Washington, Sept 28 : Comic characters Donald Duck, Wonder Woman, Batman are set to enter the academic curriculum of Dalhousie University next year. 

The University is set to introduce a new course Comics and Cartoons that will trace the history of cartoons and comics, from 18th- and 19th-century political propaganda to the golden age of Marvel and DC.

“The department was looking for this kind of a course for a while, since before I came here,” said Anthony Enns, cultural theorist and Dalhousie professor. 

“There are many different ways to teach (this course),” said Prof. Enns. 

Washington, September 28 : Researchers from Maastricht University in Amsterdam have found a possible solution in dealing with the increasing tourism in Antarctica that can form a threat for the vulnerable South Pole area, in the form of marketing the visitor rights to the highest bidder.

Tourism in Antarctica has grown dramatically. In 1985, just a few thousand people visited the area but in the season 2007/2008 more than 40,000 did the same.

A number of parties are concerned about the effects of this rapid growth with respect to safety, the environment, the scale of tourism and the lack of financial resources for monitoring and enforcement purposes.

Washington  - NASA celebrates its 50th anniversary Wednesday, but the US space agency is hardly in the mood for partying.

Even NASA boss Michael Griffin, who is usually rather a cold technician, recently sounded the alarm. After all, the agency's greatest triumphs, notably the first moon landing, took place almost 40 years ago.

In public, Griffin restrains himself, but in private, he bluntly expresses his concern that US dominance in space could soon give way to China.

Washington, Sept 27: Scientists at University of Michigan have discovered a key HIV accessory protein, called HIV-1 Nef, that thwarts the body's normal immune response - a finding that may pave the way for more powerful AIDS drugs.

While current anti-HIV drugs are life saving, they cannot root the virus out of the body. Infected cells are able to live on, undetected by the immune system, and provide the machinery for the virus to reproduce and spread.

Washington, September 27: NASA’s Phoenix Scout Lander, which reached Mars on May 25 this year, is using the thermal and electrical conductivity probe to look for evidence of water on the Red Planet.

After reaching Mars on May 25, the Phoenix opened a soils lab, and started looking for water. It uses a robotic scoop arm to deliver regolith samples to the suite of instruments aboard the Lander.

Washington, September 27: A new study has determined that cities are being unfairly blamed for most of humanity’s greenhouse gas emissions and this threatens efforts to tackle climate change, as cities are part of the solution and not the problem.

The study, which appears in the October 2008 issue of the journal Environment and Urbanization, says cities are often blamed for 75 to 80 percent of emissions, but that the true value is closer to 40 percent.