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The report of first known case of Zika virus transmission in the United States came from Texas on Tuesday. Local health officials, who reported the case, said that it was probably contracted via sex, and not a mosquito bite. The report has come a day after the World Health Organization announced an international public health emergency.

In the Americas, the virus associated with severe birth defects in thousands of babies in Brazil, has been spread at a very fast pace. On Tuesday, the WHO officials expressed concern that it may hit Africa and Asia also.

It was though that the virus spreads by the bite of mosquitoes of the Aedes genus, so sexual contact called a mode of transmission would be a likely alarming development.

Every month, a couple of times an explosion, sometimes more and sometimes less, goes off on the Sun’s surface, emitting energy equivalent to millions of hydrogen bombs.

The huge energy emission can’t explain how material spitted out by such explosions gets ramped up to roughly light’s speed. This seems like thinking of a golf cart motor to power a Ferrari.

In a latest study, researchers have provided a first-of-its-kind look underneath the cover of such solar eruptions, taking particular aim at the physical process that quickens the superfast particles.

Though academic awareness of hunting by African people using poison-tipped arrows stretches back for centuries, information regarding the ingenious practice has been also present in chemistry, entomology and anthropology texts.

A latest comprehensive research on the hunting tradition of the San peoples of Namibia has shed fresh light in their use of beetle and plant poisons for boosting the lethality of their arrows. Presently, the research has been carried by the peer-reviewed journal ZooKeys.

A recently released photograph has shown the largest moon of Pluto Charon cloaked in darkness, with only a little sliver lit up by the far away sun.

The image was clicked by NASA's New Horizons spacecraft on July 17, 2015, three days post the probe's historic flyby of Pluto. NASA officials said that in that close encounter, New Horizons reached within only 7,800 miles (12,550 kilometers) of the surface of Pluto; Charon’s night-side view on the other hand, was captured from a distance of 1.9 million miles.

In the image description released on Friday, January 22, agency officials wrote that Charon's nighttime landscapes are still barely noticeable due to light softly reflected off Pluto, just like ‘Earthshine’ lightens a new moon every month.

One of the oldest philosophical puzzles is the question of what sets human beings apart from other animals. A common answer is that just human beings can understand that others also possess minds like their own.

However, a latest study has suggested that ravens, which are the birds marked out by several cultures as a symbol of intelligence and wisdom, share at least a bit of the human ability of thinking abstractly regarding other minds, adapting their actions by attributing their own perceptions to others.

A latest research has suggested that noise generated by shipping traffic in the Salish Sea extends into the same frequencies that local salmon-eating killer whales use in hunting and communication.

The focus of earlier research has been on low-frequency noise pollution generated by container ships and its impact on balleen whales, latest underwater sound measurements noted in the Strait of Juan de Fuca and Puget Sound have disclosed that ships have also been generating high frequency noise, travelling much farther than earlier believed.

Lead author Scott Veirs of Seattle’s Beam Reach Marine Science and Sustainability School said that Orcas find their prey by sending out clicks and hearing the echo, a process that may get disturbed by shipping noise.