China is quite literally pulling out the heavy artillery to ensure that this year's Beijing Olympics go off without a hitch.

The event's official had unveiled their plans to seed any incoming clouds in the city with a combination of rockets, cannons, and even aircraft. More details on Beijing's war on clouds are available in the full article.

It was recently revealed that an almost complete fossilized human skull estimated to be around 80,000 to 100,000 years old has been unearthed in Xuchang. The skull was dug up last month after over two years of excavation.

Interestingly enough, the significance of the find is still being debated on. For more information on this find and the issues surrounding it, head on over to the full article.

It seems the folks over at the Chengdu Giant Panda Breeding Site in Beijing, China are taking the three Rs of recycling a bit too seriously.

They plan to turn panda dung into odor-free souvenirs.

Panda dung bookmarks. Panda dung cute panda statues. Talk about turning one man's waste - or rather, one panda's - into one man's miscellany!

While this sounds a bit unhygienic - after all, poop is poop - Jing Shimin, assistant director of the panda breeding base, says that it won't stink as much (or at all) like the droppings we're normally exposed to. The reason for this is that 70% of panda dung is actually undigested bamboo.

So how are they made, anyway? The process is remarkably simple. First, the dung is carefully selected, then smashed up into a manageable pulp, then dried, and THEN sterilized at a whopping 300 degrees Celsius (that's 572 degrees Fahrenheit). This process ensures that the actual merchandise made from the dung would pose no health risks whatsoever.

The treated dung will then be handled by a local handicraft company, where much of the souvenir-making will take place.

Certainly very creative thinking from the people taking care of these cute yet endangered creatures. It's a double boon for pandas - not only are their habitats getting cleaned, but the money that would have been spent on removing their dung (6,000 yuan, or US $770 per month) would be invested in taking better care of them. Nice.

Poop souvenirs in, garments made out of animal fur out. Updates as we get them! Or as fast the pandas can make them.

China, home to more than one billion people, is serious about birth control and other problems that come with sex. In fact, the commerce and health ministries in the country issued a regulation ordering hotels, holiday resorts, and public showers to provide condoms.

Beijing News reported Friday that pamphlets about AIDS prevention are also required to be made available from those places.

This move is not enough to fight AIDS in one of the biggest countries in the world, said health experts. Being late in applying prevention methods is one thing, but the lack of sex education is a major problem in trying to fight the virus. China, which used to believe that AIDS was a disease that only gays, sex workers and drug users should worry about, is also a conservative country that refuses to talk openly about sex.

You all know that up and coming Olympic Games 2008 will be held next year in Beijing, China. No problem? Well, not really because historical data states that the event will be greeted by rains starting from the opening ceremony on August 8, 2008 and way past the closing ceremony two weeks after.

Chinese meteorologists are saying though that they will force rain to fall way before the Olympics begin with the help of cloud-seeding. The process, basically, cleans up the air to ensure clear skies. But cloud-seeding is not something we can refer to as a scientific process yet as that matter is still being debated by scientists.

Actually, China has been trying to tweak the atmospheric conditions for decades now but the majority of the scientific community maintain that the science behind "cloud-seeding" is just plain weak. In fact, the U.S. National Academy of Sciences had already questioned this way back in 2003.

China, on the other hand, answered back that it is proven to increase rainfall. Last May 2006, Beijing Weather Modification Office claimed that they were able to generate more rainfall by firing seven rocket shells containing 163 cigarette-size sticks of silver iodide over the city's skies. This, then, caused chemical reactions that forced four-tenths of an inch of rain.

The point is, we all want a sunny Olympics event. It has not been confirmed yet if cloud-seeding actually works or not. But for the benefit of the event, we well wish that it does.

A grand total of 132 racehorses were diagnosed with a mild strain of herpes several days ago following police investigations of deliberate horse poisoning in the city's racetracks.

Fortunately, the horses were declared out of danger by local veterinarians after appropriate treatment was applied. "The horses are showing elevated temperatures but they seem to have recovered after a couple of days of rest. Overall, the symptoms are very mild," said Brian Stewart.

Containment measures were also conducted to stop the spread of the infectious disease. The quarantine measures are proving to be effective as no additional cases have so far been reported.

