Rare evidence of the long-held belief that humans are still evolving has been unearthed in the parish records of a French-Canadian island on the Saint Lawrence seaway, researchers say.

Ile aux Coudres is located 80 kilometers (50 miles) northeast of Quebec City. Between 1720 and 1773, 30 families settled there and the population reached 1,585 people by the 1950s.

Three people scaled Sydney's iconic Opera House on Saturday, unfurling a bright yellow banner on its tiled white sails to protest against the destruction of forests.

Police said four people were arrested after the protest and were in custody.

Climate negotiators said they made progress on laying out ways to help poor countries but deep differences remained on core issues ahead of a make-or-break talks in South Africa.

With scientists warning that the planet is far behind on meeting pledges to control climate change, officials from around the world held a week of talks in Panama City to float ideas before the Durban conference opens on November 28.

Male crickets prioritize the life of their female partners ahead of their own, even though it means a dramatic rise for the former in the risk of being eaten, research published Thursday said.

In perhaps the insect equivalent of holding the door open, infrared video pictures of a wild population of field crickets (Gryllus campestris) in Spain showed males giving females priority access to the safety of a burrow.

Daniel Shechtman of Israel won the 2011 Nobel Chemistry Prize Wednesday for discovering and revealing the secrets of quasicrystals, which has revolutionized the notion of solid matter.

Quasicrystals, described by the Nobel jury as "a remarkable mosaic of atoms", are patterns that are highly ordered and symmetrical but which do not repeat themselves.

Researchers Saul Perlmutter and Adam Riess of the United States and U.S.-Australian Brian Schmidt won the 2011 Nobel Physics Prize Tuesday for their research on supernovae, the Nobel jury said.

"They have studied several dozen exploding stars, called supernovae, and discovered that the universe is expanding at an ever-accelerating rate," it said, adding that their discovery had changed mankind's understanding of the universe.

A powerful telescope affording a view of the universe unmatched by most ground-based observatories gazed onto distant galaxies for the first time Monday from deep in Chile's Atacama Desert.

The Atacama Large Millimeter/sub millimeter Array, a joint project between Canada, Chile, the European Union, Japan, Taiwan and the United States, officially opened for astronomers after a decade of planning and construction.

Three scientists shared the Nobel Medicine Prize Monday for their ground-breaking work on the immune system which the jury said opened up new prospects for curing cancer and other diseases.

The laureates are Bruce Beutler of the United States, Jules Hoffmann of Luxembourg and Ralph Steinman of Canada.

A powerful U.S. atom-smasher that was the world's biggest particle collider for nearly a quarter-century closed forever on Friday, solidifying Europe's place as the world leader in physics.

The Tevatron began its collider work in 1985, as part of the U.S. Department of Energy's Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, and its shutdown comes at a tough time for budget-squeezed U.S. science and space programs.

U.S. scientists have developed an "artificial leaf" that converts sunlight into a chemical fuel that could be stored and used later, according to a study published Friday.

When placed in a container of water, the silicon solar cell -- with catalytic materials on each side -- generates oxygen bubbles on one side and hydrogen bubbles on the other, which can be separated and collected.