"To have such a successful neighbor and not learn from them is like starving in a wheat field." This is how a Tajik scholar describes the desire of Central Asia to expand cooperation with China in the field of talent training.

From the professional construction of vocational education systems, to local teacher training, to cultivating the local social development need for talent ... In recent years, China and Central Asian countries in the cooperation of training professional personnel have been pressing the "accelerator button" under the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). 

Recently, Global Times reporters visited the "Silk Road" International University of Tourism and Cultural Heritage (Silk Road University) in Samarkand, Uzbekistan, and the Kazakh Luban Workshop project to see how China is helping Central Asia cultivate professional and technical talent, and building an important bridge for cultural exchange and mutual understanding between the two sides.

New university on ancient Silk Road

On September 2, the opening ceremony of the China-Uzbekistan Belt and Road International Laboratory, a joint archaeological and scientific laboratory for the technical protection of cultural heritage, was held at the Silk Road University. This was a major event that Zou Tongqian, the first Chinese vice president of the university, who came from Beijing International Studies University, attached great importance to. 

The initiative to open the Silk Road University was proposed by Uzbek President Shavkat Mirziyoyev at the Shanghai Cooperation Organization Qingdao Summit in 2018. China has provided strong support for the establishment and construction of the university. For a long time, the university has closely cooperated with Chinese universities such as Beijing International Studies University and Northwest University.

In late August, Global Times reporters visited the Silk Road University and found that although the campus is not large, every detail is carefully arranged. On the walls of the main teaching building, there is a map of the ancient Silk Road and silhouettes of camel caravans, evoking the prosperity of the Silk Road in the past. In the corridor, there are paintings by students from various countries, depicting their understanding of the Silk Road.

Alysher Shamshidinov, a teacher at Silk Road University, told the Global Times that there are about 2,000 students at the university, mainly studying majors such as hotel management and logistics. It is worth mentioning that there are 85 international students, including 10 Chinese students pursuing master's degrees, as well as a number of renowned professors from world-famous universities.

In the past few years, China has played an important role in the construction of Silk Road University and the cultivation of local talent. In the library of Silk Road University, the Global Times saw a "China Corner" filled with Chinese books. In 2022, the Chinese Embassy in Uzbekistan donated more than 550 books and audiovisual materials in Chinese, English and Russian, covering topics such as Chinese culture, art, literature, history, tourism and Chinese language learning.

Since Zou took office as vice president in 2022, he and other Chinese colleagues have helped the university introduce a series of scientific research platforms, including the "One Belt and One Road" International Laboratory. They have also applied for the UNESCO Chair in Sustainable Heritage Tourism, invited globally renowned professors, and organized scholars from China, Central Asia, India, ASEAN and other countries and regions to conduct important research projects.

Cultivating more 'Lubans' of New Era

In August, during the summer vacation, the campus of Tianjin Vocational Institute is quiet and peaceful. However, one classroom is filled with lively discussions, sometimes interspersed with applause and laughter. In this classroom, 15 professional teachers from the East Kazakhstan Technical University (EKTU) are earnestly seeking advice from their Chinese counterparts on automotive repair techniques. 

These foreigners are the first group of Kazakh teachers to come to China for training at the newly established Kazakh Luban Workshop. During the China-Central Asia Summit in May this year, Tianjin Municipality signed a cooperation agreement with East Kazakhstan Region to establish the Luban Workshop in Kazakhstan, officially launching the project.

"Can anyone tell me the different methods for replacing brake fluid in a car?" Guo Jianying, professor at the Automotive College of Tianjin Vocational Institute, vividly asked and demonstrated to the Kazakh teachers at the Luban Workshop how to replace brake fluid in a car. He also mentioned the management standards and procedures for waste oil in China. For this lesson, Guo prepared meticulously for a long time.

In the classroom, everyone eagerly raised their hands, expressing their opinions and engaging in lively interactions. They didn't even want to take a tea break. "We are very interested in the Luban Workshop training. Chinese teachers have a high level of expertise!" Murat Muzdybayev, a leading researcher at the School of Mechanical Engineering at EKTU, excitedly told the Global Times. 

Muzdybayev noted that Kazakhstan has a great demand for automotive repair technicians, and they believe that the cooperation of the Luban Workshop, training equipment and resource sharing from China will greatly enhance the vocational training level of relevant majors at EKTU and promote the development of the local automotive repair industry.

