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A rocket carrying China's first space laboratory, Tiangong-1, has launched from the north of the country. The Long March vehicle lifted clear from the Jiuquan spaceport in the Gobi Desert at 21:16 local time (13:16 GMT). The rocket's ascent took the lab out over the Pacific, and on a path to an orbit some 350km above the Earth. The 10.5m-long, cylindrical module will be unmanned for the time being, but the country's astronauts, or yuhangyuans, are expected to visit it next year. Tiangong means "heavenly palace" in Chinese. The immediate plan is for the module to operate in an autonomous...

DURHAM (WTVD) -- Did a member of a Durham police SWAT team go too far when he shot and killed a dog during a raid in April? Some say it was unnecessary force. ABC11 cameras captured the incident at a home on Dunstan Avenue April 12. Officers were looking for Pete Moses and Vania Sisk. According to search warrants, Moses is a suspect in the disappearance of a woman and a 5-year-old boy. Sisk is the boy's mother.

DAYTON, TX (KTRK) -- Residents in a Dayton neighborhood say they are still in shock after hearing that someone shot and killed a dog that was loved by nearly everyone. The incident is a real blow to residents. Fred -- a four-year-old black Labrador -- had a family, but it seems everyone in this close-knit community loved him. Hope Havard was Fred's owner, but he wasn't just her pet. Fred was known to roam the streets of the neighborhood, and Havard said her neighbors treated him like a member of their own families, too. "He was a really good dog....

A D.C. police officer shot a dog in a gated community of Foxhall Crescents in D.C. Tuesday afternoon after it menaced the officer and a contractor, police said. The dog, a Chocolate Lab named Russell, left when the officer approached, police said, but returned as the officer and contractor were talking. The dog displayed an "aggressive posture" and the officer shot the dog, police said.

The parents of a U.S. Marine killed in Afghanistan are adopting the bomb-sniffing dog who the military says loyally rushed to their son's side when he was fatally shot. ... Brief excerpt per ap rules.

The teeming trillions of bacteria in the digestive tracts of mice have been shown to affect the animals' brain development and behaviour.Mice bred in sterile environments without these "gut flora" were seen to be more adventurous and less anxious than mice with normal gut flora. The research adds weight to the idea that gut bacteria are a critical part of the overall development of mammals.

CHARLESTON, South Carolina (Reuters) – In a small laboratory on an upper floor of the basic science building at the Medical University of South Carolina, Vladimir Mironov, M.D., Ph.D., has been working for a decade to grow meat. A developmental biologist and tissue engineer, Dr. Mironov, 56, is one of only a few scientists worldwide involved in bioengineering "cultured" meat. It's a product he believes could help solve future global food crises resulting from shrinking amounts of land available for growing meat the old-fashioned way ... on the hoof. Growth of "in-vitro" or cultured meat is also under way in...

A woman says she suffered permanent damage to her right hand and arm after she was attacked by a Black Labrador named Tank. Trena Wells filed a lawsuit on Sept. 14 in Madison County Circuit Court against Matthew and Amy Cooper of Moro. Wells says she was a guest in the Coopers' home at 515 West Moro Dr. when the couples' Labrador retriever Tank escaped from the back yard and ran onto Moro Drive. The dog was struck around 3:30 p.m. by a white truck. Wells says the dog then ran back into the Cooper's home and attacked and bit...

A ProPublica investigation published Tuesday raises concerns about a biotech laboratory being built in Malaysia that will handle deadly pathogens such as anthrax, plague, SARS and the Ebola virus. The stated mission of lab, developed by the Malaysian government with the Maryland-based firm Emergent BioSolutions, is to produce vaccines against fatal and contagious agents that could be used in terrorist attacks. But critics worry that the facility could be used for offensive, instead of defensive, purposes in a country that has been tied to several terrorist plots over the past decade. They question "the security, safety and wisdom of building...

When Alain Reyes’s hair suddenly fell out in a freakish band circling his head, he was not the only one worried about his health. His co-workers at a shipping company avoided him, and his boss sent him home, fearing he had a contagious disease. Only later would Mr. Reyes learn what had caused him so much physical and emotional grief: he had received a radiation overdose during a test for a stroke at a hospital in Glendale, Calif. Other patients getting the procedure, called a CT brain perfusion scan, were being overdosed, too — 37 of them just up the...

