China's first commercial spacecraft launch site in Wenchang, South China's Hainan Province, is ramping up the final stages of construction, and plans to commence normalized commercial launch operations in 2024, a representative from the launch site told the Global Times on Wednesday.

The construction of the commercial spacecraft launch site began in July 2022, and the infrastructure needed for the site will be finished by the end of 2023. The first commercial launch mission will commence in the first half of 2024, and the launch site will enter the operations and normalized launch mission in the same year.

"According to current plan, the commercial launch site will commence launch missions at a high frequency in 2025, which means commercial launch missions will occur each month," Dong Chenghua, a representative from the administration bureau of the Wenchang International Aerospace City, where the commercial launch site locates, told the Global Times on Wednesday.

On April 13, 2018, China announced a decision to support Hainan in developing the whole island into a pilot free trade zone and gradually exploring and steadily promoting the establishment of a free trade port (FTP) with Chinese characteristics. By the end of 2025, the Hainan FTP is scheduled to initiate independent customs operations throughout the whole island according to a master plan released by the central authorities in 2020.

As one of the 13 key projects of the island, the Wenchang International Aerospace City will support the Hainan FTP construction from sectors of aerospace and relevant industries.

During 2015 to 2021, the scale of China's commercial spacecraft launch industry realized an average annual growth rate of 22.3 percent, and may hit 2.3 trillion yuan ($320 billion) in market size by 2024, industry data revealed.

Another representative from the administration bureau told the Global Times that the commercial spacecraft launch is in great demand among domestic private enterprises at present, which is mostly used in communication, remote control and navigation.

The Wenchang aerospace launch site is China's only coastal launch site with multiple natural advantages such as lower geographic latitude, less transport restrictions and high security for landing sites, which will largely reduce the cost for commercial spacecraft launch.

The launch site has facilitated multiple key launch missions including the China's space station Tiangong and the lunar probe Chang'e.

In addition, Wenchang commercial spacecraft launch site may have chance to explore the commercial launch market among Southeast Asian countries based on Hainan's geographic advantages.

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.

Days after northern China emerged from flood, four provincial regions in the northwestern part of the country are facing a new challenge that has led them to activate level-IV emergency responses for drought. Experts warned of more severe droughts this year with the return of El Nino, but called for calm as these regions are frequently hit by drought and have accumulated rich experience.

Since June, drought has hit central and western Inner Mongolia, Gansu, Qinghai and Ningxia, with the amount of flowing water and the amount of water stored in reservoirs in this region lower than the same period in normal years, according to the Ministry of Water Resources on Wednesday.

The severe drought in the four provincial regions is also expected to continue to persist for a longer period, according to the ministry. China has a four-tier emergency response system for disaster relief, with Level IV being the lowest and Level I the highest.

In the Jinchuan district of Jinchang city in Gansu, corn cobs cannot even be seen across stretches of corn fields where corn stalks are evidently short and leaves are withered. In response, local departments have started a second round of irrigation to ensure arable land get sufficient water supply, China Central Television reported.

Jinchang city also mobilized drones for free to spray pesticides in farmers' corn and potato fields to prevent pests and disease and lower the losses of farmers. 

The Lanzhou Central Meteorological Observatory activated a yellow warning for drought at noon on Tuesday. It said the latest monitoring data shows the drought in the cities of Jinchang, Wuwei and Baiyin has become even more severe.

A drought relief expert who preferred not to be named told the Global Times on Wednesday that the four northwestern provincial regions are frequently hit by drought, so local departments are experienced in drought relief. In the end, the biggest impact in the region will be on animal husbandry.

The Gansu provincial emergency department called for efforts to guarantee the water supply for people's livelihoods and livestock. 

One day earlier on Tuesday the ministry said it had sent working groups and expert teams to the four provincial regions. 

The ministry has also urged local water management authorities to closely monitor the development of rain, water and drought, to scientifically divert water from conservancy projects and to adopt localized measures.

But according to the National Meteorological Center on Wednesday, in the next three days, there will be moderate to heavy rain in Qinghai, Gansu, western Sichuan, and also precipitation in Inner Mongolia. 

