Tuesday, March 17, 2015

Confirmation of construction of China's second aircraft carrier with electromagnetic airplane launching

Confirmation of construction of China's second aircraft carrier with electromagnetic airplane launching
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Several senior Chinese officials have confirmed that China is building its second aircraft carrier and will likely adopt an improved launch system for aircraft on the ship, a Chinese-language daily in Hong Kong reported Monday.

The Hong Kong Commercial Daily (香港商報) cited Liu Xiaojiang (劉曉江), a former political commissar of the People's Liberation Army (PLA) Navy, as saying that the government's industrial and manufacturing agencies are now in charge of the ship's construction.

Liu said that compared with the first carrier, the Liaoning(遼寧號), which was commissioned in September 2012, several improvements are being made to the second ship but concrete details are only known within those agencies responsible for the project.

The report also cited Ding Haichun (丁海春), deputy political commissar of the PLA's Navy, as saying that after the completion of the ship's construction, it will be turned over to the Navy for training maneuvers.

Electromagnetic aircraft launch systems (EMALS) require on the order of 60 megawatts of power. This would tend to indicate that the second aircraft carrier would be nuclear powered.

US electromagnetic aircraft carrier launch system






"I think if we need carriers, the more the better. The key is how much funding do we have," he said.

The reports also cited Ma Weiming (馬偉明), an expert in electrical and electronics engineering, as saying that the new carrier's system to launch aircraft was proceeding smoothly.

He stressed that the system was no longer inferior to and might even be more advanced than that used by the United States, whose catapult takeoff service technology is currently the best in the world.

China's CCTV reported last week that the catapult being tested in China to help planes take off quickly is more efficient than the "ski-jump" ramp used to launch aircraft on China's first carrier.

Li Li (李莉), a military expert in China, has said both steam and electromagnetic catapults are used to launch aircraft, with the United States the first country to use the electromagnetic launch system.

SOURCE -Focus Taiwan
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Findings of Tulane Biosecurity Breach Investigation

Findings of Tulane Biosecurity Breach Investigation

Gram Negative Burkholderia pseudomalleiOfficials with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), along with the U. S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) have completed their joint investigation into how the Burkholderia pseudomallei bacteria may have been inadvertently transferred from a secure, select agent laboratory into animals from the breeding colony of the Tulane National Primate Research Center (TNPRC).
Although the specific transmission event has not been identified, plausible mechanisms were uncovered during the investigation.
CDC and APHIS inspectors identified lapses in the appropriate use of personal protective equipment; specifically, the correct use of outer wear to prevent contamination of clothing beneath them, which could have led to the bacteria clinging to inner garments and getting carried out of the select agent lab where research was being conducted with the bacteria on mice.
The bacteria could have been transferred this way to the breeding colony where the non-human primates resided and/or to the clinic where routine examinations and treatments were administered.
Additionally, CDC and APHIS inspectors determined that Tulane primate center staff frequently entered the select agent lab without appropriate protective clothing, which would increase the risk of bringing the bacteria out of the lab or becoming infected themselves.
Since Feb. 11, 2015, all select agent research at the Tulane primate facility has been suspended and will remain so until Tulane officials demonstrate satisfactorily to CDC and APHIS inspectors that:
  • Entity-wide procedures exist to ensure animals accidentally exposed in the future are managed appropriately
  • All personal protective equipment procedures are thoroughly reviewed and revised appropriately to lessen the risk of future breaches;
  • All Tulane primate center personnel are trained on any new or revised protective clothing procedures
  • Improved entry and exit procedures to the outside enclosures housing non-human primates are in place to stop any further transmission among the animals.
The investigation was initiated when two primates at the Tulane center were diagnosed with Melioidosis (Whitmore’s Disease), a bacterial illness of animals and humans more commonly diagnosed in tropical areas of the world and not found in North America.
CDC laboratory analysis completed in mid-January determined that the strain of bacteria that sickened the non-human primates was identical to the one being used in research at the Tulane center.  The lab results led CDC and APHIS officials to determine the bacteria, a Tier 1 select agent regulated for research, was not contained.
Source: CDC statement, adapted.
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United Kingdom Declared Free of Ebola Virus Disease

