Today's Links: Clone Mice, Electric Bicycles, and Nakedness
- Chinese Scientists Reprogram Cells to Create Mice [WSJ] "Two teams of Chinese researchers working separately have reprogrammed mature skin cells of mice to an embryonic-like state and used the resulting cells to create live mouse offspring. The reprogramming may bring scientists one step closer to creating medically useful stem-cell lines for treating human disease without having to resort to controversial laboratory techniques. However, the advance poses fresh ethical challenges because the results could make it easier to create human clones and babies with specific genetic traits."
- Chinese Art, Still Invest-Worthy [GlobalPost] "Compared to the stock market, or nearly any other place one can put one’s money these days, Chinese contemporary art still looks like a very good investment. Recent art auctions in Hong Kong have registered sales at the high end of their estimates, even though the targets the auction houses are setting for themselves are less ambitious today than previous years. The owners of some of the best Beijing galleries said the shakeout promises to be a positive development for dealers, but also for artists. No one likes a bubble and there was growing concern that easy riches were destroying creativity by encouraging Chinese artists to go after major sales, rather than the real thing."
- It's Electric: Chinese Streets Full of Popular Electric Bicycles [FOXNews] "The bicycle was a vivid symbol of China in more doctrinaire communist times, when virtually no one owned a car. Even now, nearly two decades after the country began its great leap into capitalism, it still has 430 million bicycles by government count, outnumbering electric bikes and scooters 7-1. But production of electric two-wheelers has soared from fewer than 200,000 eight years ago to 22 million last year, mostly for the domestic market. The industry estimates about 65 million are on Chinese roads."
- Chinese-American Children Sent to Live With Kin Abroad Face Tough Return [NYTimes] "The phenomenon of American-born children who spend their infancy in China has been known for years to social workers, who say it is widespread and worrying. About 8,000 Chinese-born women gave birth in New York last year, so the number of children at risk is substantial, according to the Chinese-American Planning Council, a social service agency that hopes to get a grant to educate parents about the pitfalls of the practice and help them find alternatives. But no one tracks the numbers, and the issue has only recently seized the attention of early-childhood researchers like Yvonne Bohr, a clinical psychologist at York University in Toronto, who calls such children "satellite babies.""
- China Naturist Resort Hot Topic [Straits Times] "A NATURIST swimming resort to be open Saturday has ignited heated discussion in China where public nudity is still taboo... The new resort consists of two 300 square meter natural ponds half way on the mountain, one for men and one for women. The women's pool is 100 meters away from the men's. A thick bamboo grove blocks the view between the ponds. And patrolmen are ready scare away peeping Toms. Like before, the resort also hit newspaper headlines and was widely discussed."
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