The drought relief expert said the rainfall should mitigate the regional drought but it still needs to be decided in how much degree it would ease the drought. 

Climate change experts have warned that the development of El Nino, a result of natural shifts in winds and ocean temperatures, is expected to contribute to global warming and increase the likelihood of temperature records being broken. It also brings heavier floods to some parts of the planet while drying others out.

In the period from late June to July 2009, 17 provinces in China suffered from severe drought due to a moderate El Ni?o event. Eastern Inner Mongolia, western Jilin Province, and western Liaoning Province also experienced extreme drought, experts said. 

An Asian elephant detected a 2.8-kilogram consignment of opium in Mengman township, Southwest China's Yunnan Province during a walk in the region. The case is under investigation by the local police, according to a People's Daily report on Tuesday.

Border police of Mengman township, Xishuangbanna Dai Autonomous Prefecture received a report recently that four wild Asian elephants were roaming around a village in the town. When the police arrived at the site, they found that one of the elephants stopped and carefully sniffed in an area of grass, and then used its trunk to toss a backpack out of the grass, while also making some "calls."

The police immediately checked the backpack and found the opium. The case is currently under further investigation.

The story triggered wide discussion among Chinese netizens, with the topic gaining more than 190 million clicks as of Tuesday morning on Chinese-twitter like Sina Weibo. Many netizens praised the elephant with its delicate sense of smell and said that it should be awarded with more fruits like bananas. Some called for more protection for "smart" elephants, mankind's "good friend."

A total of 12,417 athletes from all 45 Asian countries and regions will compete at the Hangzhou Asian Games, organizers announced on Thursday, as the city marked 30-day countdown to Asia's biggest multi-sport tournament.

The Hangzhou Asian Games, which will take place in Hangzhou, capital of East China's Zhejiang Province from September 23 to October 8, will be the third Asian multi-sport event held in China, after the 1990 Beijing Asian Games and the 2010 Guangzhou Asian Games.

Ticket sales for the Hangzhou Asian Games have started on July 8, with tickets for events such as swimming and e-sports on high demand. The ticket price varies from 20 to 1,000 yuan ($2.75 to $137), with more than 60 percent of them costing less than 100 yuan, organizers said.

The torch relay for the Asian Games will start on September 8 in Hangzhou and hence commence a provincial tour in Zhejiang until September 20, said Chen Weiqiang, executive secretary general of the Hangzhou Asian Games organizing committee.

The organizers have made some adjustment to the competition schedule recently based on the athletes' registrations, with a confirmed race schedule to be unveiled at the end of August, said Zhu Qinan, director of Sports Department of the organizing committee.

The Hangzhou Asian Games will also witness the debut of some emerging sports that are quite popular among young people, such as break dance and e-sports.

Weiqi, a mind sport, will make a return to the Hangzhou Games, after a 13-year hiatus since it appeared at the Guangzhou Games in 2010.

Certain regional sports in Asia, notably dragon boat racing, kurash, and sepak takraw, though not recognized as Olympic sports, will also be medal-awarded events at the Asian Games.

China is expected to send a delegation of over 900 athletes to the Hangzhou Games, as the Asian sports powerhouse is expected to dominate the podium once again. Since 1982, China has been sitting on the top of the medal table in each of the Asian Games it has participated in.

Several Chinese national teams have been preparing for the Asian Games, as they plan to defend their glory while facing off challengers from other Asian sports powerhouses.

China's East Asian neighbors Japan and South Korea are also considered the favorites at the Asian Games, as the duo have often finished in second and third place on the medal table thanks to their excellence in swimming and archery respectively.

India will also challenge China's dominance in shooting, as the country has been making efforts to improve the country's shooting squad capabilities.
In the lead-up to the sporting event, the design details of the victory ceremony components, including bouquets, trays, and podiums, were revealed. The official theme song and music video were also released and a commencement ceremony dedicated to the event's volunteers was held.

On Thursday morning, the commencement ceremony for volunteers was held at Zhejiang University, with 1,800 representatives of a total of 37,600 volunteers expected to serve during the event in attendance.

The global recruitment drive for volunteers for the Hangzhou Asian Games and Asian Para Games was initiated in May 2021, with 317,000 applications received.