The residence of a University of Central Florida student housed a cache of explosive chemicals and a drug den, deputies said. Investigators on Wednesday found jugs of corrosive acids and other chemicals inside the student's Campus Crossings apartment in east Orange County. They also seized cocaine, Ecstasy and oxycodone tablets, methamphetamine and dozens of glass beakers and flasks used to 'cook' meth — a highly addictive drug. William Cecil told Orange County sheriff's deputies that he used the compounds to make amphetamine, another controlled drug. He also rattled off a tally of substances he kept under his bed that read...

SNIPPET: "Harare, March 30, 2010: The United States government officially handed over a new, upgraded bio-safety level 2+ laboratory to the Minister of Health, Dr. Henry Madzorera. The facility will enhance the capacity of the Ministry of Health and Child Welfare to offer clinical and diagnostic testing as well as research on indigenous/exotic agents which may cause serious disease after inhalation, such as Mycobacterium tuberculosis (TB),typhoid (Salmonella Typhi),anthrax (Bacillus anthracis) and the H1N1 virus. Speaking after a tour of the facilities with the Minister of Health and Child Welfare, U.S. Ambassador to Zimbabwe, Charles Ray described the cooperation between the...

CLEARWATER — If a dog were to accompany a restaurant chef to work, most people would have no problem with a state inspector kicking the dog to the curb. But when the food vendor happens to be a gas station, and its offerings stop at cans of Coke and bags of Doritos, and the dog is a charismatic chocolate Labrador named Cody, the response evolves into a public outcry — against the state. "Thumbs down on the Department of Agriculture. Tackle some real problems. Human customers bring more contamination — not to mention danger — than a well-cared-for pooch," said...

THREE Australian experts are making waves in the medical community with a report suggesting swine flu may have developed because of a lab error in making vaccines. "It could have happened in a lab where somebody became affected and then travelled with it," virologist Dr Adrian Gibbs said yesterday. Conjuring up a vision of Frankenstein's fictional monster fleeing the laboratory, he added: "Things do get out of labs and this has to be explored. There needs to be more research done in this area. "At the moment there is no way of distinguishing where swine flu has come from." The...

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The handsome Yale lab technician Raymond Clark quizzed by cops in connection with the grisly slaying of brilliant grad student Annie Le allegedly forced an ex-girlfriend to have sex with him, according to a new report. The New Haven Independent reports on its Web site today that Clark dated the woman, who has not been identified, about six years ago when they were both in high school. According to a 2003 police report obtained by the newspaper earlier this week, she told police he forced her to have sex with him and he “confronted” her -- when against his wishes...

By John Gever, Senior Editor Military doctors can use a portable polymerase chain reaction (PCR) testing device to diagnose novel H1N1 flu infections in troops overseas, the FDA announced. The emergency authorization was approved "to better protect our troops," said FDA Commissioner Margaret A. Hamburg, MD, in a statement. The device, called JBAIDS (Joint Biological Agent Identification and Diagnostic System), is a rugged, suitcase-sized instrument that can run PCR-based molecular diagnostic tests. It has been under development for several years by a consortium of military health research centers, the CDC, and academic medical laboratories. The development program began in the...

The Labrador Retriever certainly has a lock on the hearts of American dog lovers. For the eighteenth straight year, the Lab has topped the American Kennel Club's list of the nation's 10 most popular purebred dog breeds. The top 10 dogs are ranked as follows: Labrador Retriever, Yorkshire Terrier, German Shepherd Dog, Golden Retriever, Beagle, Boxer, Dachshund, Bulldog, Poodle and Shi Tzu.

WASHINGTON – The government has recommended a site in Kansas for a new $450 million laboratory to study biological threats such as anthrax and foot-and-mouth disease, officials said Wednesday.

‘Germ warfare’ fear over African monkeys taken to Iran Daniel Foggo Hundreds of endangered monkeys are being taken from the African bush and sent to a “secretive” laboratory in Iran for scientific experiments. An undercover inquiry by The Sunday Times has revealed that wild monkeys, which are banned from experiments in Britain, are being freely supplied in large numbers to laboratories in other parts of the world. All will undergo invasive and maybe painful experiments leading ultimately to their death. One Tanzanian dealer, Nazir Manji, who runs African Primates, an animal-supplying company based in Dar es Salaam, said that in...