The Luban Workshop is an international brand of vocational education created and led by Tianjin Municipality under the guidance of the Chinese Ministry of Education. It is named after Lu Ban, a legendary craftsman and inventor who lived 2,500 years ago in China. It combines academic education with vocational training, aiming to help countries along the BRI cultivate professional technical talent.

The Global Times learned that the specialties taught in the Luban Workshop are the most needed technologies for local industrial development, aiming to cultivate the most useful technical and skilled talent for local economic and social development. 

Taking the Luban Workshop project in Kazakhstan as an example, Kazakhstan is a typical landlocked country with a high demand for land transportation. However, the country lacks a complete industrial chain in the automotive field, and there is a shortage of corresponding technical and skilled talent.

In recent years, the Kazakh government has also increased its new-energy vehicle (NEV) development plans, creating an urgent need for NEV maintenance technology and related talent. They hope to strengthen talent training in this area with China to "take the lead" in the field of NEVs, observers noted.

The curriculum of the Luban Workshop training for Kazakhstan has fully considered these factors. The training includes three modules: fuel vehicles, NEVs and intelligent connected vehicles, with a total of 20 training courses. During the training, the Tianjin Vocational Institute also arranges for teachers from EKTU to visit Chinese NEV and intelligent connected vehicle companies.

Samat Baigereyev, deputy dean of the School of Mechanical Engineering at EKTU, told the Global Times that the visit to Chinese car manufacturers such as Great Wall left a deep impression on him. He is very interested in China's technology in the field of NEVs and hopes to pass on these technologies to more Kazakh students.

Unlike many other international vocational training projects, in the Luban Workshop, Chinese teachers do not directly teach local students but train local teachers. Through such a flexible and down-to-earth form, the rich teaching resources, high-quality technical standards and more advanced experimental equipment in China's vocational education system can be more efficiently integrated into the national academic education system of the partner country in a more localized way.

Attractive talent training cooperation models

In recent years, China and Central Asian countries have witnessed rapid development in their cooperation in the field of talent cultivation, with the Luban Workshop and the Silk Road University serving as representative programs. At a recent seminar held in Beijing, Abdukhalil Gafurzoda, Director of the Centre for Friendship and Cooperation in Tajikistan expressed a strong interest in expanding cooperation with Chinese educational and research institutions, citing several key reasons.

First, Chinese universities are highly attractive to students from Central Asia, as Chinese diplomas are considered to be of high value. The number of Tajikistani students studying in Chinese universities has increased nearly 20 times in the past 15 years, reaching close to 4,000. This is not a coincidence, said Gafurzoda.

Second, the rapid expansion of economic cooperation between China and Central Asia in recent years has created a significant demand for local talent. Gafurzoda revealed that there are about 500 Chinese companies operating in Tajikistan, and Chinese enterprises have also participated in the implementation of 14 major investment projects in the country. Chinese investment accounted for 34 percent of Tajikistan's total foreign investment over the past decade.

"The establishment of the Luban Workshop in Dushanbe a year ago was, to some extent, aimed at addressing this issue," said the Tajikistani scholar.

With three projects already underway in Central Asia in Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, and Kazakhstan, where the Luban Workshop's talent cultivation standards and professional construction quality have gained wide recognition. Currently, 14 international professional teaching standards have been approved by the education ministries of cooperating countries and incorporated into their national education systems. 

Why have the Luban Workshop and other personnel training cooperation projects?been able to make such good and fast progress in Central Asia?

"Our cooperation with another party does not come with any political conditions. We genuinely want to cooperate with Central Asian countries in the field of vocational education, help them improve their professional skills education level, and promote local industrial development. Through these collaborations, our teaching staff's capabilities and the internationalization level of our school can also be enhanced. It is a win-win situation," Meng Zheng, deputy director of the International Exchange Department of Tianjin Vocational Institute, told the Global Times. 

Meng also noted that China's vocational education system is very complete and powerful, which includes technology, standards, resources, equipment and facilities, 

"There are more than 1,300 vocational education institutions in China, and the improvement in scale and quality has been rapid. I believe that the level of vocational education in China is not inferior to internationally renowned vocational education models such as Germany and Australia. This creates a strong attraction for countries in Central Asia, including Kazakhstan," he said.