"We're fully prepared to execute each process, step, and detail in our volunteer service to contribute to this grand event," said student volunteer representative Zhao Hongyan.

The volunteer body is primarily comprised of individuals from 46 universities within Zhejiang.

Additionally, specialists in fields such as sports, less-commonly spoken languages, and medicine were sourced to provide much-needed assistance during the event. Around 400 volunteers from other provinces among others joined the effort.

The floral bouquets for the awards ceremonies were named "Fruits of Triumph," and included rice ears and lotus pods, representing harvest and achievements in Chinese culture, along with the iconic "Rainbow Purple" showing the event's core color palette.

Unique to 2023's Asian Games is the inclusion of decorative vases inspired by huagu, a kind of vessel from the Southern Song Dynasty (1127-1279).

The Dongyang wood carving, a national-level intangible cultural heritage, was also employed in the vessels' crafting. The undulating water patterns on the vases echo the rhythm of Zhejiang's landscape, and could be kept by award-winning athletes and treasured forever.

The design of the medal trays was inspired from the gentle ripples of West Lake's waters in the breeze.

The outer part of the podium mimics the color scheme of the "Rainbow Orchid," while the stage itself is adorned with an "Ink and Watercolor White" hue. A modular design approach is employed for the podium to accommodate various sports, embodying the spirit of sustainability.

The song The Love We Share, performed by famous Chinese singer Sun Nan, has officially been endorsed as the Games' theme song. The song's music video portrays iconic landscapes from across Asia, showcasing the unity of people from diverse backgrounds and regions.

China is considering holding degree holders who use artificial intelligence (AI) to ghostwrite their theses legally responsible. The draft of the Degree Law was submitted to the Standing Committee of the 14th National People's Congress, China's top legislature, for deliberation on Monday.

The draft lays out legal responsibilities for actions such as degree holders using or impersonating another's identity to gain admission qualifications, employing artificial intelligence to author thesis papers, and institutions granting degrees unlawfully, as reported by the media on Monday. 

Academic misconduct includes plagiarism, forgery, data falsification, using artificial intelligence to produce a thesis, impersonating another's identity to obtain admission qualifications, and securing admission qualifications and graduation certificates through illicit means like favoritism and cheating. The draft also addresses other illegal or irregular behaviors that, when exhibited during the study period, should prevent the awarding of a degree.

The draft states that if an individual who has already obtained a degree is found to have used illegal means to do so, the degree-granting institution must revoke the degree certificate. This decision should be made following a review by the degree evaluation committee.

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.”

Brazil, now a poster child for mosquito-borne virus spread, was once a model for mosquito eradication.

“It was amazing,” says Dan Strickman, medical entomologist with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. The Aedes aegypti mosquito, today identified by epidemiologists as one of the carriers of the Zika virus, was attacked in the 1930s with the simple tools then available. By 1965, the mosquito was certified as eradicated from Brazil and 17 other countries in the Americas (but not the United States). The feat took ferocious effort, but as the threat dwindled, so did money and the political will to stay vigilant.
Whether eradication would even be possible now is unclear. But the question of how to cope with Ae. aegypti has taken on new urgency as that mosquito species sweeps Zika virus through South and Central America and into parts of North America. Known as the yellow fever mosquito, Ae. aegypti can also spread dengue, chikungunya and West Nile viruses (SN: 6/13/15, p. 16).
It’s “the most difficult mosquito in the Americas to control,” says Michael Doyle, director of mosquito control for the Florida Keys. The mosquito’s resistance to major pesticides and its unusual biology foil many standard control measures. Some scientists have developed high-tech control approaches. Other specialists are going back to the basics to search for biological vulnerabilities that have been overlooked.
Casual slappers of mosquitoes tend to lump all of them into one annoying category, but there are 3,500 or so species, with a wide range of idiosyncrasies. Some species, for instance, don’t drink blood. As a group, though, mosquitoes are among the most dangerous animals on Earth, claiming more than 400,000 lives a year just from spreading malaria.

