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.
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.
The head of the Portuguese diplomacy rejected U.S. meddling in his country´s relations with China, after the american ambassador to Lisbon warned that partnering with Chinese tech company Huawei on 5G could have “consequences” for Portugal´s Defense policy.
George Edward Glass
U.S. diplomat George Glass said in his interview that Portugal must choose between the “ally” United States and the “trading partner” China and stressed there may be security and defense consequences for the European country if it chooses to work with Beijing. Glass says the US preferred that Portugal did not have any Huawei 5G equipment, underlining that if the that happens, the relationship in Defense between Portugal and the United States will change. The American Ambassador says that the consequences of Portugal choosing to work with China will not be political, at least not immediately, but may have to do with NATO’s activity or the exchange of classified information. George Glass also threatens to end the distribution of natural gas through the port of Sines, if the construction of the new terminal is given to China.
A response from the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Augusto Santos Silva, on the same day. “The Portuguese Government makes note of the statements […]. But the fundamental point is this: in Portugal, the decision-makers are the Portuguese authorities, who make the decisions that benefit Portugal, within the framework of the Constitution and Portuguese law and the powers that the law gives (…) relevant authorities”, Santos Silva said, quoted by Lusa news agency.
Pope Francis has reportedly refused to meet with Mike Pompeo to discuss a controversial accord between the Vatican and China, as the US Secretary of State visits Rome on Tuesday to drive home his warning that it endangers the “moral authority” of the Church. The details of the deal have never been made public, but it gave the Vatican a say in the appointment of Catholic bishops in China. Pope Francis also recognised eight bishops that had been appointed by Beijing without his approval.
9-26-20 The China-built Cauchari photovoltaic solar project in Jujuy Province, Argentina, the largest solar project in the country was put into use on Sat. The project is to bring self-sufficient electricity and an annual income of $50 million to the province.
The Cauchari solar project in Argentina’s northernmost province Jujuy is one of the biggest photovoltaic (PV) solar power projects in South America. Located at an elevation of more than 4km above the sea level, it is also the world’s highest-altitude solar power project. Construction on the 300MW Cauchari solar project phase one was started in October 2017, with an investment of £301m ($390m). The phase one was inaugurated after the completion of trial run in October 2019.
The 300MW Cauchari solar farm, with an estimated lifespan of 25 years, is expected to generate approximately 660GWh of clean electricity a year, which will be enough to power more than 160,000 households.
It is further planned for a 200MW expansion in the next phase to bring the total capacity to 500MW, which will be enough to meet the electricity needs of approximately 260,000 Argentine homes.
The 230 MeV superconducting cyclotron, in which 71 million proton beam clusters can be accelerated to about 60% of the speed of light per second, is continuously delivered. Such high-speed continuous proton beams provide new conditions for materials science and aerospace engineering for special materials, high-power devices, and radiation damage testing of space chips, as well as for radiobiological research on the biological effects of space radiation and DNA damage.
