The U.S. space agency said Tuesday it is sending a team of scientists on the second and final mission of a NASA field study of how melting Arctic ice is changing the life cycles of sea creatures.

The five-week mission, which kicks off Saturday, focuses on tiny organisms called phytoplankton, whose population blooms can offer clues about the wider health of the ocean ecosystem and how a warming climate may change the ocean's ability to absorb carbon from the atmosphere.

Wildlife experts said they were astonished Wednesday at the appearance of an Emperor penguin in New Zealand, some 3,000 kilometers (1,900 miles) from his Antarctic home.

The penguin, a juvenile male, arrived at a beach on the Kapiti Coast, 40 kilometers north of the capital Wellington on Monday afternoon, the Department of Conservation (DOC) said.

A new species of large land crab was discovered on Cocos Island in Costa Rica, a local newspaper reported on Monday.

University researchers from Costa Rica and the United States discovered the new species, named "Johngarthia cocoensis," on the Pacific Ocean Island. The distinguishing characteristic of J. cocoensis, according to the researchers, is its large size--a male can measure 40 cm (15.7 inches) with their front legs extended (females measure smaller).

Japanese researchers said Tuesday they had developed a self-propelled remote controlled capsule endoscope that can "swim" through the digestive tract.

They have succeeded in capturing images inside a person's stomach and colon using the tadpole-shaped capsule as a first step toward its clinical application, the scientists said.

Pollution and global warming are pushing the world's oceans to the brink of a mass extinction of marine life unseen for tens of millions of years, a consortium of scientists warned.

Dying coral reefs, biodiversity ravaged by invasive species, expanding open-water "dead zones," toxic algae blooms, the massive depletion of big fish stocks -- all are accelerating, they said in a report compiled during an April meeting in Oxford of 27 of the world's top ocean experts.

Astronomers think they have solved the mystery of an extraordinary flash spied in a faraway galaxy, saying it came from a massive black hole that devoured a star after it wandered too close.

The awesome energy released by the feeding frenzy was first detected by NASA's Swift satellite on March 28 and was later confirmed by a fleet of space and ground telescopes.

Cuban scientists calculate that median sea levels around the Caribbean nation will rise more than 30 inches by the end of the century due to global climate change, official media said Friday.

Models predict the sea will rise 10.6 inches (27 centimeters) by 2050, and 33.5 inches (85 centimeters) by 2100, Abel Centella, scientific director of the country's Meteorological Institute, was quoted by Communist Party daily Granma as saying.

Japanese astronaut Satoshi Furukawa has tweeted from the International Space Station that he suffers from travel sickness in space.

"Space motion sickness got me. Especially when I move my head suddenly, I really feel sick. My head feels heavy. Help!" Furukawa, who is also a medical doctor, said in a message posted on his Twitter account (twitter.com@Astro_Satoshi) Tuesday.

The neck bone of a crocodile-faced dinosaur species has been found in Australia, scientists said, showing the creature roamed much further than previously thought.

The vertebra of a Spinosaurus was found near southern Victoria's Cape Otway lighthouse and belonged to a relatively small two-meter (6.6-foot) beast which lived about 105 million years ago, said researcher Thomas Rich.

Astronomers have detected faint X-ray signals that they believe were emitted by giant black holes billions of years ago when the Universe was a toddler, a study in the journal Nature said on Wednesday.

The probe looked at more than 250 galaxies, the farthest of which was 13 billion light years from Earth -- in other words, emissions that came only 700 million years or so after the "Big Bang" that created the cosmos.