Researchers propose that several species might spread Zika, depending on location: Ae. hensilli was suspected in a previous outbreak on Yap in Micronesia and Ae. polynesiensis in French Polynesia. In the Americas, epidemiologists are watching two widespread invasives: the Asian tiger mosquito Ae. albopictus (SN: 6/29/13, p. 26) as well as the notorious Ae. aegypti.

A forest-dwelling form of Ae. aegypti, native to Africa, frequents tree holes and sucks blood from animals. The worldwide invaders, however, have become domesticated. “They bite almost exclusively humans; they live almost exclusively within feet of humans,” Doyle says.

For many mosquitoes, blood is for motherhood, usually one drink per batch of eggs. The insects meet everyday energy needs with plant sugars such as flower nectar. Ae. aegypti females, however, sip blood often, raising the chances of passing on disease. That’s because they’re unusually adept at extracting energy from blood instead of nectar, Laura Harrington, who studies mosquito biology at Cornell University, and her colleagues found.

A common way to fight bloodsuckers is spraying pesticides from trucks or aircraft. But spraying often does little to Ae. aegypti holing up in houses, resting on clothing in closets or hiding under beds. And don’t count on nighttime protection from bed nets. Ae. aegypti readily bite during the day.
To fight such a foe, crews start by trying to kill larvae before they reach vampire age. Mosquitoes generally go through their first life stage in water, and Ae. aegypti needs only a little containerful. So Doyle sends inspectors on house-by-house quests for stray minipools: in a bucket, a Fritos bag, old tires, a kayak and plant saucers by the dozens. And that could be in just one yard. His difficulties make a fine case study in how hard — and expensive — fighting a human-specialist mosquito can be.

The human-versus-mosquito battle isn’t all door-to-door. The company Oxitec, based in the United Kingdom, engineered male Ae. aegypti mosquitoes to carry genes that cause their offspring to die (SN: 7/14/12, p. 22). Using an old insect-control strategy, mass releases of dysfunctional males seduce wild females and, in time, shrink the problem population.

Experimental releases of Oxitec’s genetically modified Ae. aegypti males have reduced the size of mosquito populations by more than 80 percent in a test site of about 5.5 hectares in a suburb of Juazeiro, Brazil. The Brazilian government has approved these engineered mosquitoes for widespread use. Oxitec has applied for U.S. Food and Drug Administration approval to do a similar test in the Florida Keys. On March 11, the FDA released a draft statement predicting “no significant impact” to the environment from the test (SN Online: 3/11/16).

Efforts to genetically sterilize mosquitoes may improve with advances in CRISPR/Cas9 techniques to cut and paste genes (SN: 12/12/15, p. 16). And an advance in the genetics of sex determination last year opens new possibilities for refining sterile-male releases. What’s called an M factor determines maleness in certain insects, and for the first time in any mosquito, researchers determined the sequence of the genetic components of Ae. aegypti’s M factor. Manipulating it to produce entire generations of only males could have many uses, says Virginia Tech’s Zach Adelman.
In a different approach to reengineering mosquitoes ( SN: 7/14/12, p. 22 ), researchers with the international consortium called Eliminate Dengue are testing a nongenetically modified mosquito in Brazil among other places. Instead of wiping out a population, the goal is to reduce its disease-spreading power. Infection with a strain of Wolbachia , bacteria common in insects, can render these mosquitoes less likely to transmit dengue virus. A paper due out soon will show that the Wolbachia -carrying mosquitoes are also less likely than uninfected ones to transmit chikungunya, as well as  Zika, says Wolbachia project leader Scott O’Neill at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia.
Search for an Achilles’ heel
What interests Cornell’s Harrington are the undiscovered mosquito-fighting targets. Her lab studies courtship and reproduction in mosquitoes. “I really believe that’s where their Achilles’ heel is,” she says.

Courtship among Ae. aegypti is unusual and more complex than anyone had imagined, Harrington, her student Lauren Cator and colleagues reported in 2009. The scent of a human host attracts amorous male mosquitoes, which fly nearby until a female arrives looking for a blood meal. Male mosquitoes’ wide, feathery antennae pick up harmonic overtones of the whine of female wingbeats. The mosquitoes then synchronize one of the wingbeat overtones. “They’re singing to each other,” says Ethan Degner, a Harrington graduate student. Perhaps there’s a way to disrupt this courtship.

