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Trees and wildflowers blossom during all four seasons in Kunming, which is known as The City of Eternal Spring because of its year-round mild temperatures. However, it is also home to something much less natural: a laboratory where scientists have been creating monkey embryos with a mutated gene so that, when born, they will age unusually fast. Such experiments are done to study human diseases such as autism, cancer, Alzheimer's and muscular dystrophy.

Corny Capitalism: This is one campaign promise we wish President Trump would break. But alas, he just told his EPA to give up any thought of cutting back on the federal government's anti-consumer, anti-environment ethanol mandate. Sad. The story begins in 2005, when President Bush approved the Renewable Fuel Standard program as part of an energy bill, which required oil refiners to blend in predetermined amounts of "biofuels" into their gasoline, starting at 4 billion gallons in 2006. A revised version of the RFS, which Bush signed in 2007, expanding the program, requiring ethanol levels to climb steadily to 36...

Advice needed: It's either corrosion or a gorilla with a wrench, or both, but I cannot get the brake caliper bolts on our Ford Explorer out. FoMoCo exacerbates the problem by using bolts with shallow heads, so it is difficult to keep a socket on them. I have tried various penetrating oils such as PB Blaster, smacking the bolt heads with a medium hammer, etc. to no effect. More info. in my 1st comment...

Document CMPC-2003-000537 is a secret and personal memo written in November 1999 by the director of the Iraqi National Monitoring Department (NMD) and addressed to the Minister of the Iraqi Military Industrialization Commission (MIC). The memo talks about a Neutron Source Device with High Radioactive Activity that was found in one Iraqi University and the NMD is asking that it should be returned to the Iraqi Atomic Energy Organization. The Neutron Source Device can be also called Neutron Generator or Neutron Initiator. This Neutron Generator device was not declared to the UN inspectors all the time they were in Iraq...

Subaru last week announced a second recall for vehicles which are prone to brake line corrosion in "salt belt" states. This latest recall follows a 2013 recall for the same issue, which can cause brake failure from burst brake lines due to rust. As Subaru does the right thing by consumers and motorists regarding the safety concern, General Motors continues to claim that brake line rust is a normal maintenance issue and refuses to recall its vehicles with the same problem. The Subaru recall weakens GM's defense that rusting brake lines do not need to be addressed by manufacturers...

General Motors continues to deny that there is a problem with rusting brake lines on its vehicles, as noted here yesterday. GM's new Vice President of Global Safety, Jeffrey Boyer, claims that brake line rust "is a maintenance issue that affects the entire automotive industry." However, a search of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration's (NHTSA) website shows that GM vehicles have about ten times the complaints for brake lines than Ford, Toyota and Honda combined! NHTSA has a tool to allow searches for complaints by keyword. While there is an ongoing NHTSA investigation on model year 1999 to 2003...

Months before Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 mysteriously vanished, US regulators warned of a "cracking and corrosion" problem on Boeing 777s that could lead to a mid-air breakup and drastic drop in cabin pressure. The revelation comes amid a desperate search for traces of the plane with 239 people on board, which lost contact with air traffic control at around 1730 GMT Friday, about an hour after take-off from Kuala Lumpur en route to Beijing..

The U.S. Navy has discovered "aggressive" corrosion in Austal Ltd.'s first new combat ship designed for operating close to shore. The corrosion is in the propulsion areas of the USS Independence, the Littoral Combat Ship built by the Mobile, Alabama-based subsidiary of Australia's Austal and General Dynamics Corp. "This could be a very serious setback," said Norman Polmar, an independent naval analyst and author in Alexandria, Virginia. "If the ship develops a serious flaw, you're not going to continue producing them." Permanent repair will require drydocking the ship and removing its "water jets,". Aluminum-hulled ships such as Austal's tend to...

State transportation officials say they have discovered some corrosion in the lighting for the Big Dig tunnels in Boston. Secretary of Transportation Jeffrey Mullan said Wednesday one of the 110-pound fixtures fell but did not hit any cars. Mullan said there are about 23,000 light fixtures in the tunnels, and corrosion has been found in fewer than two percent. He said there’s no danger to the public.

Lockheed Martin Corp.’s F-22 jets began corroding soon after introduction into the U.S. Air Force in 2005 and the Defense Department plans to spend $228 million through 2016 to fix the deteriorating aluminum skin panels, the Government Accountability Office said in a report today. The newer F-35 aircraft, which are also built by Bethesda, Maryland-based Lockheed, have an improved design and use updated materials and paint to prevent the corrosion seen on the F-22 jets, according to the report sent to the Senate and House Armed Services committees. “Corrosion of the aluminum skin panels was first observed in spring 2005,...

Rust is not something the average person thinks much about when it comes to designing high-tech weapons. But several years ago I reported on a major missile test defense test that was ruined because a part rusted that helped hold the missile in place before liftoff. And in February the entire F-22 fleet was grounded “due to poorly designed drainage in the cockpit.” The affected parts were ejection seat rods. Congress is worried that similar problems could afflict the Joint Strike Fighter and has requested a report about lessons learned from the F-22’s experience. Regardless of how lowly rust might...

Just turned on the news. 35W bridge collapsed in the Mississippi River. Cars, trucks, semis..... Fires burning, tanker trucks, at least one school bus, more than ten cars...... Just now breaking.......

BP's board and London-based executives were informed of widespread corrosion at the UK oil giant's Alaska field two years before the company was forced to shut it this week, citing "unexpectedly severe corrosion". On May 22 2004, Chuck Hamel, an advocate for BP workers in Alaska, took the charges directly to Walter E. Massey, chairman of the environment committee of BP's non-executive board of directors. In the letter, Mr Hamel told Dr Massey that in the previous four years BP employees and contract workers had brought to him concerns about safety, health and threats to the environment at Prudhoe Bay,...

Print this story | Email it to an associate. Vol. 11, No. 20 Week of May 14, 2006 Providing coverage of Alaska and northern Canada's oil and gas industry BP: Learning from oil spill lessonsJohnson, Beaudo explain what they think happened in Prudhoe Bay’s largest spill and what the company is learning from the incidentAlan BaileyPetroleum NewsOn March 2 a BP well pad operator discovered a leak in the transit line that delivers oil to the trans-Alaska pipeline from Gathering Center 2 in the western operating area of the giant Prudhoe Bay oil field on Alaska’s North Slope. The...

<p>WASHINGTON - Experts have told NASA for years that simply covering the wings of a space shuttle while it sits on the launch pad could prevent a problem that investigators now think may have contributed to the destruction of the shuttle Columbia.</p>

Corrosion suggested in shuttle crash   Weakened wing may have been vulnerable to impact of debrisBy James ObergSPECIAL TO MSNBC.COM        IN RECENT DAYS, NASA officials have expressed their frustrated bafflement over the observed debris impact on Columbia’s left wing. They have repeated studies made during the flight and still come up with results that show the worst-case damage is still far short of a mortal wound that could have prompted the catastrophic failure of the wing.        If the falling insulating foam were the triggering event, some additional factor or factors must have been present,...