Birders are continuing to flock to Greystones in Co Wicklow after what is believed to be the first ever sighting of a Brown Booby in Ireland.

The large seabird is usually found fishing in tropical waters in the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean.

It was spotted yesterday afternoon in Greystones and has delighted birders by loitering at the beach today.

Niall Hatch from BirdWatch Ireland said: "It's a species that's supposed to be in the tropical Atlantic, where it's found in the West Indies and the Cape Verde islands.

Damaged human lungs could be made suitable for use in transplants through cross-circulation to a pig, new research suggests.

In a paper in the journal Nature Medicine, a team from Vanderbilt and Columbia universities in the US describes trials which showed substantial improvements of cell viability, tissue quality, inflammatory responses and respiratory function using the technique.

Transplantation is the only definitive cure for end-stage lung disease, but its use is limited by an insufficient supply of high-quality donor lungs.

Only about 20% are considered to be in suitable condition, says Vanderbilt's Matthew Bacchetta, making lungs the least-used solid organ for transplant

The current standard of care for donor lungs is ex vivo lung perfusion (EVLP), a mechanical support system that can preserve lungs for up to eight hours but has limited means to rehabilitate them.

In previous work, Bacchetta, Columbia's Gordana Vunjak-Novakovic and colleagues found that damaged pig lungs could be reconditioned when connected to the circulation system of another pig.

A 60-year-old woman was mauled to death by a leopard when she went to collect fodder for cattle in Manora forest range of Nainital forest division. Deceased Uma Devi was a resident of Saun village.

This is the second leopard attack in a fortnight in the same area, leading to the conviction that the same leopard is behind both attacks. According to Nainital divisional forest officer (DFO) Bijulal (who uses only his first name), forest teams have installed cages and camera traps and are trying to find the leopard.

A process has also been initiated to give the woman's family Rs 3 lakh compensation.

15-year-old surfer died Saturday when he was mauled by a shark, the second fatal attack in a week in Australia and already at least the fifth this year.

Police said the boy was surfing at Wooli Beach, near Grafton, about 600 kilometres north of Sydney in New South Wales state just before 2:30 p.m. when he was attacked. The shark attack left him with severe injuries to his legs.

Several surfers came to the aid of the boy and helped him to shore for medical attention. Despite CPR efforts to revive him, he died at the scene.

Police initially said the victim was 17, but later corrected his age to 15.

Common domestic cats, as we know them today, might have accompanied Kazakh pastoralists as pets more than 1,000 years ago.

This has been indicated by new analyses done on an almost complete cat skeleton found during an excavation along the former Silk Road in southern Kazakhstan. An international research team led by Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg (MLU), Korkyt-Ata Kyzylorda State University in Kazakhstan, the University of Tübingen and the Higher School of Economics in Russia has reconstructed the cat's life, revealing astonishing insights into the relationship between humans and pets at the time. The study will appear in the journal "Scientific Reports".

The tomcat - which was examined by a team led by Dr Ashleigh Haruda from the Central Natural Science Collections at MLU - did not have an easy life. "The cat suffered several broken bones during its lifetime," says Haruda. And yet, based on a very conservative estimate, the animal had most likely made it past its first year of life. For Haruda and her colleagues, this is a clear indication that people had taken care of this cat.

During a research stay in Kazakhstan, the scientist examined the findings of an excavation in Dzhankent, an early medieval settlement in the south of the country which had been mainly populated by the Oghuz, a pastoralist Turkic tribe. There she discovered a very well-preserved skeleton of a cat. According to Haruda, this is quite rare because normally only individual bones of an animal are found during an excavation, which prevents any systematic conclusions from being drawn about the animal's life. The situation is different when it comes to humans since usually whole skeletons are found. "A human skeleton is like a biography of that person. The bones provide a great deal of information about how the person lived and what they experienced," says Haruda. In this case, however, the researchers got lucky: after its death, the tomcat was apparently buried and therefore the entire skull including its lower jaw, parts of its upper body, legs and four vertebrae had been preserved.

This is the shocking moment a man was severely injured after a bear attack while walking to work in Kashmir, India.

Ghulam Qadir Sheikh, 55, was the subject of an unprovoked attack on Thursday in the Budgam district in northern India.

Video footage shows a passer-by trying to help the victim utilizing a stick to beat the bear, who had wrapped his paws around the man's arms and body.

At least 24 pygmy killer whales have been found dead along the coasts of southern Taiwan since April.

Formally known as Feresa attenuate, most of the dead whales had serious infections in their livers, lungs, and spleens, and elsewhere, according to post-mortem examinations, said Huang Hsiang-wen (黃向文), minister of the Ocean Conservation Administration. Experts also identified Klebsiella, a type of bacteria that can cause various infections, in the bodies of the whales, said Huang.

The infections are believed to have made the whales unable to withstand strong currents, thus getting stranded, reported the Public Television Service on Thursday (July 9). A total of 26 pygmy killer whales have been found stranded on southern Taiwanese coasts since April.

In August 2016, a park ranger stumbled upon 323 dead wild tundra reindeer in Norway's remote Hardangervidda plateau. They had been killed in a freak lightning event. But instead of removing the carcasses, the park decided to leave them where they were, allowing nature to take its course - and scientists to study this island of decomposition and how it might change the arctic tundra ecosystem.

Over the years scientists observed the bloated, fly-infested bodies turn into dry skeletons. The latest paper, published by the Royal Society in June, looked at the creation of a "landscape of fear", as top predators such as wolverines, golden eagles and arctic foxes took advantage of the carrion.

"The landscape of fear framework has provided a better understanding of animal decisions in relation to food and safety trade-offs, predator-prey relationships and how communities are structured across trophic levels," it concluded.

Lightning has reportedly killed at least seven cows at Elepo village, Ifon Osun in Orolu Local Government area of Osun State, southwest Nigeria.

Naija News learned that all the cattle were killed where they were being kept after returning from the grazing field at the Elepo village when the incident happened.

An anonymous resident of the area described the incident as sad and very unfortunate, saying it has caused panic and fears within the community.

A baby girl from Aurora died from dog bites early Sunday after a dog got loose in a Joliet home.

The parents of 17-month-old Marley Wilander put her in a playpen in an upstairs room of a friend's house while they attended a Fourth of July party, according to a statement from Joliet police.

Sometime during the night, two pit bull mix dogs got out of the basement of the home in the 1800 block of Cumberland Drive, police said. About 1:30 a.m. July 5, the homeowner heard noise upstairs and found one of the dogs biting the baby.