Another of the Harrington lab’s findings might be more immediately relevant. Conventional wisdom is that Ae. aegypti mosquitoes mate only once in their lives. Degner offered lab females a second chance to mate, but with a collaborating lab’s genetically engineered males that produce fluorescent red sperm. In lab conditions, a low percentage of females showed red in their reproductive tracts, indicating they mated twice, Degner and Harrington reported online February 15 in the American Journal of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene. This result agrees with observations of what looked like occasional second matings in the wild. With millions of dollars going into mass releases of sterile competitors to local fertile males, female willingness takes on new importance.

If biologists come up with some new way to eradicate Ae. aegypti, then humankind would have to decide whether to use it. Aside from moral questions, removing any species from an ecosystem can have unexpected risks and consequences. The weighing of arguments will differ species by species, even for mosquitoes. But the human-seeking form is a relative newcomer to the Americas. So in this era of Zika and other rampant mosquito-borne diseases, whether to blast this mosquito out of the hemisphere, should it ever be possible, might not be a difficult decision at all.

BALTIMORE — For a long time now, hydrogen has been the fuel of the future. A new idea for extracting hydrogen from water might help that future arrive a little sooner.

Today, producing hydrogen requires burning fossil fuels or using water-splitting catalysts that work relatively inefficiently, says physicist Arvin Kakekhani of Yale University. But Kakekhani and Sohrab Ismail-Beigi, also at Yale, identified a strategy using materials known as ferroelectric oxides to catalytically separate hydrogen from oxygen more effectively.

Catalysis requires a surface that both grips a water molecule in order to split it and releases the hydrogen atoms separated in the process. Ordinary catalysts must compromise between these two competing qualities. But a ferroelectric substance such as lead titanate can be prepared so that heat can switch it from a state suitable for splitting to another state good at releasing, computer simulations showed. Researchers therefore should be able to design a cycle of states that extracts hydrogen efficiently, Kakekhani reported March 17 in a news conference at a meeting of the American Physical Society.

“It’s a conceptual study that should be experimentally confirmed,” he said. A report on the work was also published online March 8 in the Journal of Materials Chemistry A.

There must be something wrong with the guy who never leaves home, right? Maybe not — at least if that guy is a male spotted hyena. Males that stay with their birth clan, instead of taking off to join a new group, may simply be making a good choice, a new study suggests.

Spotted hyenas are a matriarchal society. Females are in charge. They rank higher than every male in the clan. And the females generally stay with the clan for their entire lives. But males face a choice when they reach two and a half years in age. They can stay with the clan, or they can leave and join a new clan.

Each choice has its pros and cons. Staying with the clan means that a male hyena keeps a place at the top of the male pecking order. He’ll probably have his mother around to help. But he’ll be limited in the number of females he can mate with, because many of the female hyenas won’t mate with him because they might be related. If he joins a new clan, the male hyena might have access to more females — and they might even be better than the ones in his home clan — but he’ll start with the lowest social rank and have to spend years fighting his way to the top.

Among most group-living mammal species, the guys that stay at home turn out to be losers, siring fewer offspring. But spotted hyenas, it appears, are an exception.

Eve Davidian of the Leibniz Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Research in Berlin and colleagues tracked 254 male spotted hyenas that lived in eight clans in Ngorongoro Crater in Tanzania throughout their lives, a study lasting 20 years. When these males reached the age of maturity, they left their clans to take a look at the other options available to them. Forty-one hyenas returned to their home clans, and 213 settled with new ones.

Even though the males that stayed at home probably had fewer potential breeding partners, they still managed to sire as many offspring as those males that left for greener pastures. Many mated at an earlier age, and they tended to mate with higher-ranking females than males that joined new clans. And both groups lived similar lengths of time, the researchers report March 18 in Science Advances.

The guys who stay at home, it seems, aren’t losers who couldn’t find better prospects elsewhere. They just found good enough prospects at home, where they are at the top of the social ladder — and have mom around to help them get access to food and females.

Seems like a good strategy — for hyenas, at least.