Almost the entire cohort of chicks from an Adelie penguin colony in the eastern Antarctic was wiped out by starvation last summer in what scientists say is only the second such incident in over 40 years. Researchers said the mass die-off occurred because unusually large amounts of sea ice forced penguin parents to travel farther in search of food for their young. By the time they returned, only two out of thousands of chicks had survived. Yan Ropert-Coudert, who leads the study of seabirds at the Dumont D'Urville Antarctic research station, said the colony there numbers about 18,000 pairs who have been monitored since the 1960s. A similar breeding loss was observed for the first time during a 2013-14 research expedition.

Chinese space lab will crash to Earth

Sometime within the next few months, the heavens will come crashing down. Tiangong 1, which translates to "Heavenly Palace," is China's first space laboratory, launched in September 2011. In 2016, Chinese officials said that they had lost control of the space lab, and in May, China said the lab would re-enter Earth between October 2017 and April 2018. Much of the space lab, which measures 34 feet long, is expected to burn up during its re-entry. But Jonathan McDowell, an astrophysicist from Harvard University, told the Guardian that pieces weighing up to 220 pounds could make it to the Earth's surface.

Therapy a way to buy time after snake bites

A researcher at the University of Arizona is experimenting with a new therapy to help treat rattlesnake bites. Dr. Vance G. Nielsen hopes that once it is ready for humans, the therapy will be administered like an EpiPen, injected into a snakebite victim in the field to buy the person valuable time to get to the hospital for anti-venom treatments. The therapy includes injecting carbon monoxide into the venom directly to block its effects. Nielsen has successfully shown the therapy blocks 36 different kinds of venom from interacting with animal and human plasma in test tubes. He also had successful results in live animal tests for at least an hour.