Editor's Note:
Is China-US relationship locked in an increasingly intense rivalry or is there possibly a "window of opportunity" to mend strained ties between the two countries? A number of recent visits to China by high-ranking US officials were made, including Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, Climate Envoy John Kerry, and Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo. Veteran US diplomat Henry Kissinger also visited China in July. Where is the China-US relationship headed as high-level interactions increase? Einar Tangen (Tangen), a senior fellow of the Beijing-based think tank Taihe Institute, founder and chairman of China Cities Bluebook Consulting and former chairman of the State of Wisconsin's International Trade Council, shared his insights with Global Times (GT) reporter Li Aixin, during the 7th Taihe Civilizations Forum held on Tuesday.

GT: How would you comment on the recent series of visits by US officials and veteran US diplomat? What message did they convey?
Tangen: You have to separate Henry Kissinger from the other four. The administration people simply came to "gaslight" China. 
Kissinger was at the signing of the Three Communiqués – he is a living reminder that the US agreed to one-China policy. His hope, like the hope of all rational people, is that an armed conflict can be avoided. 
The other four were part of, in essence, a "gaslighting" operation. Publicly declaring a desire to engage with China while engaging in hostile acts – military provocations in the Taiwan Straits, the South China Seas, anti-China congressional and the administration acts and statements…
But, you can't expect someone to want to talk with you, if you keep slapping them. 

GT: Will these visits make any difference to the US' China policy?
Tangen: No. The major issue is the Biden administration's lack of a China, or for that matter an international, strategy. Containing China is not a strategy and it isn't working. China continues to forge ahead, for example, pioneering new methods that can replace silicon with gallium, which would revolutionize chip design, capabilities, and fabrication. Another example is the Huawei Mate 60 phone, which is using a 7 nanometer chip which allows it to equal Apple's iPhone.
If the intent was to contain China, US policy is actually working in reverse. We live in an interconnected global supply chain, where progress and prices come from research, competition, and efficiency. China has for the last eight years led the world in the installation of industrial robots, is leading the world in making its industries cost competitive, as domestic wages rates rise, by instituting Industry 4.0 systems. 
In such a world the US, instead of competing, seems intent on spreading uncertainty, strife, and Inflation, in an awkward attempt to maintain its hegemony, in a world that is already multipolar. 

GT: Will Huawei's case impact the US policy of decoupling with and suppressing China?
Tangen: I doubt it. Washington is gripped by a national hysteria, similar to what it experienced under former senator Joe McCarthy. If anyone says anything good or neutral about China, talks about rational policy or realities, they are labeled "panda huggers" who can't be trusted. 
Today, being Asian subjects you automatically to suspicion and increases your chances of being racially profiled, as well as verbally and physically attacked. Every Asian in government and academia is being viewed as a potential spy. Asian students aren't allowed to enroll in hard science courses. All of this under the pretext of national security. Where there have been trials, the government has lost the overwhelming number of cases, as with the numerous cases where academics have been accused of spying. The result, a growing outflow of Chinese scientists and executives, leaving the US, as Asian students look elsewhere for advanced education. 
The US is a nation racked by poverty, homelessness, crime, gun violence, political polarity, and racism. For those seeking the American Dream, the reality has become disappointing. In cases of Asian hate crimes, which increased 342 percent in 2021, according to a nationwide study by California State University in San Bernardino, Washington's standard response, decry the violence, but continue the anti-Asian rhetoric that fans it. 
As Huawei has shown, investing in people, processes, and competition, is more effective than efforts to decouple/de-risk/suppress.

GT: Some observers tend to think the period from now until November is a "window of opportunity" for the recovery of China-US relations. What's your take on this?

Tangen: I can't see a window, domestic politics is, as always, front and center for Biden. He is focused almost exclusively on next year's election. Staying in power is the objective, governing is a sideline.

Since taking office as president, he has not been able to unify the country, or even follow through on his campaign issues. He criticized Donald Trump for his unilateral imposed tariffs, but has kept many of them in place, despite saying they were hurting the American people more than Chinese businesses.

He hasn't created a workable policy toward China. He hasn't been able to articulate a global vision, unless repeating Donald Trump's America First is a global vision. The world is not safer today than it was when Trump left office.

