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By Michael Perry

SYDNEY (Reuters) - The world's oceans are virtually choking on rising greenhouse gases, destroying marine ecosystems and breaking down the food chain -- irreversible changes that have not occurred for several million years, a new study says.

By Richard Lovett

A three-year study of hundreds of artifacts looks set to settle several long-standing debates about Egypt's ancient dynasties.

The study, which appears in the June 18 issue of Science, is the first to use high-precision measurements of radioactive carbon isotopes to produce a detailed timeline for the reigns of Egyptian pharaohs from about 2650 BC to 1100 BC.

"It is a very, very important finding," says Hendrik Bruins, an archaeologist and geoscientist at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Israel, who was not associated with the work. [More]

By Lamine Ghanmi

RABAT (Reuters) - Replacing a whaling moratorium with a controlled cull will be discussed by negotiators who gather next week to forge a compromise between nations who say hunting whales is their birth-right and those who call it a crime against nature.

BP CEO Tony Hayward sat alone before the House Energy & Commerce Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations Thursday to answer for his company's questionable decision to continue drilling this spring at the Deepwater Horizon offshore oil well despite safety concerns and that decision's catastrophic consequences. The hours of grilling turned up very little new information, however, as Hayward repeatedly denied knowledge of what was happening at the Macondo (MC252) well site prior to the April 20 explosion that claimed 11 lives, sank the Deepwater rig and unleashed a deluge of oil and natural gas into the Gulf of Mexico. [More]

Here's a little experiment. You know " Greensleeves "--the famous English folk song? Go ahead and hum it to yourself. Now choose the emotion you think the song best conveys: (a) happiness, (b) sadness, (c) anger or (d) fear. [More]

How's this for preventative medicine?: Ingesting bacteria may help to prevent infections.

Researchers at Creighton University School of Medicine in Omaha, Neb., recently demonstrated that regular doses of probiotic bacteria given to hospital patients on mechanical ventilators resulted in fewer cases of pneumonia. The findings were published online June 3 in the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine .

Not everyone has a perfect sense of direction , whether they would like to admit it or not. But two new studies have found that even baby rats have a basic spatial framework in their brains ready to use as soon as they leave the nest for the first time--which is much earlier than had previously been documented. [More]