Humanity may face global temperature rises of 3C-4C because greenhouse gases in the atmosphere are increasing so rapidly, scientists have warned.

The prediction came from Chris Field, director of the Carnegie Institution’s Department of Global Ecology.

“Over the past decade, developing countries such as China and India have increased electric power generation by burning more coal,” said Field. “Economies in the developing world are becoming more, not less, carbon-intensive and impacts are very likely to be much worse than predicted.”

— A cosmologist has drawn up a bleak forecast for the universe, suggesting it will become unimaginably cold and empty.

Professor Lawrence Krauss, from Arizona State University, believes that, over billions of years, the expansion of the universe will eventually empty the night sky as stars become too distant to see. He said: “The rest of the universe will disappear before our eyes.”

A study released outside the AAAS finds that in the deep past of the universe stars would have been packed a million times more densely than now. The theory follows the discovery of so-called ultra-compact dwarf galaxies.

— Scientists studying post-traumatic stress disorder have found that the condition runs in families, sufferers may share certain genes and MRI brain scans may be able to show which individuals are most at risk.

The research could enable people at risk to be pinpointed in advance - allowing the military, for example, to screen out potential recruits, according to Karestan Koenen at Harvard School of Public Health in Boston.

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