China is just a week away from launching its third manned spaceflight into orbit and apparently hoping for a sell-out crowd.

The country is selling tickets to watch for the planned late night Sept. 25 launch of its Shenzhou 7 spacecraft, but buyer beware: Each seat goes for about 15,000 yuan, or about US$2,206 and ticket buyers will need to provide identification and a reference from their employer to vie for the limited spaces, according to the Chinese Web site China Daily and the newspaper Wenhui Daily.

While hefty, the ticket price apparently includes a flight to China’s Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in the northwestern Gansu province, as well as a four-day stay to watch the planned space shot, state media reported.

China first invited space fans to buy tickets for a rocket launch last year, when the country launched the Chang’e 1 moon probe from the Xichang launch center in southwestern Sichuan province. But those tickets went for about 800 yuan, or US$117, per person. Some 2,000 people watched the lunar mission’s launch from a pair of platforms about 1.5 miles (2.5 km) away, according to press reports.

But the northwestern-located Jiuquan launch site is much more remote than Xichang, and offers fewer amenities and other tourist hot spots, China Daily reported.

China’s Shenzhou 7 mission will launch atop a Long March 2F rocket carrying the first-three man crew for the country. During what is expected to be a three or four day mission, Chinese astronauts Zhai Zhigang, Liu Boming and Jing Haipeng are expected to fly China’s third manned spaceflight and make the country’s first-ever spacewalk.

Zhai, a fighter pilot with the Chinese Air Force, is billed as the one making the 40-minute spacewalk, and will apparently toss out a small satellite designed to beam images of the landmark orbital excursion to Earth, according to Chinese media reports. China is the third nation, after Russia and the U.S., to launch humans into space. It launched a one-man mission (Shenzhou 5) in 2003 and a two-man flight (Shenzhou 6, pictured here) in 2005.

Chinese space officials, meanwhile, are apparently planning their new spaceport - the Wenchang Satellite Launch Center on Hainan Island - with an eye towards space enthusiasts.

According to China Daily, the China National Space Administration expects some 21,000 people to be living around the Wenchang spaceport by 2010, which should also sport enough surrounding development to handle up to 12,000 space fans.

So that’s good, if fairly expensive, news for Chinese space aficionados.

Incidentally, China isn’t the only country to sell tickets for space launch viewers.

Here in the U.S., you can put down cash to watch NASA launch space shuttle missions from the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Fla., like next month’s Atlantis flight to the Hubble Space Telescope. But you’ve got to get yourself to Florida first.

You can also watch a Russian Soyuz rocket launch astronauts toward the International Space Station from the Central Asian spaceport of Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, courtesy of the folks at the Virginia-based firm Space Adventures. Like China’s Shenzhou 7 offer, Space Adventures has an all-inclusive travel package (it is a long way to Baikonur, after all) for the upcoming Oct. 12 launch of Expedition 18 astronauts and millionaire computer game developer Richard Garriott, who is paying US$30 million for a short space station trip.

• China’s First Spacewalk: A Prelude of Things to Come
• Shenzhou Rising: China’s Second Manned Spaceflight
• Special Report: Emerging China, Engaging China

The International Space Station fired its rocket engines to dodge space junk for the first time in five years on Wednesday.

According to a daily NASA status report, the European-built cargo ship Jules Verne docked at the station’s aft end fired its rocket engines in a 5-minute, 2-second maneuver to avoid the potential collision with a piece of orbital trash. The last time the station performed the so-called “Debris Avoidance Maneuver” was on May 30, 2003, the report added.

The offending piece of space hardware: Object #33246, part of a Russian satellite formerly known as Kosmos-2421.

NASA projections predicted that, without the avoidance maneuver, the space station and chunk of orbital debris would likely pass silently by each other with just under a mile (1.627 km) of clearance between them. The probability of an impact: 0.0139 (That’s 1-in-72 chance odds, according to NASA, if you’re counting).

Mission requirements call for an avoidance maneuver if there’s a greater than 1-in-10,000 chance that a piece of orbital debris could collide with the space station.

For you rocket hounds, the unmanned Jules Verne cargo ship - Europe’s first Automated Transfer Vehicle - fired two of its four rocket thrusters at 12:11 p.m. EDT (1611 GMT) on Wednesday to put some more elbow room between the station and Kosmos-2421 remnant. Jules Verne is due to undock from the aft end of the station’s Russian-built Zvezda service module on Sept. 5.

And if you’re still interested, if Kosmos-2421 (also known as Cosmos-2421) was a Russian Navy electronic ocean surveillance satellite that apparently shut down and began breaking apart earlier this March, according to NASA’s Orbital Debris Program Office.

As of June, the satellite had undergone three different fragmentation events that left a total of 500 or more bits of debris floating around an orbit 242-257 miles (390-415 km) above Earth. The space station typically flies in an orbit about 220 miles (354 km) above Earth.