His idea of global diplomacy, is using India's chairing of the G20 to water down any criticisms against the US for: broken climate change funding promises, undermining the WTO, inaction on global health, poverty, debt and development issues. India got agreements on outstanding WTO cases the US had brought, an India-US joint venture military jet engine factory, and support for an India-Europe transportation corridor, which the US Congress would never fund, while the US turned a blind eye on Kashmir, corruption, the caste system, and human rights.

For example, instead of a strong statement on the trail of broken developed country promises to deliver 100 billion a year for developing world climate mitigation, there was a statement that there would be an effort to triple the amount of renewable energy. Ironically, a policy, if followed through, would favor China, since China is the dominant force in those industries.

The announcement of the new transportation corridor (the India-Middle East-Europe Economic Corridor) as a competitor to the Belt and Road Initiative is laughable.

The BRI has been around for 10 years, it has demonstrated its resolve with a trillion dollar's worth of investments in projects that according to The Chartered Institute of Building, the BRI will boost world GDP by over $7 trillion per annum by 2040.

The Biden Administration's idea, developed last October, after criticizing the BRI as a waste of resources aimed at "debt-trap diplomacy," was to connect Europe to India, as a competitor to China’s BRI.

Question is, in an increasingly isolationist Congress, how would Biden be able to get funding for a project that has nothing to do with Making America Great.

It is true, as the presidential election gets closer, Biden would like to have some sort of temporary economic rapprochement with China if it could improve the domestic economic situation. The obvious choice would be to remove Trump's economic tariffs, but he is afraid of being labeled "soft on China", so it is doubtful he will pull the trigger.

The main difficulty is there is no coherent China engagement policy, just an emotional desire to contain it. As we all know, it's hard to adjust feelings.

GT: After G20, Biden paid a short visit to Vietnam, where he said US outreach to Vietnam is not about containing China. Did he mean it?

Tangen: It's difficult to know what Biden means when he talks. He constantly says he's not trying to contain China, that he adheres to the Three Communiques, and the “one-China” policy, but he has said four times that he would support Taiwan island militarily if force was used to unite the breakaway province.

Actually, Biden says many things the White House says he doesn't mean. Quite frankly, in the US, as well as internationally, there are concerns about what he means, as the White House seems to continually reinterpret whatever he says.

The irony with Vietnam is the US waged a brutal war that resulted in millions of civilian and military deaths, millions of tons of bombs, massive areas deforested by Agent Orange, and unexploded ordnance, like cluster bombs, which continue to kill and maim civilians to this day.

Vietnam is run by the Communist Party that drove the US out of their lands. Biden's pitch is we don't like Communist China, we want to ally with Vietnam, a Communist country, against your neighboring Communist country, because they don't share our values.

It doesn't make any sense, but the Vietnamese, for their part, are happy to take whatever they can get and thumb their noses at the US as they continue negotiating arms deals with Russia.

On a larger level, this has become a prevalent pattern. India was able to obtain concessions from the US, while not joining in on trade sanctions and outright condemnation of Russia over Ukraine, in fact India is now the largest importer of Russian oil, which ironically, they buy cheap and then sell to Europe. India continues to use the Russian S-400 missile system, as well as numerous armaments and other weapons systems, while also getting US jet engines and weapons systems.

South Africa has been more than willing to vocalize its amused contempt for Washington's attempts at coercion. Saudi Arabia has followed its own economic interests, when it comes to oil supplies and pricing. But, both countries continue to maintain cordial diplomatic relationships with Washington.

GT: Do you think there is still a cure or a key to resolving the strained China-US ties?

Tangen: The key is for Washington to recognize that the days of its hegemony have gone, replaced by a multipolar world, but that is something that the current Washington elites are incapable of doing. Therefore, change will have to come from the American public, the voters.

Why would the American public want change, because about five decades ago the middle class accounted for 62 percent of the US population, today, it is only 50 percent. Inflation is decreasing real wages month by month, consumer debt is higher than it has ever been, loan defaults are skyrocketing, about 60 percent of consumers live paycheck to paycheck, and 40 percent don't have $400 in case of an emergency, small business are reigning in their investments. Meanwhile, the Fed continues to raise interest rates, oblivious to the fact that the inflation is coming from service side wage increases, which continue to increase.

It will be up to the American people to reverse the course, because the elites in Washington have it firmly in their mind that China is the enemy, and that every problem in the US is China's fault, even if, like the ever growing deficit, it is a domestic issue of poor governance.

