Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said on Friday the U.S. government will spend $15.2 million to modernize equipment for monitoring U.S. volcanoes and improve warning systems.

Chile's Llaima volcano, one of South America's most active, belched ash 7 kms (4 miles) into the sky that was blown towards neighbouring Argentina in an intensifying eruption that prompted more evacuations.

MARY PEMBERTON
WILLOW, ALASKA

The tallest volcano on Indonesia

technology Mediaeval books dated by DNA testing Timothy Stinson from the North Carolina State University is using modern dna testing to trace the evolution of the book industry during the Middle Ages. Thousands of volumes, handwritten during the mediaeval period on parchments made of animal skin, still exist today. Scholars have long struggled to know the origin of these works. A

Volcanic eruptions have periodically cooled the tropics over at least the last 450 years by spewing out particles that girdle the world at high altitude and reflect sunlight, according to a study released Sunday.

Life

Ninety-three million years ago, Earth was a reshuffled jigsaw of continents, a hothouse where the average temperature was nearly twice that of today.

Palm trees grew in what would be Alaska, large reptiles roamed in northern Canada and the ice-free Arctic Ocean warmed to the equivalent of a tepid swimming pool.

So our planet was balmy -- but hardly a biological paradise, for it was whacked by a mass die-out. The depths of the ocean suddenly became starved of oxygen, wiping out swathes of marine life.

Scientists attempt to understand mud volcano