SEATTLE - WHO loves Lucy? Far fewer than officials at the Pacific Science Center hoped when they booked the 3.2 million-year-old fossil remains of one of the earliest known ancestors of the human race.

With about a month and a half of the five-month exhibition to go, the center faces a $500,000 (S$751,540) loss on the exhibit, resulting in layoffs of 8 per cent of the staff and a wage freeze, President Bryce Seidl said on Friday, according to The Seattle Times newspaper.

TOKYO - JAPAN launched the first satellite to monitor greenhouse gases worldwide, a tool to help scientists better judge where global warming emissions are coming from, and how much is being absorbed by the oceans and forests.

The orbiter, together with a similar US satellite to be launched next month, will represent an enormous leap in available data on carbon dioxide and methane in the atmosphere, now drawn from scattered ground stations.

COLUMBIA (Missouri) - AFTER back-to-back hospital visits for congestive heart failure, Eva Olweean figured her health was back to normal. But the nurses at her retirement home knew better: Motion sensors in the 86-year-old's bed detected too many restless nights.

Tiny sensors hover unobtrusively over the toilet, shower and doorways to detect Ms Olweean's movements inside her apartment.