The two protected baby pandas were born at a zoo in Shanxi province on June 25 and were immediately rejected by their mother in front of a huge crowd of visitors, Xinhua news agency reported.

"No one knew she was pregnant. Her plump body and bushy hair disguised her protruding belly until the babies were born," a worker at the Taiyuan Zoo, Ha Guojiang, told Xinhua.

A German company has produced contact lenses for animals, including lions, giraffes, tigers and bears, who suffer from cataracts.

S & V Technologies, founded by Bavarian chemist and entrepreneur Christine Kreiner, have created the acrylic intraocular lenses which are custom made to fit each animal.

"Cataracts generally means blindness for animals, unlike for humans," said the head of the company's veterinary division, Ingeborg Fromberg.

It began in 2007 with a few traders in the small town of Modbury in Devon refusing to give out plastic bags. But yesterday their small green revolution reached a national milestone: British shoppers have nearly halved the number of single-use bags they get through.

Figures from Wrap, the government's waste and resources programme, show that whereas 870m single-use plastic bags were handed out in the UK in May 2006, the figure for May 2009 was down to 450m - a 48% reduction, and 4,740 tonnes to send to landfill against 8,890 tonnes in May 2006.

A tiny species of lizard is so light that it falls to the ground like a feather, scientists have discovered.

Outwardly, little of the animal's body seems adapted to flying, gliding or moving through the air in any way.

But a slow-motion camera has revealed that when the lizard jumps from a height, it can slow the rate of its descent and land gently on the ground.

The lizard's surprising aerial ability might help explain how some animals became true gliders.

Details of the little lizard's talents are published in the Journal of Experimental Biology.

They can't be stockpiled, producers are shutting down, and cancer patients need them. Isotopes, used in the detection and evaluation of cancer, heart and brain disorders could soon be in short supply. Of three main reactors in the world, only one will continue to function at the end of this week.

 
The upcoming closure of a Dutch nuclear reactor for routine maintenance has sparked fear and concern in Canada, where there is already a shortage of isotopes following the shut down of a reactor in Ontario.

"It's a real disaster. It's a national disaster. It's an international disaster", said Dr. Jean-Luc Urbain head of the Canadian Association of Nuclear Medicine. The Chalk River, Ontario reactor supplied a third of the world's radioactive isotopes.

There were limited options available to the Canadian medical community following the shut down of the Ontario nuclear reactor; namely South Africa and the Netherlands. However, as The Netherlands prepares to shut down its reactor, medical experts in Canada grow increasingly worried.

"I don't know how we're going to go through the summer, to tell you the truth, particularly since the reactor in Holland is also going to shut down for more than a month" said Urbain.

Microsoft's Bill Gates has already accomplished plenty in his life -- but now he's involved in an ambitious new venture -- a plan to tame hurricanes. He and several other scientists and engineers have a patent-pending project that plans to release barge-like contraptions into brewing offshore hurricanes, which would pump cold water up from the bottom of the ocean, thus calming the rough weather that's caused by warm ocean temperatures.

Jumbo flying squid have invaded the shallow waters off San Diego, California, spooking scuba divers and beachgoers after washing up dead on the beaches.

The carnivorous cephalopods, which weigh up to 45kg (100lb), came up from the depths last week, with swarms of them roughing up unsuspecting divers. Some reported tentacles enveloping their masks and yanking at their cameras and gear.

Radar beams could protect bats from wind turbines
^{A stationary beam reduces bat activity near turbines by almost 40%, research shows}
By Jacob Aron, guardian.co.uk

Radar beams that irritate bats could be used to prevent the animals from being diced by the spinning blades of wind turbines, according to a study of how the animals react to radar signals. The researchers discovered that a stationary beam reduced bat activity near the turbines by almost 40%.

Bat and bird populations can be significantly effected by collisions with turbines. A six-week study at two wind farms in the US recorded more than 4,500 bat deaths and the Peñascal wind farm in southern Texas is currently using radar to prevent migrating birds from flying into it.

"This is a major problem in the States, especially during the bats' migratory period," said Paul Racey of the University of Aberdeen, which undertook the study. The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs recently commissioned a three-year study to gather data on the effect wind farms are having on bats in the UK.

Racey, who co-authored the research, outlined three ways to deter bats using radar in a paper published today in the journal PLoS One.