President Barack Obama said on Wednesday that disappointment over the outcome of the Copenhagen climate change summit was justified, hardening a widespread verdict that the conference had been a failure.

"At a point where there was about to be complete breakdown, and the prime minister of India was heading to the airport and the Chinese representatives were essentially skipping negotiations, and everybody's screaming, what did happen was, cooler heads prevailed," Obama said.

EU leaders have so far failed to agree how much aid the bloc will give to developing nations to tackle the effects of global warming.

"We have called on the developed countries to reduce emissions by 25-40% by 2020, and expect developing countries to achieve cuts of between 15% and 30%," he said.

A squirrel has been seen attempting to savage a fruit bat to death.

"No-one has recorded this type of behaviour or incident before," says Mr Stanley, who saw the squirrel try to kill the bat in a tree above his head.

"The least likely hypothesis is that the squirrel was preparing to eat the bat," says Mr Stanley.

Now scientists from the University of Haifa-Oranim in Israel have discovered that ridges in the plant's giant leaves actually collect water and channel it down to the plant's root system, harvesting up to 16 times more water than any other plant in the region.

"Even in the slightest rains," the researchers wrote, "the typical plant harvests more than 4,300 cubic centimeters of water per year and enjoys a water regime of about 427 millimeters per year, equivalent to the water supply in a Mediterranean climate."

Japanese giant hornets, which can be up to 5cm long, are voracious predators that can devastate bees' nests and consume their larvae.

But, if the bees spot their attacker in time, they mount a powerful defence in the form of a bee ball.

As the temperature inside the ball increased to more than 45C, the carbon dioxide level also rose sharply.

"The hornet may be killed during the first 0-5 minute period, in which the highest level of heat production and carbon dioxide emissions take place," said Dr Sakamoto.

Pioneering investigations have thrown the first scientific light on the highly unusual case of Brooke Greenberg, a child from Baltimore, Maryland, who is 16 years old, but whose size and development corresponds to that of an infant of 11 months.

Her brain, for example, is scarcely more mature than that of a newborn infant. Although she can recognise her mother and make gestures and noises to articulate her wishes, she can't talk.

This year, scientists found caffeine-less coffee plants, tiny seahorses and a 23-inch long bug that looks like a branch, not to mention a strange white slug no one had ever described that was found in a Welsh garden.

Bacteria really can live just about anywhere on else from hot volcanic vents to Antarctic ice. But they are also adapting to the new environments that humans create. Case in point, Japanese scientists found that this bacterial species lives inside hairspray.

Penn State Assistant Professor of Biology Tracy Langkilde has shown that native fence lizards in the southeastern United States are adapting to potentially fatal invasive fire-ant attacks by developing behaviors that enable them to escape from the ants, as well as by developing longer hind legs, which can increase the effectiveness of this behavior.

In the future, Langkilde plans to study the mechanism behind the behavioral changes following invasion. Non-responsive lizards tend to be killed and removed from the gene pool.

Globally, Earth's atmosphere warmed an average of about 0.4 C (or about 0.72 degrees Fahrenheit) in 30 years, according to data collected by sensors aboard NOAA and NASA satellites. More than 80 percent of the globe warmed by some amount.

Virtually all of the warming found in the satellite temperature record has taken place since the onset of the 1997-1998 El Nino. Earth's average temperature showed no detectable warming from December 1978 until the 1997 El Nino.

Researchers say the Viagra alternative could be as effective as the famous blue pill, but have fewer side-effects.

In the meantime, "if people eat horny goat weed, I think it can be beneficial because it contains icariin," says Dell'Agli.