Boost for biodiversity
To improve biodiversity, ministers of the G8 and 11 other nations signed the 鈥�Carta di Siracusa鈥� at a meeting in Sicily, Italy, last week. The measures include being proactive about helping natural and managed ecosystems adapt to climate change, fighting illegal logging and investing in conservation.
Grim prospect for Asia
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South-east Asia is highly vulnerable to climate change, the Asia Development Bank (ADB) warned on 27 April. Vietnam, the Philippines, Indonesia and Thailand will see declines in rice production and loss of coastal land due to rising sea levels, causing their GDPs to fall by almost 7 per cent by the end of the century.
Hot rock disaster
Hopes of producing electricity from the heat of subterranean rocks have suffered a blow after the explosive breach of a well in the Cooper basin in South Australia on 24 April. The company operating the well, Geodynamics, was thought to be close to commercialising the technology.
Far, far away
NASA鈥檚 Swift satellite has spotted the most distant object yet seen 鈥� a star that exploded 13.1 billion light years from Earth. The burst, named GRB 090423, detonated just 640 million years after the big bang, at the end of the cosmic 鈥渄ark ages鈥� when the first stars and galaxies formed.
Genome auction
Whole-genome sequencing is up for grabs . The company Knome of Cambridge, Massachusetts, has set a starting price of $68,000 in an auction that runs until 4 May. As New 杏吧原创 went to press, no bids had been placed. Proceeds will go to the X Prize Foundation, which is offering a prize to the first group to sequence 100 human genomes in 10 days at less than $10,000 per genome.