Washington, Oct 11 : A new study has suggested that the collision between India and Asia set off events that likely caused long-term cooling in Earth''s climate.

According to a report in Science News, the study determines that when the tectonic plate carrying India slammed into Asia about 50 million years ago, the ensuing geological changes triggered a long-term cooling trend.

That trend later enabled Antarctic ice sheets to grow.

Before the collision, volcanoes along the rim of southern Asia spewed immense quantities of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.

Washington, Oct 11 : Simulations developed by a NASA supercomputer have shown that dusty disks around sunlike stars point to planets that might be habitable.

The simulations show that planets nearly as small as Mars can create patterns that future telescopes may be able to detect, with the research pointing to a new avenue in the search for habitable planets.

"It may be a while before we can directly image earthlike planets around other stars but, before then, we''ll be able to detect the ornate and beautiful rings they carve in interplanetary dust," said Christopher Stark, the study''s lead researcher from the University of Maryland, College Park.

Washington, Oct 11 : In view of the increased violence along the Pak-Afghan border and the general changing situation in Afghanistan, the US strategy on Afghanistan must broaden its scope and include India in it, said Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Mike Mullen.

Mullen said the Pak-Afghan boarder region had become a “safe haven for insurgents”. “Things have changed enough to warrant a review of our overall strategy there, and in fact, part of the effort is to try to ensure better coordination on both sides of that border,” The News quoted him as saying.

Washington, Oct. 11 : Sleazy viral e-mails appearing on Internet sites and blogs suggest that underhand campaign is on to derail John McCain’s bid for the White House.

McCain is being described as an egotistical, sexist man who oppresses people taking vacations with him by reading aloud from William Faulkner novels.

The e-mail appears to be the first of its kind attacking McCain, and experts say it could have a subtle effect on voters'' opinion of the candidate.

Washington, Oct 11 : A team of scientists has resolved a long-standing puzzle in climate science, by reconciling the differences between simulated and observed temperature trends in the tropics.

Using state-of-the-art observational datasets and results from computer model simulations archived at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL), researchers and colleagues from 11 other scientific institutions have refuted a recent claim that simulated temperature trends in the tropics are fundamentally inconsistent with observations.

This claim was based on the application of a flawed statistical test and the use of older observational datasets.

Computer model simulated changes in surface temperature and sea-ice extent.

Washington, Oct 11 : Scientists in the US have turned oil from plants like soybeans and coconuts into jet fuel that is equivalent to kerosene derived from oil.

According to a report in the Scientific American, working with the U. S. Department of Defense’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), scientists at the Energy and Environmental Research Center (EERC) at the University of North Dakota turned these plant oils into fuel that had a similar density, energy content and even freezing point.