Scientists will send a few final prods to robot lab Philae, incommunicado on the surface of a comet hurtling through space, but hopes for a reply are running out, they said Tuesday.

A last-chance maneuver was attempted Sunday to shift the tiny lander into a sunnier angle for its battery-replenishing solar panels.

A Canadian helicopter pilot has died after plunging 20 meters (66 feet) down a crevasse when he landed on a remote ice shelf in Antarctica, Australian officials said Tuesday.

David Wood, 62, was winched out of the deep crack after two hours by specialist officers from Australia's Davis scientific research station.

Forty-five whales have died after stranding themselves on a southern Indian beach, a government official said Tuesday, with local fishermen struggling to save others.

The pod of whales started beaching themselves on Monday afternoon along a 15-kilometer (9-mile) stretch of coast near Tiruchendur on India's southernmost tip.

The gut microbes of the Iceman, a 5,300-year-old mummy found frozen in a European glacier in 1991, have shed new light on the history of human migration, scientists said Thursday.

Researchers thawed the mummy of the man, also known as Otzi, who was killed by an arrow when he was between 40 and 50 years old and hiking across the Otztal Alps between modern-day Italy and Austria.

Women are about three times as likely as men to say they are bisexual, and increasing numbers of U.S. women say they have had sexual contact with other females, new data showed Thursday.

More than 9,100 adults aged 18–44 took part in the 2011–2013 National Survey of Family Growth.

Scientists revealed Wednesday the trigger that can plunge a colony of obedient and sterile worker bees dutifully serving their queen into a chaotic swarm of sexual rebellion and regicide.

It's in the beeswax, according to a study published in the British journal Royal Society Open Science. 

Australian scientists Wednesday said they had devised an "innovative method of conservation" through feeding giant monitor lizards small cane toads so they won't be killed by larger-sized amphibians.

Cane toads, an invasive species from Central and South America that were introduced to Australia in 1935, are so toxic they can kill predators that try to eat them and are continuing to spread across northern Australia at an estimated 40-60 kilometers (25-37 miles) a year.

On billboards across the Florida Everglades, a burly Native American man pries open an alligator's mouth, pressing his face dangerously close to the reptile's 80 glinting teeth. "Adventures Await," the ads promise, as motorists whiz by.

The man's name is Rocky Jim, Jr., a 44-year-old Miccosukee Indian who has been wrestling alligators for 31 years, entertaining countless tourists from a sand pit and pond beneath a chickee hut along the Tamiami Trail, a two-lane road linking Miami to the port city of Tampa.

North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un has opened a science and technology complex in Pyongyang, the North's state media said Saturday, adding another ostentatious building to the impoverished country's showcase capital.

His attendance at the ceremony on Friday marked his first public appearance since his New Year address, when he vowed to raise living standards in the struggling one-party Stalinist state.

A swimmer Saturday suffered wounds to his arms and legs after he was mauled in a suspected shark attack off Queensland state on Australia's east coast, officials said.

The latest reported attack comes during the busy summer season, and as authorities in neighboring New South Wales implement a range of shark-prevention measures to reduce encounters after a spate of maulings in the state last year.