SACRAMENTO (Reuters) - General Motors Corp plans to have 1,000 hydrogen fuel cell vehicles in California between 2012 to 2014 to comply with the state's goal to put thousands of cleaner cars on its roads.

GM has about 60 Chevrolet Equinox fuel cell vehicles in Southern California now, the automaker's vice president for research & development and planning, Larry Burns, said at the National Hydrogen Association conference here.

Kara Mertz tries to run an eco-conscious home. She buys wind energy credits to offset her electricity usage, and she owns a solar water heater. But her carbon footprint is still significant, thanks in part to the 20 gadgets her teenage son is constantly recharging.

Fortunately for Mertz, her hometown of Boulder, Colorado, may soon have options that allow far greater control over energy use.

New research has dealt a blow to the skeptics who argue that climate change is all due to cosmic rays rather than to man-made greenhouse gases. The new evidence shows no reliable connection between the cosmic ray intensity and cloud cover.

Lauded and criticized for offering a possible way out of the dangers of man made climate change, UK TV Channel 4's programme "The Great Global Warming Swindle", broadcast in 2007, suggested that global warming is due to a decrease in cosmic rays over the last hundred years.

COLUMBUS, Ohio — New research finds fresh evidence that urbanization in the United States threatens the populations of some species of migratory birds.

But the six-year study also refutes one of the most widely accepted explanations of why urban areas are so hostile to some kinds of birds.

A fish that would rather crawl into crevices than swim, and that may be able to see in the same way that humans do, could represent an entirely unknown family of fishes, says a University of Washington fish expert.

The fish, sighted in Indonesian waters off Ambon Island, has tan- and peach-colored zebra-striping, and rippling folds of skin that obscure its fins, making it look like a glass sculpture that Dale Chihuly might have dreamed up.

ADDIS ABABA (Reuters) - Troubled by a difficult case, doctor Asfaw Atnafu decides to seek advice.

He walks into a consulting room at Black Lion Hospital in Ethiopia's capital Addis Ababa and greets a doctor at the Care Hospital in the southern Indian city of Hyderabad.