Latest news with #ChineseAcademyOfSciences
South China Morning Post
4 days ago
- Politics
- South China Morning Post
China doubles down on building telescopes in Thailand to monitor Earth using space signals
China has completed its first overseas new-generation radio telescope in northern Thailand , bolstering a global scientific network that monitors deep space signals and tracks subtle shifts in the Earth's rotation and tectonic plates. Advertisement The 13-metre (43-foot) radio antenna, jointly developed by the Shanghai Astronomical Observatory and the National Astronomical Research Institute of Thailand, was officially inaugurated in Chiang Mai on May 16, according to the observatory's WeChat account. Together with a second telescope under construction in Songkhla, southern Thailand, the station will enhance deep-space tracking and high-precision Earth monitoring, contributing to more accurate GPS, climate research and earthquake forecasting. 11:05 Space race elevates Asia in new world order Space race elevates Asia in new world order Ding Chibiao, vice-president of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, described the Chiang Mai telescope as 'a role model of scientific cooperation between China and Thailand'. During the inauguration ceremony, he said its launch held special significance as the two countries marked the 50th anniversary of diplomatic relations. Supachai Pathumnakul, permanent secretary of Thailand's higher education and science ministry, said the telescope reflected the growing scientific partnership between the two nations and would deliver high quality data for global research efforts. According to the Shanghai observatory, the project began with a memorandum of understanding in 2017. After years of delays caused by the Covid-19 pandemic , the telescope captured its first signal in August last year. Advertisement By April, it had completed a full 24-hour observation session – including enhanced measurements of Earth's rotation – as part of a network of similar Chinese telescopes. The data met the expected precision benchmarks.
South China Morning Post
27-05-2025
- Science
- South China Morning Post
French Lamarckism beats Darwinism in China's groundbreaking study on evolution
In a fundamental challenge to more than a century of Darwinian dominance, Chinese scientists have revived a long-dismissed evolutionary theory by proving that acquired traits can shape heredity – no DNA changes required. According to a landmark study published in the esteemed scientific journal Cell, rice plants subjected to cold stress passed on an adaptive tolerance to low temperatures across five generations, bypassing the genetic mutations that are central to Darwinism. The breakthrough reignites the 19th-century rivalry between French naturalist Jean-Baptiste Lamarck – whose 'giraffe theory' proposed that organisms can pass on learned survival traits – and Charles Darwin's ideas about random genetic variation. The research not only mirrored Lamarck's famed giraffe-neck parable, by pinpointing heritable DNA methylation changes as the driver of cold adaptation in crops, it also challenges modern biology to reconcile epigenetics with evolution's core principles. The team, led by researchers from the Chinese Academy of Sciences , showed that rice varieties from China's frosty northeast exhibited these stable, non-genetic adaptations – positioning Lamarckism as a potent, if partial, force in evolution's playbook. 'We demonstrate that environmentally induced epigenetic variation contributes to the inheritance of an acquired characteristic,' the team said, in a paper published in the peer-reviewed life sciences journal on May 22.
Gizmodo
24-05-2025
- Science
- Gizmodo
Researchers Claim Ancient Chinese Star Catalog Is the Oldest of Its Kind—But Not Everyone's Convinced
Humans have been stargazing for thousands—possibly hundreds of thousands of years. Ancient people around the globe looked to the heavens for physical and spiritual guidance. Dozens and dozens of generations later, their descendants are now arguing over which civilization created the oldest known visual star catalog in the world. Researchers from the Chinese Academy of Sciences' National Astronomical Observatories claim that Shi's Star Catalog, the oldest known star catalog in China, is actually the earliest known star catalog, period. They reached this conclusion using a technique that accounts for potential human errors made thousands of years ago. If their results prove to be true, it would mean that Shi's Star Catalog is centuries older than the other first place contender—the one created by Greek astronomer Hipparchus. But not everyone in the scientific community is convinced. 'In comparison to the observation epochs of other ancient star catalogs worldwide, the Shi's Star Catalog predates even the oldest Western star catalogs, affirming its status as the oldest star catalog in the world,' the researchers wrote in a study posted to the preprint server arXiv in April. Because Earth's axis wobbles, the location of stars in the night sky changes over the centuries in a phenomenon called precession. Researchers can use Earth's precession to date ancient visual star catalogs by calculating the difference between historical records of the night sky and what our stars look like now. Shi's Star Catalog, however, has been infamously difficult to date, not least because this one catalog depicts star positions that seem to span multiple centuries. In the preprint study, the researchers outline a number of previously suggested dates: around 360 BCE; around 360 BCE with an update around 200 CE; around 440 BCE with an update around 160 CE; sometime between 100 BCE and 70 BCE; and during the seventh century CE. 'A multitude of perspectives exist regarding the observational timeframe of the Shi's Star Catalog, with no definitive consensus reached,' the researchers admitted. As such, they decided to analyze the catalog's 120 stars with the Generalized Hough Transform method—an algorithmic imaging technique that 'statistically accommodates errors in ancient coordinates and discrepancies between ancient and modern stars, addressing limitations in prior methods,' they explained. This approach seems to confirm that Shi's Star Catalog was first drafted around 355 BCE and then updated around 125 CE. 