In the end, governments are measured in terms of how they take care of their people. The first role of government is to provide a safe, orderly environment. In this the US failed. It is now commonplace for those in government to say, "Buy a gun, because we can't protect you, you have to protect yourselves." You see the shootings in schools and workplaces, on the streets, in shopping malls and people's homes. You see videos of shoplifters brazenly robbing stores, drug addicts, beggars, mentally ill, and homeless, living on the streets. Crime has become an epidemic.

The second duty of government is to provide opportunity. Education, a social safety net and policies that encourage entrepreneurship and innovation, fair legal systems, a government that can regulate, without smothering, these are elements of what is needed to create opportunities. Right now though, the US isn't providing what is needed, (but is providing) too big to fail industry oligarchs, a massive and growing national debt, under-funded education, cuts to social welfare, overly expensive healthcare, social and political divisions, international policies that are closing rather than opening markets, and are making investment abroad more uncertain.

Examples of unsustainable and lost opportunities: TSMC has said a chip made in Taiwan will be 30 percent less expensive than the same chip made in an American factory. Actions to prevent the sale of computer chips and chip making equipment are closing the Chinese market, which is one third of the world market, to US companies. Bans on US investments in Chinese companies means they won't be able to participate in China's innovation and general economic rise.

So, while the US cites capitalism, open markets and competition, Washington doesn't accept the realities of what this means, if it doesn't benefit the US.

Washington's real problems are domestic, they are tied to its development and governance models, China is just a convenient scapegoat for issues the US refuses to address.

A combination of Tianzhou-5 cargo spacecraft and Long March 7 carrier rocket has been rolled onto the launch pad. The cargo spacecraft will ferry goods to the China Space Station: CMSA

Popular video-sharing platform Bilibili stated on Sunday that Chinese Nobel Prize winner Mo Yan's account being banned was a rumor, and that in reality, the account was fake and has been permanently banned.

Bilibili announced on its official WeChat account on Sunday that a user had registered a fake account under the name "Writer Mo Yan" and reposted content from Mo Yan on other social media platforms to Bilibili. Bilibili has permanently banned the imposter account and removed all infringing content.

Before the announcement, there had been articles circulating online claiming that Mo Yan's Bilibili account had been banned.

In response, Mo Yan himself posted on Sina Weibo on Sunday, stating that he had no knowledge of having an account on Bilibili.

Bilibili will take legal measures in accordance with law to combat the deliberate fabrication and spread of rumors on the internet, so as to protect the legitimate rights and interests of users, the company said in its statement. 

Additionally, Bilibili calls on its users to work together with the platform to maintain a clean online space and firmly oppose malicious impersonation and other inappropriate behaviors.

Being infected with a parasite is usually not good news. Some of the critters can make you sick, and some will eventually kill you. And studies have found that when an animal has to deal with both a parasite and pollutants such as toxic heavy metals, the stressors add up.

But that isn’t true for Artemia brine shrimp in Spain, a new study finds. Infection with cestodes — a type of parasitic flatworm also known as tapeworms — results in an increased ability to survive in waters laced with toxic arsenic.
Marta Sánchez of the Spanish National Research Council in Seville has been studying the role of parasites in ecosystems. She and her colleagues were curious about the brine shrimp because they are key players in the ecosystem; they are eaten by many water birds, including flamingos, and can ferry pollutants and parasites into the birds. “Infected [brine shrimp] are more susceptible to predation by birds,” Sánchez notes, which contributes to pollutant levels in the birds.

When brine shrimp become infected with parasites, they turn red. This makes them especially attractive to birds not only because they are easier to see but also because birds are on the lookout for the carotenoid pigments responsible for the color. These pigments not only give a bird’s feathers their colors but they are also necessary for a healthy bird. “As birds cannot synthesize these pigments and they are a scarce resource in nature, they selectively search for them in their diet,” Sánchez says.
The red color also makes it easy for scientists to pick out infected brine shrimp. Sánchez and her colleagues collected brine shrimp from southwestern Spain’s Odiel and Tinto estuary, which is tainted with arsenic and other heavy metals from current and past mining activities. In the lab, the researchers separated the parasite-infected and uninfected brine shrimp and then ran tests to see how well they survived in arsenic-laced waters.

