Hundreds of millions of people there are about to go on vacation at the same time.
As October 1 arrives, hundreds of millions of people are expected to pack highways, trains and planes for the National Day holiday, one of the busiest times for travel in the world’s most populous country. The eight-day Mid-Autumn Festival break is China’s first major holiday since it emerged from the coronavirus outbreak. While life has largely returned to normal in recent months, the upcoming “Golden Week” holiday will be an ambitious test of China’s success in taming the virus — and a much-awaited boost to its economic recovery. Last year, a total of 782 million domestic trips were made during the holiday, generating nearly 650 billion yuan ($95 billion) of tourism revenue, according to the Ministry of Culture and Tourism. The ministry predicts 550 million domestic trips to be made this year, while Ctrip, China’s largest online travel agency, estimates the number to be over 600 million — both above 70% of last year’s level.
Guangzhou South Railway Station in S China’s Guangdong Province has seen 437K departures — the highest since the station was opened 10 years ago — and 183K arrivals on Thursday, the first day of the National Day and Mid-Autumn festival holidays
China’s largest patrol vessel, Haixun 09, was undocked on Tuesday in Guangzhou, south China’s Guangdong Province. The patrol vessel is 165 meters long, 20.6 meters wide and 9.5 meters deep. It has a displacement of 10,700 metric tons. The vessel has a helicopter landing pad and a data center equipped with a set of satellite communication systems, including China’s Beidou Navigation Satellite System. Its construction started in May 2019. The vessel is expected to be put into service in 2021 in the areas of law enforcement, emergency coordination and command and pollution prevention.
In a recent paper published in Nature Biomedical Engineering, researchers from China and the United States reported the successful production of pigs whose organs are more compatible with the human immune system and are free of active porcine endogenous retrovirus (PERV).
Globally, there is a huge gap between the number of people who need organ transplants and the number of organs available, said Yang Luhan, a corresponding author of the research as well as co-founder and chief executive officer of Qihan Biotech.
It has long been hoped that the challenge could be alleviated through animal organ transplants — a concept known as xenotransplantation.
The Pig 3.0 immunological and blood-coagulation compatibility with the human immune system was enhanced and PERV was eradicated. Engineered pigs also exhibit normal physiology and fertility.
In 2017, Yang and her team produced the first batch of live pigs free of PERV, setting the stage for xenotransplantation. In 2018, Pig 2.0 was born, addressing concerns about pig-to-human immunocompatibility.
Pigs have been especially promising candidates due to their similar size and physiology to humans. But one of the biggest safety concerns has been the fact that most mammals, including pigs, contain repetitive, latent retrovirus fragments in their genomes — present in all their living cells — that are harmless to their native hosts but can lead to disease in other species.
Yang said they are now testing organ function and safety in primate preclinical studies.
James F. Markmann, chief of the Division of Transplant Surgery at Massachusetts General Hospital and a co-author of the study, said that Pig 3.0 demonstrates critical progress toward what could be a truly transformational option for millions of patients.
The paper was also authored by researchers from Harvard University, China’s Zhejiang University, Yunnan Agricultural University, Massachusetts General Hospital in the United States, and Massachusetts-based biotechnology company eGenesis.
Yang told Xinhua that the transplant gap, cancer and COVID-19 are global issues. She noted that her team hopes to maintain close contact with outstanding scientists, doctors and regulatory agencies around the world, so as to create globally recognized products.
Yang said the study is only the first step toward xenotransplantation. The functional compatibility of organs between species remains a challenge for researchers. Whether transplanted porcine organs can function as fully as original human organs in maintaining hormone secretion and metabolic balance remains to be seen.
The researchers are currently testing if the primates that have undergone pig kidney transplants are able to maintain their bodies’ hydro-salinity balances.
Xenotransplantation also faces challenges in ethics and supervision, Yang noted. “How can we balance animal ethics with organ supply? How can we supervise and guide research institutes in the development of related technologies in an active and responsible way? There are questions that need to be answered.”
She noted that regulations, ethics guidelines and public awareness usually come after technology has advanced. Researchers should think about these questions and share their logic, to truly promote the technology so that it can change society.
From Strato Energetics: The Stinger is our first mass-produced mini-weapon. It’s fully autonomous with wide-field cameras, tactical sensors, facial recognition, processors that can react 100 times faster than a human, and its stochastic motion is an anti-sniper feature. Inside it are three grams of shaped explosives that offer just enough power to penetrate the skull and kill the target with surgical precision.
9-14-19 Drone attacks claimed by Yemen’s Houthi rebels struck two key oil installations inside Saudi Arabia on Saturday, damaging facilities that process the vast majority of the country’s crude output and raising the risk of a disruption in world oil supplies.
1-2-20 Iran’s top security and intelligence commander Qassim Suleimani was killed early Friday in a drone strike at Baghdad International Airport that was authorized by President Trump, American officials said.
9-28-20 A major conflict has erupted between Armenia and Azerbaijan over the long-disputed mountainous Nagorno-Karabakh region, with casualties being reported on both sides after just two days of fighting. The Azerbaijani military says that its expanding drone fleet, which may now include Turkey’s increasingly popular Bayraktar TB2, has been particularly active already, destroying multiple Armenian mobile air defense systems, tanks, and other vehicles.
https://youtu.be/HiSTvlBYx14?t=5
9-29-20 China’s first independently developed unmanned helicopter that will focus on plateau operation successfully completed its maiden flight in a plateau region, a milestone that demonstrates the capability of this agile drone. The AR-500C prototype completed its first plateau flight at the Daocheng Yading Airport, which is the world’s highest civilian airport with an elevation of 4,411 meters, the state-owned Aviation Industry Corp of China (AVIC), the aircraft’s developer, said in a statement on Monday. This flight broke the record for the elevation at which a domestically built unmanned helicopter took off and landed. Unlike fixed-wing drones, a helicopter drone is more flexible since it does not require long runways.
China has simultaneously been holding military drills in the South and East China seas as well as the Yellow Sea and the Bohai Sea, naval authorities said Monday, amid escalating tensions with Taiwan and the United States.
The authorities have prohibited ships from navigating in the waters where the exercises have been held. The exercises, being conducted by a command based in Fujian Province facing Taiwan, are apparently aimed at landing on the island.
US EP-3E and P-8A enter china 50 natical miles zone 9-26-20??
9-27-20 The PLA has reportedly sent at least ten Y-8 anti-submarine aircraft to the southwest of Taiwan and a Y-9 reconnaissance aircraft to the east of Taiwan over the past week. These intel-gathering ops are preparing for possible real combat.
The message is clear, unification by force is near.