'In comparison, the Western tradition's oldest known catalog, the Ptolemaic Star Catalog (2nd century CE), likely derives from the Hipparchus Star Catalog (2nd century BCE). Thus, Shi's Star Catalog is identified as the world's oldest known star catalog,' they added. Some scientists, however, have a different theory: The instrument used to record Shi's Star Catalog was off by one degree. Previous studies adjusting for this assumption date Shi's Star Catalog around or after 103 BCE, as reported by Science. Certain historians look favorably on this later date because it aligns the catalog's use of spherical coordinates more closely with the Chinese invention of the armillary sphere (a spherical mathematical instrument used to track the movement of celestial bodies around Earth) and their adoption of a spherical cosmological model, both of which took place in the first century BCE, according to Science. Suggesting that people used spherical coordinates hundreds of years before the invention of the armillary sphere, as the researchers do in the recent study, would be like finding 'a receipt from a gas station and somebody wants to say it's from 1700,' Daniel Patrick Morgan, a historian at France's Center for Research on East Asian Civilizations who was not involved with the study, told Science. Future research may provide more answers. Whether or not the recent study proves to be true, it's worth noting that the Western world's Eurocentric approach has historically undervalued achievements made elsewhere, including those in ancient China. Plus, the ancient Babylonian seventh century BCE Astronomical Diaries blow both European and Asian astronomical artifacts out of the water, even though the tablets list astronomical observations via text, not visuals.
Free Malaysia Today
22-05-2025
- Health
- Free Malaysia Today
A new battery can generate electricity using bacteria
Electroactive bacteria have properties that enable them to generate electricity. (Envato Elements pic) PARIS : Researchers in China have developed a completely new form of bio-battery based on bacteria, capable of generating its own electricity and recharging itself for several cycles. This major breakthrough in miniaturised bio-batteries was developed by researchers at the Shenzhen Institutes of Advanced Technology (SIAT) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and Shenzhen University. Their research is published in the journal Advanced Materials. This innovative bio-battery uses electroactive bacteria encapsulated in an alginate-based hydrogel to generate electricity. These living hydrogels are 3D-printed and can therefore be customised. For the moment, it's a very small device (20 mm in diameter and 3.2 mm high), but it works. Thanks to the bacteria's metabolism, the bio-battery can recharge itself for up to 10 cycles without any external energy input. The battery stands out for its sustainability and low environmental impact, using no critical raw materials like cobalt or lithium, or toxic components such as organic electrolytes. In fact, it is ideally suited to potential applications in medical devices, such as implants. Researchers have demonstrated, for example, that this bio-battery could be used for sciatic and vagus nerve stimulation, enabling very precise control of bioelectric stimulation and blood pressure signals. This approach could pave the way for innovative physical therapies, even if they are still currently a long way off.
The Independent
15-05-2025
- Business
- The Independent
Mississippi sues China for $200bn for costs associated with the Covid-19 pandemic
The state of Mississippi has declared victory in its $200 billion Covid lawsuit against the People's Republic of China - now it just has to work out how to get paid. Officials in Mississippi must wait for a federal judge to determine if China can be forced to pay it the massive sum after it failed to show up in court in March and a default judgment was entered against it. Mississippi Attorney General Lynn Fitch sued China and other parties back in 2020, claiming the country deliberately hid information about the Covid-19 pandemic. On Wednesday, the AG's office dismissed the Chinese Academy of Sciences as a co-defendant in the lawsuit, reported The Clarion-Ledger. The suit alleges that China failed to fully share the dangers of the deadly virus as it tried to 'corner the market' on PPE equipment such as masks as it spread across the globe. 'The Defendants engaged in a cover-up and a misleading public relations campaign, which included censoring scientists and ordering the destruction and suppression of valuable research,' the AG's office said in a statement. 'Further, the foreign Defendants bought up the supply of PPE, committed hostile takeovers of U.S. factories in China to prevent them from shipping PPE to the U.S., and then turned around and sold substandard PPE to Mississippi at inflated prices - all while hundreds of thousands of people across the globe, including in Mississippi, began to get sick and die.' Fitch claims China earned $6.2 trillion on PPE sales in 2020, while more than 13,000 victims died of the virus in Mississippi. The AG claims she can sue under the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act and the state's antitrust laws. In March, the Missouri Attorney General's Office said it was looking at seizing $24.5 billion in Chinese assets in the state to recoup damages in a similar COVID-19 lawsuit. However, it's unclear how Mississippi would collect any money from China, which has never recognized the lawsuit as being valid or the federal court as having jurisdiction. Last month, the White House launched a website stating that the coronavirus came from a lab leak in China. In response, China made the case that the virus may have originated in the U.S.
