Science - AP

WASHINGTON - While carbon dioxide has been getting lots of publicity in climate change, reactive forms of nitrogen are also building up in the environment, scientists warn.

TOKYO - A Japanese man who developed the world's smallest helicopter will take flight in the birthplace of Leonardo da Vinci in tribute to the Renaissance genius' original idea.

Rex Jameson bikes and swims regularly, and plays tennis and skis when time allows. But the 5-foot-11, 180-pound software engineer is lucky if he presses 200 pounds — that is, until he steps into an "exoskeleton" of aluminum and electronics that multiplies his strength and endurance as many as 20 times.

WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. - Construction on a huge reservoir meant to help restore the Everglades will be put on hold over a lawsuit brought by a group that fears the water could be diverted for other purposes.

WASHINGTON - Put at risk by global warming, the polar bear is getting a life line as the government officially has declared it a threatened species in need of increased protection. But another round of legal battles surrounding the majestic animal may be just beginning.

MILWAUKEE - It has sent innocent men to death row, given defense attorneys fits and splintered the scientific community.

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. - Astronomers have discovered the youngest known supernova in the Milky Way galaxy, still just a baby at 140 years old. The scientists, who announced their findings Wednesday, used a radio observatory in New Mexico and NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory in space to identify when the supernova, or stellar, explosion occurred. They put the star-dying event at sometime around 1868.

BEX, Switzerland - A Swiss pilot strapped on a jet-powered wing and leaped from a plane Wednesday for the first public demonstration of the homemade device, turning figure eights and soaring high above the Alps.

TOKYO - The fault line that caused this week's devastating earthquake in China probably buckled in two stages, and the hardness of the terrain contributed to the wide reach of the damage, Japanese scientists said Thursday.

DALLAS - In what sounds like a really low-budget horror film, voracious swarming ants that apparently arrived in Texas aboard a cargo ship are invading homes and yards across the Houston area, shorting out electrical boxes and messing up computers.

PORTLAND, Ore. - The deaths of six sea lions found in traps on the Columbia River earlier this month were likely caused by the heat, and not by gunshots as officials first suspected, the National Marine Fisheries Service said.

RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil - Marina Silva brought impeccable credentials to her post as Brazil's environment minister: The daughter of a poor Amazon rubber tapper, she was a colleague of slain rain forest defender Chico Mendes.

PARIS - Divers trained in archaeology discovered a marble bust of an aging Caesar in the Rhone River that France's Culture Ministry said Tuesday could be the oldest known.

JERUSALEM - One of the most important Dead Sea scrolls is going on display in Jerusalem this week — more than four decades after it was last seen by the public. The 24-foot scroll with the text of the Bible's Book of Isaiah had been in a dark, temperature-controlled room at the Israel Museum since 1967. It went on display two years earlier, but curators replaced it with a facsimile after noticing new cracks in the calfskin parchment.

LONDON - The men were air traffic controllers. Experienced, calm professionals. Nobody was drinking. But they were so worried about losing their jobs that they demanded their names be kept off the official report.

VATICAN CITY - Believing that the universe may contain alien life does not contradict a faith in God, the Vatican's chief astronomer said in an interview published Tuesday.

WASHINGTON - With concerns about global warming rising along with the planet's temperature, the head of the federal agency in change of weather research and forecasting is proposing creation of a new National Climate Service.

CHENGDU, China - All the pandas at the world's most famous panda preserve were reported safe late Tuesday, more than a day after China's worst earthquake in three decades closed off the remote, mountainous area.

WASHINGTON - Two decades from now Americans could get as much electricity from windmills as from nuclear power plants, according to a government report that lays out a possible plan for wind energy growth.

NEW YORK - News that scientists have for the first time genetically altered a human embryo is drawing fire from some watchdog groups that say it's a step toward creating "designer babies."

PORTLAND, Ore. - John McCain broke with the Bush administration and Republican Party orthodoxy Monday as he not only declared global warming real, but reached out to Democrats and independents with a free-market solution that includes capping carbon-fuel emissions.

LOS ANGELES - The coyote was limping as it approached a girl in a sand box at a public park — but it was still dangerous. It snapped its jaws on the girl's buttocks and her nanny had to pry the toddler from the wild animal.

SEOUL, South Korea - A science official says South Korea's first astronaut has left a hospital after recovering from neck and back pain apparently caused by her Russian spacecraft's unexpectedly steep descent to Earth last month.

Jon Edwards often manages what appears impossible. He has recovered precious data from computers wrecked in floods and fires and dumped in lakes. Now Edwards may have set a new standard: He found information on a melted disk drive that fell from the sky when space shuttle Columbia disintegrated in 2003.

WASHINGTON - Daniel Suson has a doctorate in astrophysics and has worked on the superconducting super collider and a forthcoming NASA probe. Now he's heading back to school to take on an even trickier task — getting elected to public office.

WASHINGTON - Remains of meals that included seaweed are helping confirm the date of a settlement in southern Chile that may offer the earliest evidence of humans in the Americas.

CONCORD, N.H. - Since they first walked the planet, humans have either buried or burned their dead. Now a new option is generating interest — dissolving bodies in lye and flushing the brownish, syrupy residue down the drain.

SYDNEY, Australia - With a bill like a duck, a tail like a beaver and snake-like venom hidden in heel spurs, the platypus could be the result of some strange genetic experiment.