World News by Wild Rose

Two laboratories in central China have been shut down for alleged surrogacy activities, an underground practice that persists despite repeated crackdowns. On Wednesday, the health bureau in Changsha, Hunan province, said six people were detained after a tip about a “laboratory that illegally uses assisted reproductive technologies”, according to state news agency Xinhua. A day earlier, the Wuhan Municipal Health Commission, in neighbouring Hubei province, announced that an illegal lab had been...

We have put together stories from our coverage on science from the past two weeks to help you stay informed. If you would like to see more of our reporting, please consider subscribing. 1. China’s radar satellites capture sharp images of glacier collapse site in Nepal Within hours of a devastating glacier collapse on the China-Nepal border, a Beijing-based satellite company had already redirected six of its satellites to survey the disaster zone. 2. Chip expert Chen Ye joins China’s Zhejiang...

China’s biotechnology market has “significantly” driven up the demand for primate experimental models as the market recovers, tightening the supply of laboratory monkeys, according to a leading biotech firm. The continued recovery of fundraising and out-licensing deals in innovative drugs in China this year has led to significant growth in the demand for primate experimental models, research firm Joinn Laboratories (China) said on Tuesday. Primate experiments typically use monkeys and other...

US President Donald Trump’s vision of new warships bristling with huge-calibre guns – widely mocked as a billionaire’s vanity project and a throwback to the battleship era of the second world war – has received an unexpected nod from military scientists in China. In a paper published last month by the Chinese peer-reviewed journal Command Control & Simulation, the authors suggested that large-calibre naval guns could have a critical role in future warfare by countering the growing threat of...

A study in one of the world’s top scientific journals that concluded China’s policy-driven solar energy expansion was harming bird diversity has come under fire after allegations emerged that the analysis may have used observations of 2.1 billion little egrets in a single park – more than the entire global population of the species. It also brought up heated conversations on social media about negative narratives surrounding China’s green energy sector. The study in question – by researchers in...

China has started an international project to build a three-dimensional satellite network between Earth and the moon that will track solar activity and study some of the universe’s most powerful explosions. The project plans to send 30 backpack-sized CubeSats into highly elliptical orbits around Earth in the next four years or so, according to the Deep Space Exploration Laboratory, which will lead the project. The laboratory said on Friday the constellation would “fill a global gap in systematic...

A young Chinese man recently became colleagues with the doctor who saved him from a congenital heart defect 19 years ago, prompting many to marvel at the wonder of fate. Huang Hongxin, 23, has recently enrolled as a postgraduate student in the neurosurgery department at Xiangya Hospital, affiliated with Central South University. Nearly two decades ago, Huang underwent a life-saving surgery to address his congenital heart disease at the same hospital. His condition included pulmonary artery...

Soon after becoming a mother, Hong Kong resident Sarah Tam enjoyed eight hours of sleep a night and yoga sessions at a post-partum care centre in neighbouring Shenzhen, where carers looked after her newborn around the clock. Tam, a 30-year-old social worker who gave birth in mid-July, spent a month at the facility in mainland China, recovering from delivery with total peace of mind. She said she felt completely at ease leaving her baby in their care, which allowed “mothers to truly focus on...

Chinese scientists have identified a genetic barrier that makes it hard to crossbreed African and Asian rice varieties – a discovery that could lay the foundations for creating high-yielding hybrids. While both Asian and African cultivated rice varieties have distinct strengths, crossing them often produces offspring with sterile pollen and low yields. A research team has now identified three genes that act as a barrier to reproduction – and also a possible way round the problem. “This...