Antarctica's massive ice shelves are shrinking because they are being eaten away from below by warm water, a new study finds. That suggests that future sea levels could rise faster than many scientists have been predicting.

The western chunk of Antarctica is losing 23 feet of its floating ice sheet each year. Until now, scientists weren't exactly sure how it was happening and whether or how man-made global warming might be a factor. The answer, according to a study published Wednesday in the journal Nature, is that climate change plays an indirect role — but one that has larger repercussions than if Antarctic ice was merely melting from warmer air.

Physicists in the United States said Wednesday they have developed a simulator that will allow them to observe the behavior of subatomic particles impossible to measure on existing computers.

Understanding quantum mechanics is a key challenge for scientists seeking to explain natural phenomena on the subatomic level, where the laws of nature work differently to those of the observable world.

Scientists studying bats have found dozens of new members of a virus family linked to human disease, and warned of possible exposure as the winged mammals are driven out of forests into the cities.

Sixty-six new species of paramyxoviruses, the viral group that causes measles and mumps and is behind three cattle diseases, have a natural host in bats, they said.

Thirty-six turtles seized from smugglers, including 20 of one of the world's rarest species, are to be returned from Hong Kong to the Philippines, an official said Wednesday.

It will mark the first time a protected Philippine species seized from the illegal wildlife trade abroad has been returned, Philippine environment department deputy chief Luz Corpuz told Agence France Presse.

Japanese astronomers said Wednesday they had found a cluster of galaxies 12.72 billion light-years away from Earth, which they claim is the most distant cluster ever discovered.

Using a powerful telescope based in Hawaii, the team peered back through time to a point just one billion years after the Big Bang, the birth of the universe.

Swiss scientists have demonstrated how a partially paralyzed person can control a robot using brain signals alone.

The team at Switzerland's Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne says the experiment takes them a step closer to enabling immobile patients to easily interact with their surroundings through a robot 'avatar.'

From the bone-chilling air conditioning that pumps through Singapore's malls and offices to lights that burn all night, the city state is one of Asia's most intensive energy users.

Nearly all electricity used by the industrialized island is produced by burning fossil fuels, which in 2010 contributed to the largest carbon footprint per head in the Asia-Pacific region, according to conservation group the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF).

Arctic marine mammals and fish populations are on the rise, according to a report released on Monday by the Arctic Council's biodiversity working group at a Montreal conference.

In fact fish populations have risen dramatically, according to the findings of the Circumpolar Biodiversity Monitoring Program, the Zoological Society of London, and the World Wildlife Fund.

The Arctic Ocean could be a significant contributor of methane, a powerful greenhouse gas, scientists reported on Sunday.

Researchers carried out five flights in 2009 and 2010 to measure atmospheric methane in latitudes as high as 82 degrees north.

Scientists on Monday urged Arctic rim nations to set fishing regulations for the Arctic Ocean, and order a moratorium on fishing until stocks are assessed, before trawlers soon start dropping nets in the pristine waters.

"A commercial fishery in the central Arctic Ocean is now possible and feasible," said more than 2,000 scientists from 67 countries in an open letter released by the Pew Environment Group to Canada, Denmark, Norway, Russia and the United States.