HANOI -- A 23-year-old woman has died from H5N1 bird flu in northern Vietnam, state-run radio said on Friday, the country's fourth human fatality this year. The woman, from Thanh Hoa province, fell sick and died earlier this month, and tests showed she had been infected by the H5N1 virus, Voice of Vietnam said, quoting the Health Ministry.

Scientists have achieved what they describe as a major milestone in animal genetics: decoding the genome of the cow. The findings provide “tantalizing clues to explain ‘the essence of bovinity,’ ” according to an essay in the journal Science, which is publishing several articles on the work.

The Obama administration will develop federal aquaculture regulations, including a system that could permit offshore fish farming in the ocean waters for the first time, Commerce Secretary Gary Locke said today.

Scientists from the University of Maryland have published their assembly of the domestic cow (Bos taurus), an important new resource for the genetics community. The new version of the cow genome improves considerably on other assemblies, in terms of both completeness and accuracy.