NPR People: Richard Harris

One of the great mysteries about North America is what killed off woolly mammoths and other exotic animals that roamed the land after the last ice age. Ideas have ranged from a comet impact and climate change to human hunters. A study published Friday in Science Magazine provides new clues about this — cleverly deduced from samples of a fungus that grew on the animal's dung.

Conservationists worried about overfishing on the Pacific island of Kiribati persuaded fishermen to pick coconuts instead. The strategy backfired: Coconut oil production increased, but so did fishing. It turns out, fishermen who earned more money in coconut agriculture had more leisure time — which they spent fishing.

The international commission that regulates fishing of tuna and other large migratory fish in the Atlantic voted to sharply reduce the fishing quota for bluefin tuna at their latest meeting. But some scientists say the new quota is too high to sustain the species.

The Environmental Protection Agency has outlined a new effort to help protect and restore the Chesapeake Bay, the nation's largest estuary. And it targets the root causes of the trouble: runoff.

As the world prepares for crucial climate-change talks in Copenhagen next month, there is a growing rift between the United States and some of the world's poorest nations. The gap grew wider this past week, at the final official pre-Copenhagen talks in Barcelona.

The glaciers atop Africa's Mount Kilimanjaro may be gone entirely in the next few decades. A new study shows that 85 percent of the ice cover that was present in 1912 has vanished, and the ice continues to melt rapidly.

Light from a star that died when the universe was about 600 million years old is only now reaching Earth. The gamma ray burst is 13.1 billion light-years away, and astronomers say it's the most distant object ever seen from Earth.

Researchers writing in the current issue of Science believe they have found an error in existing biofuel laws that could actually make climate change worse. They say these rules inadvertently encourage deforestation, which in turn contributes to global warming.

A man from the Plains is on a mission to change the way we farm. For the past 33 years, this farmer has devoted his life to creating new strains of crops that will thrive year-round without depleting the soil.

Despite dissent from developing countries, the U.S. and Europe seem to be abandoning the idea of extending or revising the Kyoto climate treaty when it expires in 2012. Instead they will form a new treaty, but some doubt it will be ready in December, when diplomats meet in Copenhagen. The news leaves many countries in the developing world frustrated.

Spiders deserve their reputation as bloodthirsty critters. Up until now, all 40,000 species known to science seemed to eat by sucking the juices out of insects and other prey. But researchers have come across a spider that eats mainly leaves.

The 2009 Nobel Prize in Physics has been awarded to Charles K. Kao, Willard S. Boyle and George E. Smith for breakthroughs in fiber optics and digital imaging.

The Nobel Prize for Physics has been awarded to Charles K. Kao, Willard S. Boyle and George E. Smith for their work in fiber-optics and semiconductors. The Nobel committee Tuesday said the three scientists helped shape the foundations of today's networked society.

In Samoa, more than 100 people died after a magnitude 8 quake triggered a tsunami on Tuesday. Less than a day later, a magnitude 7.6 earthquake caused more than 400 deaths and widespread damage in Indonesia. A third earthquake struck in Peru, magnitude 5.9, on Wednesday. Scientists are studying those and other quakes to see if patterns emerge.

The special meeting on climate at the United Nations Tuesday produced strong rhetoric, but no breakthroughs. U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon called the meeting in advance of a December deadline. That's when talks in Copenhagen are supposed to produce a new treaty to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases.