Springfield, Illinois - A bearded man in black with a stovepipe hat still draws a crowd around the world.

Even 200 years after his birth on February 12, 1809, Abraham Lincoln, the Civil War-era president who freed Southern slaves and preserved the Union, continues to move and inspire people.

Alicia Erickson, international marketing manager for the Convention and Visitors Bureau in Springfield, Illinois, Lincoln's home town, often brings a Lincoln impersonator to foreign tourism conventions. It always makes a splash.

Washington, Feb 11: Researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, US, have developed a two-step method to convert the cellulose in raw biomass into a promising biofuel.

Washington, Feb 11: Biologists have discovered a technology that reduces infection by the virus that causes Rice Tungro Disease, a serious limiting factor for rice production in Asia.

The finding was made by Roger N. Beachy, a biologist at Washington University in St. Louis (WUSTL) and his colleague Shunhong Dai at the Donald Danforth Plant Science Center in St. Louis.

They demonstrated that transgenic rice plants that overexpress either of two rice proteins are tolerant to infection caused by the rice tungro bacilliform virus (RTVB), which is largely responsible for the symptoms associated with Rice Tungro disease.

Washington, Feb 11: If a new study is to believed, plant and forestry waste and dedicated energy crops could sustainably replace nearly a third of gasoline use by the year 2030.

The study was conducted by researchers at the Sandia National Laboratories and General Motors Corp.

The goal of the "90-Billion Gallon Biofuel Deployment Study" was to assess whether and how a large volume of cellulosic biofuel could be sustainably produced, assuming technical and scientific progress continues at expected rates.

London, Feb 11: Hopscotch, which involves hopping between designated squares on a chalk grid, has been voted as the greatest ever playground game in a new poll.

The game, which dates back to Roman times, was first used as a military training exercise for foot soldiers, who ran in full armour and field packs along 100ft long courts to improve their foot work.

Adults who took part in the survey, conducted by parenting advice service TheBabyWebsite. com, voted hide and seek as the second greatest playground game enjoyed by their children.

Washington, Feb 11: A new research from the Niels Bohr Institute at University of Copenhagen has determined that by controlling emissions of fossil fuels, we may be able to greatly delay the start of the next ice age.

From an Earth history perspective, we are living in cold times. The greatest climate challenge mankind has faced has been surviving ice ages that have dominated climate during the past million years.

Therefore, it is not surprising that back in the relatively cold 1970's, prominent scientists like Soviet Union climatologist Mikhail Budyko, greeted man-made global warming from CO2 emissions as a way to keep us out of future ice ages.