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More than 300 foreign tourists are stranded in India's Himalayan region of Ladakh, three days after flash floods killed at least 150 people and ravaged the main town of Leh, officials said on Monday. Floods triggered by unexpected heavy rains destroyed houses, uprooted telephone towers and deposited boulders and mud up to 15 feet high on highways and destroyed all communication networks, authorities and witnesses said. At least 300 people are still missing and 25,000 people affected by the floods, army officials said. At least 7,000 soldiers were deployed to rebuild roads and bridges, they said.

A new NOAA study looking at how to curb the rapid growth of lionfish, an invasive species not native to the Atlantic Ocean, suggests that approximately 27 percent of mature lionfish will have to be removed monthly for one year to reduce its population growth rate to zero. But the good news is that the invasive fish happens to be delicious—and NOAA is encouraging chefs to find new ways to introduce it to U.S. consumers. Lionfish are native to the western and central Pacific Ocean, but have established themselves from North Carolina to South America. They are a popular aquarium fish that were likely first released in Florida waters in the mid-1980s. Since then, the species has spread rapidly. Scientists and public officials are seriously concerned at the effect lionfish are having on reef ecosystems, since this predator is capable of rapid population growth and outcompeting native fish for food and territory.

Heavy rain in central Europe has caused floods which killed at least seven people, cut off towns and forced the evacuation of residents from submerged villages by helicopter, authorities and local media said Saturday. The Polish town of Bogatynia was cut off after a river overflowed its banks, covering the main bridge leading into the town and sweeping away several smaller bridges. "At this moment we need everything," said Andrzej Grzemielewicz, mayor of the town of 18,000. "We need helicopters. People are on their roofs. The situation is dramatic." Several buildings had collapsed in the town and local media reported one person was killed. In the Czech Republic, the news agency CTK reported three people had been killed by floods in the north of the country.

An ice island four times the size of Manhattan broke off from one of Greenland's two main glaciers, scientists said on Friday, in the biggest such event in the Arctic in nearly 50 years. The new ice island, which broke off on Thursday, will enter a remote place called the Nares Strait, about 620 miles south of the North Pole between Greenland and Canada. The ice island has an area of 100 square miles (260 square km) and a thickness up to half the height of the Empire State Building, said Andreas Muenchow, professor of ocean science and engineering at the University of Delaware. Muenchow said he had expected an ice chunk to break off from the Petermann Glacier, one of the two largest remaining ones in Greenland, because it had been growing in size for seven or eight years. But he did not expect it to be so large.

Often, when we think of sustainable companies and corporate social responsibility we think of Patagonia, Stonyfield, Seventh Generation and the like: companies that have sustainability as part of their DNA and stakeholder engagement as the foundation for company culture. But what about the sustainability efforts of not so green companies? What about the CSR initiatives at corporations that have bad reputations, make questionable products and are late to the CSR game? Is there room for them?

There has always been a desire in the spirits of human beings to hope and sometimes believe in the effects of prayer in healing. Belief and the subsequent proof has always been hard to find or to do. Findings from a new international study of healing prayer suggest that prayer for another person's healing just might help -- especially if the one praying is physically near the person being prayed for. Candy Gunther Brown, an associate professor in the Department of Religious Studies at Indiana University Bloomington, led the study of proximal intercessory prayer for healing.

Does anybody still remember swine flu? It caused a big uproar last winter and sent millions of people to their doctors to request the Tamiflu vaccine. New findings on the virus have been uncovered by researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. They found that the H1N1 virus used a new biochemical trick to spread rapidly among humans and cause an epidemic. The structure of the virus evolved to allow it to interact with the cellular structure of mammals.

There are signs that 2010 could be the coming out party for Compressed Air Energy Storage (CAES). With the onslaught of large wind and solar deployments that will be added to the grid to meet state renewable portfolio standards requirements, there is a lot of buzz about the need for energy storage systems, particularly bulk energy storage. Bulk systems can store megawatt-scale amounts of energy produced during off peak times. They then discharge that energy during peak times, when prices are higher, and over many hours.

BP finished pumping cement into its ruptured oil well in the Gulf of Mexico on Thursday to seal off the source of the world's worst offshore spill, paving the way to permanently plug the blow-out later this month. The daylong cementing operation followed earlier injections of heavy drilling mud this week that had subdued the upward pressure of oil and gas inside the deep-sea Macondo well. The crippled wellhead was provisionally capped in mid-July. "This is not the end, but it will virtually assure us that no oil will be leaking into the environment," retired Coast Guard Admiral Thad Allen, who oversees the U.S. oil spill response operation, said at a briefing in Washington. "Monitoring of the well is under way in order to confirm the effectiveness of the procedure," BP said in a statement announcing completion of the cementing work.