Police are still investigating how a device found in one of the city's racetracks could be linked to the outbreak of herpes. A small contraption designed to shoot poison darts into the animals at the start of the race was detected and confiscated by law enforcers.

This places the 2007 Beijing Olympics in a precarious position as equestrian events have been moved to the freeport island from Beijing because of disease-control problems. A growing concern among the ranks of the international jockeys may derail the events or have them moved elsewhere. The Hong Kong Jockey Club which sanctions horse race operations in the area has declined to comment so far.

Many regions in China which have been suffering from increasing pollution from coal-fired plants, have recently released reports of lead poisoning. These reports have been coming in from the Gansu province in the northwest region of that country. Residents of two villages in the area were reported to be seeking hospital treatment after their blood test results showed high levels of lead. A nearby smelter is pointed out as the possible source of the pollution which has ultimately led to the harm that has been caused to these villagers, according to Chinese newspapers.

According to The Beijing Daily Messenger, almost every family in the area were found to have high levels of lead in their blood.

Lead poisoning damages the nervous system, eventually leading to dementia, convulsions and death.  In fact, the Roman habit of drinking wine from lead-lined vessels is thought by some scholars to  have contributed to the decline of Roman society. Hopefully, as China modernizes, they will pay closer attention to the lessons of history than their Western counterparts.

Just this Saturday, Nokia held an environmental-themed SMS Slogan Contest in Beijing, China where ten children were given the titles of "Environmental Pioneer."

 

As with everywhere else in the world, text messaging or SMS have also become very popular in China. Chinese youngsters showed off their texting skills by sending in their proposed slogan via SMS. This year, Nokia received more than 200,000 SMS from over 20 provinces in China, all suggesting their own environmental slogans.

China's Association for the Promotion of Environment and Culture was one of the organizers of the said event and they believe that by combining the popular text messaging culture with environmental concerns, they will able to reach out to more Chinese citizens and promote environmental awareness. According to them also, the best way to protect the environment is to teach children to love the environment.

One of the young slogan-senders said in his SMS that hopefully in the future, paper could be made from fibers, and ink could be made from chocolate, so that this way, instead of it adding up to our trash, we can eat the newspaper after reading it. We know we're not alone in saying this, so...altogether now: Aaawwwwww! Smart and cute, just the way little boys should be.

A new study suggests life on Earth could have sprung from electrically charged microbes from space!

Previously, some researchers think living microbes could have been commuting between Earth and Mars via meteors based on the discovery of a Martian space rock known as meteorite ALH84001. They think that living microbes could have travelled back and forth between the two planets, succeeding in seeding one with life. That planet is, of course Earth. Otherwise we'd all be in Mars right now.

Like all theories, there are holes in this fascinating scenario. Such a trip could only happen after a huge asteroid collided with one of the planets powerful enough to blast rocks off the planet's surface. It does happen but not every day. In fact, such strikes are extremely rare only a handful are thought to have occurred since the solar system formed.

Now, the new study suggests another way for microbes to travel through space. Tom Dehel from the US Federal Aviation Administration, calculated the effect of electric fields at various levels in the atmosphere on a bacterium that was carrying an electric charge. He says electrically charged bacteria could easily be ejected from the Earth's gravitational field by the same kind of electromagnetic fields that generate aurora. And this happens every day.

The field strength vary greatly at different levels of the atmosphere but the strongest ones are near the surface, generated by thunderstorms. If the fields extend through the whole air column, the process of launching bacteria high into the atmosphere could be an ongoing process.

"Since the upward forces of the magnetic field would balance the force of gravity for tiny organisms, they could float in the upper atmosphere for years and reproduce there, giving them a chance to evolve capabilities to endure the hardships of that environment, including coping with strong UV and a near-vacuum. Such organisms would thus be well equipped to endure the rigours of a journey through space," says Dehel.

Another route the microbes could take is through the “magnetospheric plasmoids.” These are independent structures of plasma and magnetic fields that can be swept away from the Earth’s magnetosphere. Bacteria surfing these structures could attain speeds capable of taking them out of the solar system and on to the planets of other stars. "And because of the potential for a steady outflow of the particles pushed by the electric fields, a single life-bearing world might seed an entire galaxy with life", said Dehel at the biennial meeting of the International Committee on Space Research (COSPAR), in Beijing, China.

If Dehel's theory is true that would make all of us Martians!