Canberra, Nov. 27 : Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd on Thursday described the attackers who planned the synchronised strikes across southern Mumbai as "cowards, absolute cowards and murderers", and warned that the number of Australian casualties from terrorist attacks in India might rise above the two people reported injured so far.

According to The Daily Telegraph, Rudd told Parliament that he had spoken to Australian High Commissioner to India John McCarthy to get an idea of the situation on ground in Mumbai.

Canberra, Nov 17 : Scientists have found a large number of marine “jelly balls” appearing off the Australian east coast that could be part of the planet’s mechanism for combating global warming.

The species were found by Mark Baird of the CSIRO, along with researchers from University of NSW (New South Wales), who conducted a marine survey last month that resulted in the discovery of a massive abundance of salps in the waters around Sydney.

Canberra, Nov 11: Researchers in Australia have discovered that the tipping point for ocean acidification caused by human-induced CO2 emissions is much closer than first thought, with estimates suggesting that the Southern Ocean could become too acidic by 2030.

According to a report by ABC News, scientists from the University of New South Wales (UNSW) and CSIRO looked at seasonal changes in pH and the concentration of an important chemical compound, carbonate, in the Southern Ocean.

Canberra, Nov 11: Missing NASA tapes from the 1960s, which could be the key to unlocking valuable information from the space agency’s Apollo missions to the moon, have been retrieved by scientists.

According to a report by ABC News, an archiving error by NASA in the 1960s resulted in 173 data tapes being misplaced, which hold information about lunar dust that could be vital in expanding science’s understanding of the moon.

Canberra, Oct 26: Scientists have come up with an answer to the puzzling question of why life on Earth coincides with a momentous shift in the makeup of the universe.

According to a report by ABC News, research into finding an answer to this mystery was done by Ph. D. student Chas Egan and Charley Lineweaver from Australian National University.

The conundrum has its roots in the way the universe changes as it expands, explained Egan.

Soon after the Big Bang, some 14 billion years ago, most of the energy in the universe was in the form of heat. Later, as the universe cooled and expanded, matter, such as stars and planets, became dominant.

Canberra, Oct 26 : Amateur astronomers are collaborating on an international project to track urban light pollution in the atmosphere, which clouds our view of the stars.

As urban light pollution grows as a problem, a global survey aims to map its spread, with the help of amateur star gazers.

According to a report in Cosmos magazine, the project is known as the Great World Wide Star Count, which pools skyward observations taken by citizens around the world.

The information helps scientists measure the extent to which city lights mask the visibility of stars.