As the concentration of arsenic in the water increased, so did the number of brine shrimp that died. But more brine shrimp that were infected with cestodes survived than uninfected ones, the team reports March 3 in PLOS Pathogens. Then, curious about the effects of climate change, the researchers repeated their experiment with warmer water. Again, the parasites appeared to confer some level of protection to the brine shrimp.
It may not be obvious, but causing a quick death is not a good strategy for a parasite. That’s because a parasite needs its host to stay alive long enough for the parasite to reproduce, leave and find a new host. If the host dies too quickly, then the parasite dies with it. So for cestodes, giving brine shrimp some help in surviving polluted waters may be in the parasites’ best interest.

The results suggests that the cestodes help change the way the brine shrimp deal with pollutants and the resulting stress. When the researchers compared infected and uninfected brine shrimp, they found differences in the antioxidant defenses that protect an organism against the damaging effects of reactive oxygen species. “Infected individuals were better than uninfected individuals at coping under polluted conditions,” Sánchez says. Also, infected brine shrimp had higher amounts of lipid droplets that are thought to sequester toxins.

The researchers can’t say whether this beneficial relationship is restricted to this particular estuary in Spain. “What we can say,” Sánchez says, “is that the red coloration associated with tapeworm infections is something we have observed in many sites in different countries. Hence, we expect our results do represent what would be recorded at other localities.”

Antarctica’s meltdown could spur sea level rise well beyond current predictions. A new simulation of the continent’s thawing ice suggests that Antarctic melting alone will raise global sea levels by about 64 to 114 centimeters by 2100, scientists report in the March 31 Nature.

Adding Antarctic melt to other sources of sea level rise, such as the expansion of warming seawater and melting Greenland ice, the scientists predict that sea levels will rise 1.5 to 2.1 meters by the end of the century. That’s as much as double previous predictions that didn’t incorporate mechanisms that can expedite the Antarctic ice sheet’s collapse, though uncertainties remain, says study coauthor David Pollard, a paleoclimatologist at Penn State.
Predicting future sea level rise requires understanding how the oceans rose in the past. Scientists often glean ancient sea level rise by reconstructing the locations of ancient coastlines. But these coastlines can be a slippery target: Forces such as tectonic activity can cause Earth’s surface to rise and fall, obscuring the effects of past sea level rise. Depending on how much uplift obfuscated ancient sea level records — ranging from no uplift to massive uplift — the new prediction of 21st century sea level rise can differ by 35 centimeters or more.

A separate study also highlights the challenges of factoring changing coastlines into sea level rise predictions. Researchers estimate online April 2 in Geophysical Research Letters that groundwater depletion has caused the coasts of California and India to rebound upward, counteracting sea level rise in those regions by about 0.4 millimeters per year.

“I really would be happier if we had the luxury of doing the research on this without bothering the public until we have 95 percent confidence in an answer,”says Penn State glaciologist Richard Alley, who was not involved in either study. “Any single forecast is notably uncertain, but if we continue warming the world rapidly, the most likely outcome is a major event of large and rapid sea level rise.”

Two warm periods, one about 125,000 years ago and another about 3 million years ago, were particularly useful for Pollard and coauthor Robert DeConto, a geoscientist at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Those bouts of warming shrank Earth’s ice sheets and boosted sea levels by several meters. Pollard and DeConto used these sea level records to fine-tune a computer simulation of how climate change affects the Antarctic ice sheet. The researchers then applied their calibrated simulation to current climate conditions and projected sea level rise thousands of years into the future.

Assuming that society takes no actions to curb greenhouse gas emissions, the simulation predicts that Antarctic melting will accelerate around 2050 as rising temperatures destabilize several keystone glaciers in West Antarctica. After 2100, Antarctica’s contribution to sea level rise will exceed 4 centimeters a year — more than 10 times the current rate from all sources.
Such severe sea level rise would reshape most of Earth’s coastlines, and the waters would rise even higher as time goes on, Pollard predicts. “Sea levels won’t peak until around 3,000 to 4,000 years from now,”he says. At that point, Antarctica will have raised global sea levels by about 20 meters.

The consequences of this long-term sea level rise will be dire, says Maureen Raymo, a marine geologist at Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory in Palisades, N.Y., who was not involved with the work. “I haven’t seen anyone mention the long, slowly unfolding refugee crisis that will only get worse as hundreds of millions [of people] are displaced worldwide,” she says.