• Video - Inside Europe’s Jules Verne Cargo Ship
• Video - ESA’s Special ISS Delivery
• Video - A Successful Satellite Kill

Scientists plan to make “cybrids” by putting human DNA into cow eggs.

The British government gave the go-ahead this week for two separate groups to experiment with the process. Scientists will “inject human DNA into empty eggs from cows, to create embryos known as cytoplasmic hybrids that are 99.9 per cent human in genetic terms,” according to The Times of London.

The government had planned to ban such cybrid research, but scientists protested, leading to the reversal.

U.S. Senators Sam Brownback (R-Kan.) and Mary L. Landrieu (D-La.) lashed out today. Last November, they introduced the Human-Animal Hybrid Prohibition Act, S. 2358, to prevent the crossing of humans and animals because they say it unethically “[blurs] the line between human and animal.”

The argument is an emotional and speculative one, scientists would say, conjuring images of lab freaks gone wild that no reputable researcher envisions. Nobody has suggested the cybrids be raised and let loose in London (or Manhattan, for that matter, where the movie will likely be set. I mean, whoever heard of London being taken over by cybrids?).

“Creating human-animal hybrids could irrevocably harm the basic human genetic makeup and intentionally or unintentional change what it means to be human,” Brownback said in a statement today. “What was once only science fiction is now becoming a reality, and we need to ensure that experimentation and subsequent ramifications do not outpace ethical discussion and societal decisions. History does not look kindly on those who violate the dignity of the human person. The UK’s decision to allow the creation of human-animal hybrids is short-sighted, and further underscores our need here at home to enact the common-sense Brownback-Landrieu Human-Animal Hybrid Prohibition Act.”

If Brownback and Landrieu have their way, science might proceed quite differently on the two sides of the pond.

“Here in the United States, we simply cannot open the door to the unethical blending of humans and animals, which the British government seems intent on doing,” Landrieu said. “It creates an unnatural species and is a clear line we cannot cross. This unsound science also presents potential global health hazards due to increased risk of disease spreading to humans from animals.”

Meanwhile, U.S. scientists have produced embryos that are clones of two men, another possible step toward useful stem cells for research.

They used “ordinary cells from an adult human can be used to make cloned embryos mature enough to produce stem cells, the researchers said. But because they haven’t produced those stem cells yet, experts reacted coolly,” according to AP.

All this sort of work is intended to lead, eventually, to disease cures by creating alternatives to human embryonic stem cells that will assist in other research. Embryonic stem cells can become any cell in the body, so the idea is that tapping their potential could help build replacement organs or infuse a person with fresh brain or blood cells or simply provide vital information about how diseases work. Much of the potential remains unproven and cures for intractable ills could be years away. But scientists agree that embryonic stem cells are a crucial line of research to pursue in efforts to cure Parkinson’s disease, Alzheimer’s and others.

• Lab Freaks: Vote for Your Favorite

The National Science Board rolled out Science and Engineering Indicators (SEI) 2008 today - a biennial report on the state of science and engineering research and education in the United States.

The report also documents public attitudes about science and technology - and there are some observations — albeit few of them — regarding space.

For example, the report notes that, while support for federal research investment is at historically high levels, other kinds of federal spending generate even stronger public support.

“Support for increased spending is greater in numerous program areas, including education (73%), health care (72%), assistance to the poor (68%), environmental protection (67%), and Social Security (61%),” the report explains.

And here’s a kick-in-the-head for space fans: “Scientific research ranks about on a par with mass transit (38%) and well ahead of space exploration (14%) and assistance to foreign countries (10%) in the proportion of the U.S. population favoring increased spending.”

The SEI report also points out that television and the Internet are Americans’ primary sources of science and technology information. While the Internet is favored below the TV tube for info, “to learn about specific scientific issues, more than half of Americans choose the Internet as their main information source.”

Regarding environmental quality here on Earth, the report observes that in 2007, 43% of Americans expressed “strong concern” about the environment, up from 35% in 2005. However, concern about the environment ranks somewhere in the middle among 12 issues. Global warming has recently become more prominent among environmental issues of concern to the public, the report states, although it still ranks 8th among 10 issues.

The Science and Engineering Indicators 2008 is prepared by the National Science Foundation’s Division of Science Resources Statistics on behalf of the National Science Board.

Dig into the just-released report by dialing in your Internet feed-line to:

http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/seind08/

There might be some seductive science behind the world-famous pipes of Barry White — the “Walrus of Love” — and other low-voiced males.

Researchers asked Tanzanian women of the Hadza people to pick a voice they preferred from sample of men saying “hello” in Swahili. Most of the time, they went for the deeper voices, according to a Jan. 3, 2008 article by Sean Bowditch of NPR. Turns out that men with deeper voices also had more children than the average Hadza daddy.