United Kingdom Declared Free of Ebola Virus Disease

Ebola Virus Research Sudan Strain
Image courtesy of NIAID
The United Kingdom is now free of Ebola virus disease after successfully treating an infected health-care worker returned to Glasgow from volunteer work at an Ebola treatment center in Sierra Leone.
The health-care worker, who had displayed no symptoms of Ebola while travelling home on Dec. 28, 2014 developed a fever and myalgia the next day and was placed in strict isolation at the specialist Brownlee Unit for Infectious Diseases on the Gartnavel Hospital campus.
Laboratory testing confirmed that the health-care worker had EVD and WHO was notified of the case. The patient was transferred for treatment in isolation at the Royal Free hospital in London Dec. 30 and remained there until fully recovered.
All passengers who travelled on the same flights as the health-care worker from Freetown, Sierra Leone, to Casablanca, Morocco, and then to London Heathrow and Glasgow were contacted and monitored for any symptoms of EVD for 21 days. By 18 January, they all had completed the 21-day follow-up period without developing EVD.
On 23 January 2015, the patient tested negative twice for EVD, and was therefore discharged from hospital on 24 January 2015. On 7 March 2015, 42 days had passed since the health-care worker had tested negative for the second time using RT-PCR testing.
The United Kingdom is therefore now declared free of EVD on the basis of the WHO guidelines.
WHO commended the United Kingdom for the measures put in place to identify and trace all potential contacts and to prevent further transmission of the Ebola virus. These measures included the exhaustive tracing of fellow air passengers and the implementation of all necessary preventive and control measures.
Source: WHO update, adapted.
Editor’s Note: The day after this story published, a British military healthcare worker was infected while working in Sierra Leone and flown back to the UK for treatment, arriving March 12.
   

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American and British Aid Workers Infected With Ebola in Sierra Leone

Europe |​​NYT Now

American and British Aid Workers Infected With Ebola in Sierra Leone

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    A worker from Partners In Health, the prominent American medical aid organization, and an emergency worker from the British military have been infected with the deadly Ebola virus in Sierra Leone, health officials said Thursday.
    The Partners In Health worker was the first in that group to be infected since it made an ambitious commitment last fall to help combat Ebola in West Africa, and was the first American health worker in months to get the disease while working in the region. The infections of both the American and Briton served as a reminder that the scourge that has ravaged Sierra Leone, Liberia and Guinea for the past year is far from defeated, even as the number of new cases has declined drastically.
    The National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Md., said in a statement that the American had been ordered flown back to the United States in isolation on a chartered plane, to be admitted on Friday to the N.I.H. hospital in Bethesda. The statement did not identify the worker by name or affiliation, and the person’s precise condition was not known. But other officials in Sierra Leone confirmed the person had been part of a Partners In Health team caring for Ebola patients in the Port Loko district.

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    “They’ve been very great. We are saddened by the fact that one of them has been infected,” said Sidie Tunis, communications director for Sierra Leone’s National Ebola Response Center. “They helped us a lot to control the virus in Sierra Leone. It’s not a pleasant moment for us that one of them is infected.”
    Partners In Health, led by Dr. Paul Farmer and Ophelia Dahl, is known for its work in impoverished countries. It opened Ebola treatment units for the first time last year, and has reported sending over 250 American health professionals. In Sierra Leone, the group joined with an existing organization, the Wellbody Alliance, to care for Ebola patients.
    The N.I.H. hospital has treated one other Ebola patient: Nina Pham, a nurse infected while caring for a Liberian patient in Dallas. She recovered. Emory University Hospital in Atlanta and Nebraska Medical Center in Omaha have also successfully treated American health workers who were infected in Africa and flown back to the United States.
    Earlier Thursday, British officials said a Royal Air Force plane left Sierra Leone carrying three British military health workers, of whom one had tested positive for Ebola. The other two were under observation for signs of infection, officials said. All three were taken to the Royal Free Hospital in northwest London, which has a specialized unit to treat Ebola patients.
    The World Health Organization said Thursday that the number of deaths in the Ebola epidemic had surpassed 10,000. While the number of new cases has fallen in all three countries in recent months — and reached zero in Liberia last week — the transmission of the disease has been a resilient problem in the other two.
    Denise Grady and Rick Gladstone contributed reporting.
    A version of this article appears in print on March 13, 2015, on page A6 of the New York edition with the headline: 2 Aid Workers in West Africa Are Infected With Virus. Order Reprints| Today's Paper|Subscribe

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