Washington, Sept 26 : A WWF expedition has uncovered 11 new plant and animal species in a remote area in central Vietnam.

Scientists said the discovery underscored the importance of conservation efforts in the ancient tropical forests of the region.

The biologists found a snake, five orchids, two butterflies and three other plants new to science and exclusive to the Annamites Mountain Range within the forest region, known as “Green Corridor”.

London, Sept 26 : Oceans on Earth were ‘home-grown’ and formed because the young planet had a thick blanket of hydrogen, which reacted with oxides in the mantle to form lakes and seas, Japanese planetary scientists have said.

The dominant view has been that Earth got its share of water from moisture-rich asteroids and comets that rained down on the planet during its formative years.

Washington, Sept 24: NASA's next-generation lunar explorers may live in mobile habitats and drive mini-RVs that can tool around for a week or more at a time, agency scientists have said.

The rovers would be about the same size as the electric dune buggies driven during the last three Apollo moon landings in 1971 and 1972, but would be enclosed and pressurized to better protect astronauts from radiation, extreme temperatures and other hazards.

London, Sept 23 : Moon’s gentle surface could be the best place to find earliest evidence of life on Earth, according to a new study by a University of London researcher.

Ian Crawford of Birkbeck has said that conditions on the moon are much more gentle than those on Earth, so meteorites that blasted off our planet billions of years ago could well still be lying around on the moon.

Washington, Sept 23 : Green plants and animals enjoy a relatively close evolutionary relationship than previously thought, a new study by an East California University biologist has revealed.

Plants, fungi and animals are all in a group called the eukaryotes – distinguished by their advanced cellular machinery. But some eukaryotes, most notably the fungi, have long been considered more closely related to animals than plants are.