Harvard anthropologist Coren Apicella commented on the curious data in Bowditch’s piece:

“Why there’s this relationship, we’re not entirely sure yet,” Apicella said. “It could be that these men have greater access to mates. Maybe these men that have deeper voices have higher levels of testosterone. Or maybe they’re better hunters and they’re able to bring more food home to their wives.”

Whatever the case, other scientists agree that voices may be “signaling some biologically relevant information to potential mates.” Apicella and her colleagues aren’t yet sure, however, if the the deep-voice preference extends to other cultures — including the United States.

Angry,  hostile, Type A behavior, depressed … do you know anyone who *doesn’t* fit one of the psychological profiles linked to heart disease?

The latest out of USC — chronic anxiety.

If you’re running for president, you’re required to say “America has the best healthcare in the world, but …” Statistics differ:

The United States is last among 19 countries when it comes to deaths that could have been prevented by access to timely and effective healthcare, according to new research supported by The Commonwealth Fund and published in the January/February issue of the journal Health Affairs. The study is published today.

If the United States had performed as well as the top three countries ( France, Japan, and Australia) out of the 19 industrialized countries in the study there would be 101,000 fewer deaths per year here, the researches calculated.

While other countries saw these types of deaths decline by an average of 16 percent, we only a 4 percent decline. We’re also behind Austria, Canada, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Sweden and the United Kingdom.

“It is notable that all countries have improved substantially except the U.S.,” said study leader Ellen Nolte of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. She and colleague Martin McKee note that “it is difficult to disregard the observation that the slow decline in U.S. amenable mortality has coincided with an increase in the uninsured population, an issue that is now receiving renewed attention in several states and among presidential candidates from both parties.”

In the presidential debate the other night, Republican candidate Mike Huckabee argued that America’s healthcare system is broken because it focuses on treatment rather than prevention. While the other candidates spoke about whether and to what extent healthcare should be funded by the government vs. the individual, Huckabee noted the white elephant in the discussion:

“We do need to get serious about preventive health care instead of chasing more and more dollars to treat chronic disease, which currently gobbles up 80 percent of our health care costs, and yet is often avoidable,” Huckabee said.

Access to healthcare is key. While many workers get useful coverage, many low-income, part-time, and unemployed people do not. That’s one reason infant mortality in the United States is among the worst of all industrialized nations, as shown in a study last year. Another 2006 study found that in every single health category measured — such as circulatory disease, diabetes and cancer — Americans had a higher rate of sickness than the British.

More than a year ago, we told you bedbugs were making a comeback:

Absent from the U.S. for so long that some thought they were a myth, bedbugs are back. Entomologists and pest control professionals are reporting a dramatic increase in infestations throughout the country, and no one knows exactly why.

So this week’s news is no surprise, but New York City is, well, New York City:
The blood-sucking nocturnal creatures have infested a Park Ave. penthouse, an artist’s colony in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, a $25 million Central Park West duplex and a theater on Broadway, according to victims, exterminators and elected officials.

Said Jeff Eisenberg, owner of Pest Away Exterminating on the upper West Side, in the Daily News article: “In the last six months, I’ve treated maternity wards, five-star hotels, movie theaters, taxi garages, investment banks, private schools, white-shoe law firms, Brooklyn apartments in Greenpoint, DUMBO and Cobble Hill, even the chambers of a federal judge.”

Every excursion across my small swath of suburbia now involves dealing with multiple erratic drivers, swerving dangerously to pass, tailgating, and generally looking as though they don’t realize there are other cars on the road. Truth is, they don’t: They’re talking on a cell phone or, worse, texting, and studies show they really aren’t aware of their surroundings. The problem has grown markedly worse in the past couple years as the devices (count iPods and GPS mappers now, too) have become ubiquitous.

In the UK, it’s illegal.

“Drivers who adjust sat-navs, tinker with MP3 music players such as iPods or send text messages at the wheel could also face prison sentences,” according to new guidelines from prosecuters, detailed in The Telegraph.

Studies clearly show that texting or phoning while driving is dangerous, about like driving drunk.

Of course, motor vehicle laws do not always prevent dangerous behavior. From The Telegraph article: “Using a hand-held mobile while driving was outlawed in 2003, but it is estimated that half a million motorists flout the ban each day.”

Still, the ban should span the pond. Many motorists flout our seat belt law, too, but that doesn’t mean the law should never have been instituted.

I’m not a huge fan of Guinness myself, but there’s some good news if you are. A pint of the famous beer a day prevents heart clots (which can trigger heart attacks) as well as an aspirin, according to a study featured in this BBC News article.

 Our own Robin Lloyd details the steps that lead to a heart attack, which may seem sudden, but actually develop over time.

The antioxidants found in the Guinness’s dark brew are responsible for its protective effect, the research in the BBC article found. Other foods and drinks that are sources of these beneficial molecules are red wine, coffee, fruits and vegetables.