The sun's erratic and sometimes volatile behavior has the potential to cause real problems here on Earth, and protecting our planet from a possible "Solar Katrina" in 2013 will require an international effort, according to scientists who gathered recently for a meeting about the effects of solar activity.

North Korea's nuclear test in May indicated that an international network of nuclear detonation sensors is becoming increasingly capable of detecting violations of the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, said leaders of a study that surveyed more than 200 scientists worldwide on the monitoring project's technical underpinnings.

A team of U.S. military experts went to Moscow for the first round of discussions on an early warning center that would assess the threat of ballistic missiles, including any from Iran or North Korea, as part of the Obama administration's effort to "reset" relations with Moscow.

For the first time, scientists have pinpointed where an Earthbound space storm would strike when it crashed into the atmosphere, helping give advance warning of its arrival. These findings suggest researchers could soon help give better and better forecasts as to when these solar storms might wreak havoc on spacecraft and on Earth.

The author discusses current research into detecting enhanced infrared radiation from ground stations and outer space as a way of detecting earthquakes before they happen.

The six billion people on Earth are changing the biosphere so quickly that traditional ecological methods can't keep up. Humans, though, are acute observers of their environments and bodies, so scientists are combing through the text and numbers on the Internet in hopes of extracting otherwise unavailable or expensive information.

A new Google tool that tracks user searches for "flu symptoms" has given rise to a new early warning system for fast-spreading flu outbreaks that test indicate may be able to detect regional outbreaks of the flu a week to 10 days before they are reported by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The Israeli military is working on "a high-fly­ing, long-endurance unmanned in­frared sensor" that can tell the difference between nuclear war­heads amid doz­ens of decoys sent to confound na­tional missile defenses and would mark the first use of an unmanned platform for nuclear warhead hunting.

Officials at the Department of Homeland Security have overstated the performance of costly new radiation detectors designed to prevent the importation of radiological materials that could be used in bombs, according to an unreleased government report.

Japan yesterday signed a deal to receive data on possible tsunami activity from seismic and hydroacoustic sensors operated by an international nuclear detonation monitoring organization.