Peacocks know how to twerk it to attract females.

During mating season, a flamboyant fowl will raise his iridescent train, shake his wings and vibrate his fan. Such displays can go on for hours.

Biologist Roslyn Dakin of the University of British Columbia in Vancouver teamed with physicist Suzanne Kane of Haverford College in Pennsylvania and other collaborators to break down the basic biomechanics of this shimmy show, known as rattling. The team also investigated a related peacock move called shivering — a reshuffling of feathers akin to a dandy combing his hair — that occurs before females arrive.
The researchers recorded feral peafowl (Pavo cristatus) in action with a high-speed video camera and studied feathers in the lab. Rattling birds literally shake their shorter, stiff tail feathers to strum their fanned-out train, making the train feathers vibrate at the same high frequency (25.6 hertz on average), the team reports April 27 in PLOS ONE. This frequency sweet spot generates a loud rustling noise — also part of the show. Although the scientists saw variety from bird to bird, individual peacocks tended to vibrate their feathers at a consistent frequency. Males with longer trains vibrated at slightly higher frequencies than those with shorter ones. Shivering involved lower-frequency feather vibrations than rattling.

Despite all this gyration, the eyespots stay still thanks to tiny hooks that lock the eyespot barbs together. “It isn’t just beautiful,” Kane explains. “It acts like a single mass at the top of the feather.”

Previous studies have shown that males with more iridescent eyespots have better game. High-frequency shimmying might be indicative of a male’s health or muscle power, Dakin says. But how the female perceives the total package remains to be studied. “One has to wonder what it’s like to be a female seeing this for the first time,” she says.

The historic El Niño event currently shaking up Earth’s weather rose like a phoenix from the hot remains of a failed 2014 El Niño, new research suggests.

In 2014, the scientific community buzzed about the possibility of a supersized El Niño as warm Pacific Ocean water sloshed eastward. That July, however, large winds pushed westward and halted the budding El Niño before it fully formed (SN: 11/1/14, p. 6). Those same winds also prevented the release of stored-up ocean heat, researchers report in a paper to be published in Geophysical Research Letters. In March 2015, that lingering heat gave the current El Niño a jump start toward the extreme, the researchers propose.
The ongoing El Niño is among the three strongest on record (SN Online: 7/16/15); it has boosted rainfall in California, contributed to ocean coral bleaching and helped make 2015 the hottest year on record (SN: 2/20/16, p. 13). Such a once-in-a-generation El Niño would have been less likely without the failed 2014 event, says study coauthor Michael McPhaden, a physical oceanographer at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory in Seattle.

“In a sense, we dodged a bullet in 2014 by not having a monster El Niño,” McPhaden says. “But that was short-lived, because the conditions that shut that developing El Niño down set up the big one in 2015.”

El Niños typically form every two to seven years when Pacific winds shift a large, near-surface pool of warm water eastward. That warm water then rises to the surface and releases its heat into the atmosphere, causing global shifts in storms, precipitation and temperatures.

The fizzled 2014 El Niño followed by a colossal event in 2015 is very unusual, McPhaden says. He and climate scientist Aaron Levine, also at NOAA’s Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory, wondered if the sequence of events was just a coincidence. So the researchers looked at decades of El Niño climate data and ran computer simulations of various hypothetical El Niño events.

Under typical ocean conditions, the chances of a 2015 El Niño of any strength are about 27 percent, the researchers estimate. The remnant heat from the failed 2014 El Niño increased those odds to roughly 40 percent. Having a failed El Niño the previous year stacks the deck in favor of an El Niño, McPhaden and Levin conclude. But it “isn’t a guarantee,” Levine says.
A similar aborted El Niño occurred in 1990, the researchers find. An El Niño formed the following year, but the event ended up being more modest than the current super El Niño. That’s in part because the eastward-blowing winds in 1991 were relatively weak, Levine says. Strong El Niños require strong winds, not just warm water, he adds.

Forecasting those winds is tricky because the winds and the warm water “are all part of the same system,” says Kevin Trenberth, a climate scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo. Ocean heat can cause atmospheric changes that can in turn influence the winds. The new work provides insights, he says, “but it is far from complete.”

Packing on a few pounds may not be such a bad thing.

