Washington, Sept 26 : A new NASA-supported study has reported that 2007 marked an overall rise in the melting trend over the entire Greenland ice sheet.

More surprising, researchers said, was the fact that melting in high-altitude areas was 150 percent more than average, adding that the amount of snow that had melted this year over Greenland could cover the surface size of the US more than twice.

Washington, Sept 26 : Israeli and Jordanian scientists have constructed a string of artificial coral reefs in the Red Sea with the aim of weaning away divers and snorkelers from natural reefs, allowing them time to heal.

A high diversity of corals thrive in the Gulf of Aqaba, which lies at the northern end of the Red Sea and is bordered by Israel and Jordan, and Egypt and Saudia Arabia farther south.

These reefs draw tourists from around the world to the neigh boring resort cities of Elat, Israel, and Al 'Aqabah, Jordan.

Washington, Sept 26 : Researchers from the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO) have found in a new study how plants use their own communication system to warn each other of impending danger.

Herbal plants such as strawberry, clover, reed and ground elder naturally form networks.

Individual plants remain connected with each other for a certain period of time by means of runners.

These connections, very similar to computer networks, enable the plants to share information with each other via internal channels.

Paris, Sept 26 : The ESA/NASA Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) has discovered its first officially periodic comet - which flies by the Sun at regular intervals. SOHO had already spotted this comet twice before.

The find is important, as this is the first one conclusively proven and officially declared by SOHO as a periodic comet.

Washington, Sept 26 : Ornithologists from Oldenburg in Germany have found that the cryptochrome-containing neurons in the eye and a forebrain region (Cluster N), of migratory birds become active when processing magnetic compass information during flights.

Cryptochromes, which fulfil the molecular requirements for sensing the magnetic reference direction, has recently been found in retinal neurons of migratory birds.