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Study: Engineered airborne hybrid flu contagious between mammals

Virologists in China have published a paper detailing how they created more than 100 hybrid viruses from H5N1 and the H1N1 strain that caused the deadly swine flu pandemic of 2009. The virologists wanted to see if any combinations would transmit between mammals—five did.

The study, published in the journal Science, comes exactly a year after the release of a controversial paper describing how the H5N1 bird flu could theoretically be modified to become human-contagious. At that time, the international community had called for a moratorium on similar research because of threats related to the virus escaping or the information being used for deadly purposes. Various outbreaks of H1N1 have, over the years, proven extremely dangerous. However, researchers argue we need to learn more about how these viruses mutate, and indeed how hybrids form in nature, to better tackle any future outbreaks.

The process by which hybrids form is known as reassortment, and it occurs when an individual is infected with two different strains. Genetic information is exchanged across the two to form a new and unique virus, exactly what happened in 2009 when a combination of different swine, avian, and human flus from across the globe merged. H1N1 in particular seems to reassort more readily and is highly infectious among humans. On the other hand, H5N1 (bird flu) is not typically infectious. The premise behind the study was to see if hybrids could create a more infectious strain of H5N1.

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China now third country to carry astronauts to an orbital space station

Credit: Chinese Radio International

Early this morning at 2:07am EDT the Chinese crew of Shenzhou-9, China's 3-person orbital spacecraft, achieved China's first-ever space dock with their Tiangong-1 space station. In doing so, China became the third country to carry astronauts (or taikonauts) to an orbital space station, and at least a billion people celebrated. The flight also brought with it China's first woman into space.

Shenzhou, which translates roughly to "divine watercraft," made its first flight in 1999. Since that time, China has been racking up space milestones on a consistent basis, following up with manned launches of Shenzhou in 2003, 2005, and 2008 and the launch of the Tiangong-1 module last year. For reasons that have not yet been revealed by the Chinese government, animated depictions of Tiangong's launch were broadcast with an instrumental version of "America The Beautiful." Other than that, there have been few anomalies.

Shenzhou resembles a Soyuz spacecraft in design, with an orbital module on one end, a service module on the other, and a re-entry module in the center, but it's slightly larger. Both the service module and the orbital module are capable of flying autonomously, and both have solar panels for power.

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Asia’s space race could turn into an arms race

Asia’s current space race could turn into an arms race akin to the Cold War, according to James Clay Moltz, a professor in the Department of National Security Affairs at the Naval Postgraduate School. He makes that argument in a recent Nature commentary.

The major Asian nations, including China, Japan, India, and South Korea, are all expanding their space programs with little-to-no cooperation. These efforts are driven by national prestige and geopolitical rivalries, similar to the US-Soviet space race of the 1960s. Like that period, this space race is stimulating technological advances, but competing agendas are leading to duplication of work and mistrust—in other words, a waste of resources. Even worse, this competition is undermining recent cooperation between the US, Russia, and Europe.

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