As a group, overweight people are living the longest nowadays, suggests an almost four-decade study in Denmark published May 10 in JAMA. And obese people seem to be at no higher risk of dying than those of normal weight. The new analysis fuels ongoing debate about what’s a healthy body mass index — especially in light of rising obesity rates (SN: 5/14/16, p. 5), improved heart health treatments and other factors influencing health and longevity.
“This is a very carefully done study,” says Rexford Ahima, a physician who studies endocrine disorders at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine. The findings strengthen the notion that “BMI as a number alone may not be sufficient to predict health and risk of death. It has to be taken within context.” Ahima was not involved in the research but has analyzed previous studies urging a rethink of how BMI influences mortality.

Researchers screen for obesity by calculating BMI — a popular but fairly crude measurement of body fat reached by dividing a person’s weight in kilograms by the square of height in meters. People with BMIs between 18.5 and 24.9 are considered normal. A BMI between 25 and 29.9 is “overweight”; 30 and above is “obese.”

Many studies suggest that obese individuals face a higher risk of heart disease, stroke and other ills. But some analyses have found that heavier folks may not in fact be in such dire straits. In one study of type 2 diabetes patients, those with normal weight when diagnosed were more likely to die than those who were overweight or obese (SN: 9/8/12, p. 13). And a 2013 meta-analysis of 97 studies found that being overweight was associated with lower risk of death than having a normal BMI — a surprising finding that echoed a 2005 study by the same researchers.

In this new analysis, clinical biochemist Børge Nordestgaard of Copenhagen University Hospital and his team studied more than 100,000 adults. The three groups of white Danes, recruited about 15 years apart, reflected the general population in Copenhagen.

From 1976 to 2013, BMI associated with lowest risk of death increased from 23.7 to 27. That falls squarely in the overweight category. What’s more, obese individuals had the same mortality risk as people in the normal range, the analysis found. That trend held even when researchers took into account potentially confounding factors including age, sex, smoking and a history of cardiovascular disease or cancer.
While some might misinterpret the study to mean “you can eat as much as you like,” this is not what the findings suggest, Nordestgaard says. Rather, the results indicate that people who are moderately overweight might not need to worry as much as they had in the past. That might be because better treatments are now available for high blood pressure, high cholesterol and other risk factors for heart disease, Nordestgaard speculates. “So maybe you can be overweight if you have [these conditions] treated.” But the study was not designed to address whether improved heart health care actually caused “healthy” BMI values to creep up over time.

It’s also unclear whether the results apply to other ethnic groups. A substantial fraction of Asians, for instance, develop type 2 diabetes and heart disease despite having BMIs lower than the existing cutoff point for being overweight.

The findings underscore the idea that a person’s BMI does not tell the whole story. While this measure is good for comparing populations, it is not as useful for evaluating individuals and their risk for disease and death, Ahima says. Interpreting an individual’s BMI depends on many other factors, including “whether you are man or woman, how much muscle you have, how physically fit you are and what diseases you have.”

Houseflies stretch their legs to land. Bumblebees hover, then slowly descend. Now, insect-sized flying robots have a way to stick the landing, too.

A tiny aerial bot about the size of a bee (nicknamed RoboBee) uses static electricity to cling to the underside of a leaf and perch on other materials, study coauthor Robert Wood of Harvard University and colleagues report in the May 20 Science.

RoboBee, a bot with shiny, flapping wings and four pinlike legs, is the first of its size that can fly, perch on a surface and then take off again. This energy-saving feat could one day extend mission time in search and rescue operations, the researchers say.
For robots, tackling the problem of flight has been easier than figuring out how to land. “Engineers have been trying to build perching mechanisms for flying robots nearly as long as we have been creating flying robots,” Wood says.
Researchers have had success with bigger, bird-sized bots (SN: 2/7/15, p. 18), but their landing mechanisms are tricky to scale down. For the microbot, Wood and colleagues wanted something simple: lightweight and without moving parts.

The team created an “electroadhesive” patch with electrodes that can be charged, letting the patch stick to different surfaces, like a balloon sticking to the wall after being rubbed on someone’s hair.

Switch the electrodes on and the patch, a circular disc on top of the robot, helps RoboBee hang out on overhanging pieces of glass or plywood, for example. Switch the electrodes off and the bot detaches, free to fly again. The sticky contraption lets RoboBee rest between flights: The bot used about a thousandth as much energy perching than hovering, the researchers found.