A solar-powered airplane finished crossing the United States on Saturday, landing in New York City after flying over the Statue of Liberty during its historic bid to circle the globe, the project team said. The spindly, single-seat experimental aircraft, dubbed Solar Impulse 2, arrived at New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport at about 4 a.m. local time after it took off about five hours beforehand at Lehigh Valley International Airport in Pennsylvania, the team reported on the airplane's website. Such a pleasure to land in New York! For the 14th time we celebrate sustainability," said the project's co-founder Andre Borschberg on Twitter after flying over the city and the Statue of Liberty during the 14th leg of the trip around the globe. The Swiss team flying the aircraft in a campaign to build support for clean energy technologies hopes eventually to complete its circumnavigation in Abu Dhabi, where the journey began in March 2015. The solar cr...
Prof George Church and colleagues used a technique called Crispr to alter the DNA of pig cells to create a better match for humans. The early work, in the journal Science, aims to address concerns about rejection and infection by viruses embedded in pig DNA. If successful, it could be an answer to the shortage of human donor organs. Years more research is needed before genetically modified pigs could be bred to grow organs for people. Gene editing Crispr is a relatively new scientific tool that lets scientists snip and play around with the code of life - DNA. Prof Church, from Harvard University, used it to inactivate a retrovirus present in the pig cell line.This porcine endogenous retrovirus is potentially risky because it can infect human cells - at least in the lab. In tests on early pig embryos, Prof Church was able to eliminate all 62 copies of porcine endogenous retroviruses from the pig cells using Crispr. Next, he checked i...