbon is sucked deep into the Southern Ocean to be safely locked away -- a process that may itself be threatened by climate change.

Wind, eddies and currents work together to create carbon-sucking funnels, said the research team from Britain and Australia in a discovery that adds to the toolkit of scientists attempting climate warming predictions.

A sperm whale that was rescued and returned to sea after being stranded for four days in shallow waters off the coast of West Java in Indonesia has died, a rescuer said Monday.

Fishermen found the 11-metre (36-feet) whale in waters near the beach in Muara Gembong Sunday evening, "dozens of miles" from the Pakis Jaya beach where it had been stranded, said Benvika, a rescuer from the Jakarta Animal Aid Network.

Once the preserve of science fiction, increasingly sophisticated robotic devices are vying for a place side by side with humans in the real world.

At Italy's Sant'Anna university, a bionic arm commanded by the human brain or a limb extension that allows rescuers to lift rubble after earthquakes are just some of the futuristic innovations in the pipeline.

Beijing on Friday denied accusations of solar panel dumping, saying it hoped Chinese and EU manufacturers could negotiate an end to a dispute that threatens a trade war.

EU ProSun, a group of more than 20 European solar panel makers, suspects Beijing of providing their Chinese rivals with loans and other subsidies enabling them to sell their goods below cost.

A university study that claimed fracking for gas deep beneath the Earth's surface did not cause water contamination was led by a U.S. professor with financial ties to the gas industry, a watchdog group said Friday.

Lead author Charles "Chip" Groat, of the University of Texas, told reporters when the research on hydraulic fracturing was presented at a major science conference in Canada in February that the university had turned down all industry funds for the study.

Lebanon took part in the Sixth International Conference on Environmental Science and Technology reaping the first prize through its representative Dr. in Environmental Engineering Mervat el-Hoz for her research project titled Site Evaluation for Olive Mills Waste Composting Facility.

The conference was held in Houston-Texas and sponsored by the American Academy of Sciences. It aimed to provide a major interdisciplinary forum for presenting new approaches from relevant areas of environmental science, to foster integration of the latest developments in scientific research into engineering applications, and to facilitate technology transfer from well-tested ideas into practical products, waste management, remedial processes, and ecosystem restoration.

Scientists have discovered a rift the size of the Grand Canyon hidden under the Antarctic ice sheet, which they say is contributing to ice melt and a consequent rise in the sea level.

The rift, some 1.5 kilometers (one mile) deep, 10 kilometers wide and 100 kilometers long, was found by researchers using radar to measure the sub glacial topography, glaciologist Robert Bingham told Agence France Presse.

Seven nations may lose their ability to legally trade tens of thousands of wildlife species after U.N. conservation delegates agreed Thursday to penalize them for lacking tough regulations or failing to report on their wildlife trade.

The suspensions against the seven nations — Comoros, Guinea-Bissau, Paraguay, Nepal, Rwanda, Solomon Islands and Syria — were approved by consensus among the delegates and would take effect Oct. 1.

Japanese women are no longer the world's longest living, their longevity pushed down in part by last year's devastating earthquake and tsunami, according to a government report Thursday. The top of the global life expectancy rankings now belongs to Hong Kong women.

The annual report by Japan's health ministry said the expected lifespan for Japanese women slipped to 85.90 years in 2011 from 86.30 the year before, mainly due to disease and other natural causes of death. The life expectancy for men also declined slightly, from 79.55 to 79.44.