Of all the planets in our solar system Mars has always been the one most dreamers think of. Many science fiction myths have been based on Mars such as Edgar Rice Burroughs Barsoom and its many canals as well as the Ray Bradbury Martian Chronicles. All dreamed of a friendlier Mars than has been found. Now all can see detailed images of Mars. The latest set of new images from the telescopic High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment Camera on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter offers detailed views of diverse Martian landscapes.

There has always been a desire in the spirits of human beings to hope and sometimes believe in the effects of prayer in healing. Belief and the subsequent proof has always been hard to find or to do. Findings from a new international study of healing prayer suggest that prayer for another person's healing just might help -- especially if the one praying is physically near the person being prayed for. Candy Gunther Brown, an associate professor in the Department of Religious Studies at Indiana University Bloomington, led the study of proximal intercessory prayer for healing.

Does anybody still remember swine flu? It caused a big uproar last winter and sent millions of people to their doctors to request the Tamiflu vaccine. New findings on the virus have been uncovered by researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. They found that the H1N1 virus used a new biochemical trick to spread rapidly among humans and cause an epidemic. The structure of the virus evolved to allow it to interact with the cellular structure of mammals.

BP finished pumping cement into its ruptured oil well in the Gulf of Mexico on Thursday to seal off the source of the world's worst offshore spill, paving the way to permanently plug the blow-out later this month. The daylong cementing operation followed earlier injections of heavy drilling mud this week that had subdued the upward pressure of oil and gas inside the deep-sea Macondo well. The crippled wellhead was provisionally capped in mid-July. "This is not the end, but it will virtually assure us that no oil will be leaking into the environment," retired Coast Guard Admiral Thad Allen, who oversees the U.S. oil spill response operation, said at a briefing in Washington. "Monitoring of the well is under way in order to confirm the effectiveness of the procedure," BP said in a statement announcing completion of the cementing work.

Small units that purify household sewage could provide a source of electricity for urban and remote communities in the developing world, according to researchers. The units would be populated with Shewanella oneidensis, one of several types of bacteria that can break down organic matter in sewage, producing electrons and protons. If the sewage is placed between electrodes with the bacteria present, this process can be harnessed to generate an electrical current.

Small units that purify household sewage could provide a source of electricity for urban and remote communities in the developing world, according to researchers. The units would be populated with Shewanella oneidensis, one of several types of bacteria that can break down organic matter in sewage, producing electrons and protons. If the sewage is placed between electrodes with the bacteria present, this process can be harnessed to generate an electrical current.

Earth's solid inner core may be continually inching eastward relative to its liquid outer core, renewing itself by shedding its front while solidifying its back, a team of French scientists suggests. The idea counters traditional theory that the big ball at the center of the Earth stands still, growing uniformly in all directions as the planet cools. It could shed light on the nature of the core — such as its age, apparent seismic mismatches, and a mysterious coating of dense fluid on its surface.

Myanmar has announced that Hukaung Valley Tiger Reserve will be nearly tripled in size, making the protected area the largest tiger reserve in the world. Spanning 17,477 square kilometers (6,748 square miles), the newly expanded park is approximately the size of Kuwait and larger than the US state of Connecticut.

For most of us, finding a bathroom or toilet isn't hard. Chances are it's not more than a short walk away - you may even be there now. For 2.5 billion people around the world, however, it isn't that easy. Their bathroom is likely shared, has no running water and is a walk from their house. And you thought port-a-potties were bad. The lack of access to sanitation is a huge challenge to the 1 billion people living in urban slums in Africa, Asia and Latin America. The dangers of inadequate sanitation infrastructure are well known - contaminated drinking water and disease transmission become difficult to avoid.

Myanmar has announced that Hukaung Valley Tiger Reserve will be nearly tripled in size, making the protected area the largest tiger reserve in the world. Spanning 17,477 square kilometers (6,748 square miles), the newly expanded park is approximately the size of Kuwait and larger than the US state of Connecticut.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has released a major report by the federal government addresses the fate of the oil released while the well was gushing, and what is likely to happen to the remaining oil in the ocean. The report was prepared by a team of federal agencies and scientists from NOAA, USGS, and NIST, and as well as independent scientists from universities, Environment Canada, Exxon Mobil, and other companies. The study concludes that the vast majority of the oil from the BP oil spill has either evaporated or been burned, skimmed, recovered from the wellhead or dispersed much of which is in the process of being degraded. A significant amount of this is the direct result of the robust federal response efforts. A third (33 percent) of the total amount of oil released in the Deepwater Horizon/BP spill was captured or mitigated by the Unified Command recovery operations, including burning, skimming, chemical dispersion and direct recovery from the wellhead, according to a federal science report released today. An additional 25 percent of the total oil naturally evaporated or dissolved, and 16 percent was dispersed naturally into microscopic droplets. The residual amount, just over one quarter (26 percent), is either on or just below the surface as residue and weathered tarballs, has washed ashore or been collected from the shore, or is buried in sand and sediments. Dispersed and residual oil remain in the system until they degrade through a number of natural processes.