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China Enjoying Baby Boom In Artificially Bred Pandas
Beijing (AFP) Nov 14, 2006 China is enjoying a giant panda baby boom thanks to the nation's artificial breeding program, with a record 27 surviving cubs born so far this year, state press reported Tuesday. A total of 30 pandas were born in China this year through artificial insemination, including 11 sets of twins, Zhang Zhihe, director of the China Giant Panda Breeding Technical Committee told Xinhua news agency. Although three died shortly after being born, the number of new pandas this year is the most since Chinese biologists began artificially breeding the endangered species in 1960, the report said. Twenty-six of the surviving panda cubs were bred by zoologists in southwest China's Sichuan Province, with 17 born at the Wolong Giant Panda Protection and Research Center and nine at the Chengdu Research Base, the report said. The other surviving panda was born in neighboring Chongqing municipality, while a 28th was born in the US city of Atlanta after being artificially inseminated with the help of Chengdu researchers. The famously sexually inactive giant pandas are among the world's most endangered animals. Their traditional homes have been the mountains of central and southern China, with about 1,590 of the "living fossils" believed to be surviving in the wild and 180 being raised in captivity in zoos worldwide, Xinhua said.
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The Milky Way Shaped Life On Earth
Copenhagen, Denmark (SPX) Nov 15, 2006Frenzied star-making in the Milky Way Galaxy starting about 2400 million years ago had extraordinary effects on life on Earth. Harvests of bacteria in the sea soared and crashed in a succession of booms and busts, with an instability not seen before or since. According to new results published by Dr. Henrik Svensmark of the Danish National Space Center in the journal Astronomische Nachrichten, the variability in the productivity of life is closely linked to the cosmic rays, the atomic bullets that rain down on the Earth from exploded stars. |
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