分类： science

In a milestone for global climate monitoring efforts, China successfully launched a high-precision greenhouse gas detection satellite into its planned orbit on Friday, using a Long March 4C carrier rocket. The liftoff occurred at 12:10 p.m. Beijing Time at the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center, located in the Gobi Desert of Northwestern China.

This mission marks the 638th flight operation of China’s Long March series carrier rockets, one of the most active and reliable rocket families in global space operations. The newly deployed satellite is designed to deliver accurate, large-scale measurements of greenhouse gas concentrations across the globe, filling critical data gaps that support climate change research and international emission reduction policy implementation.

Unlike general atmospheric monitoring satellites, this new platform is equipped with advanced high-resolution detection instruments that can capture precise data on key greenhouse gases including carbon dioxide and methane, enabling scientists to track emission sources, monitor absorption processes, and verify the effectiveness of climate action initiatives around the world.

The launch comes amid growing global urgency to enhance climate observation infrastructure, as nations work toward meeting the carbon reduction goals outlined in the Paris Agreement. This new satellite capability is expected to contribute valuable open data to the global climate science community, supporting more informed decision-making for climate adaptation and mitigation strategies worldwide.

After nearly 20 years of sustained field investigation and cutting-edge data analysis, a team of Chinese marine geologists has completed the most comprehensive systematic survey of seabed sediment geochemistry in China’s eastern waters to date, generating unprecedented high-precision data that will advance regional resource development, ecological conservation, and Earth science research. The groundbreaking findings were officially released recently by the China Geological Survey.

Encompassing the Bohai Sea, Yellow Sea, and East China Sea, China’s eastern waters represent a geologically critical junction between the Eurasian continent and the Pacific Ocean, shaped by millions of years of sediment deposition, tectonic activity, and climate shifts. Drawing on decades of on-site marine expeditions, the research team assembled the largest, most complete, and most reliable geochemical dataset ever compiled for this region. To overcome the challenge of incomplete data across sparse survey areas, the team integrated field measurements from more than 10,000 sampling stations and leveraged machine learning algorithms to improve simulation accuracy. This innovative approach allowed them to produce detailed maps documenting the location, concentration, and spatial distribution of dozens of key chemical elements, including iron, manganese, copper, and a range of rare earth minerals.

Dou Yanguang, a lead researcher at the China Geological Survey’s Qingdao Institute of Marine Geology, described the new element distribution dataset as a foundational “navigation chart” for balancing development and conservation efforts across China’s eastern marine territories. “With this clear map of element distributions, we can rapidly pinpoint contaminated zones and ecologically sensitive areas, demarcate marine ecological protection red lines, more effectively manage marine pollution and environmental risks, and accurately target potential seabed mineral deposits to eliminate costly blind exploration,” Dou explained.
Beyond practical coastal management and resource applications, the survey also delivers profound insights into Earth’s geological and climatic history. Layers of seabed mud and accumulated biological remains act as a “thick marine diary,” preserving millions of years of records of continental drift, long-term climate change, and shifting river courses. The new geochemical data gives scientists a far clearer tool to decode this history and reconstruct the evolution of the western Pacific margin.

As part of their analysis, the research team compared sediment geochemistry from major river systems including the Yellow River, Yangtze River, and coastal rivers running through Zhejiang, Fujian, and Taiwan. The comparison confirmed a clear latitudinal pattern: moving southward into warmer, wetter climatic zones, chemical weathering breaks down bedrock and minerals far more completely, a pattern reflected in the composition of seabed sediments. The team also identified multiple secondary factors shaping element distributions, including seabed sediment grain size, the erosive scouring effect of ocean currents, and localized hydrothermal activity near tectonic plate boundaries and volcanic zones.

The China Geological Survey emphasized that this project fills a long-standing critical gap in systematic marine geochemical research in China, addressing the absence of a complete seabed sediment element map for the country’s eastern waters. The foundational dataset is expected to support ongoing work to advance China’s marine science capacity and advance the development of a modern maritime power.

As climate change continues to reshape polar regions, a new study led by Chinese researchers has delivered a key breakthrough in understanding the drivers of accelerating glacier movement along the Antarctic Peninsula, pinpointing shallow upper-ocean warming as the primary cause rather than previously hypothesized surface meltwater processes.

Antarctica’s ice sheet is widely recognized as one of the most critical barometers of global climate change. In recent decades, scientists have observed growing signs of instability across the continent, from accelerating ice mass loss to increasing dynamic disruption of marine-terminating glaciers – glaciers that end their flow in the ocean rather than on land. One of the world’s most closely watched hotspots of Antarctic climate change is Beascochea Bay, located in the western Antarctic Peninsula, a region where climate shifts have unfolded faster than almost anywhere else on the continent.

Prior research had linked short-term spikes in Antarctic glacier flow speed to one-off events, such as seasonal surface meltwater drainage or temporary intrusions of warm ocean water into glacial cavities. However, the question of whether long-term, persistent ocean warming could drive sustained regional glacier acceleration had remained unanswered until this new investigation.

To unpack the specific atmospheric and oceanic mechanisms that regulate glacier movement in the region, a research team from the Northwest Institute of Eco-Environment and Resources under the Chinese Academy of Sciences selected Beascochea Bay as their focused study site. Over the course of a decade, from 2015 to 2025, the team collected continuous observational data, enabling high-frequency, high-precision monitoring of flow velocities across all 101 glaciers contained within the bay. The team’s findings were recently published in the *International Journal of Applied Earth Observation and Geoinformation*.

The analysis confirmed two core trends: first, average glacier flow speeds are consistently higher during summer months than in winter, aligning with seasonal shifts in ocean and atmospheric temperatures. Second, the region has experienced widespread, sustained acceleration of glacier flow beginning in 2018, which the research team identifies as a potential critical turning point for the region’s glacial system.

“This widespread and sustained acceleration of glacier flow velocities was likely a signal of a critical regime shift in the climate system,” explained Kang Yulong, the first author of the research paper. The trend confirms that Antarctic Peninsula glaciers are exhibiting an increasingly clear and pronounced response to ongoing anthropogenic global warming.

To disentangle the relative contributions of different warming drivers, the team conducted a quantitative analysis separating the impacts of ocean warming and atmospheric warming on flow speed. Their key conclusion upends some prior assumptions: the sustained acceleration is not dominated by surface meltwater processes, but instead is tightly linked to increased heat input in the shallow upper ocean, at depths between 0 and 300 meters.

The study also uncovered a worrying new trend: Antarctic Peninsula glaciers now have significantly higher sensitivity to external warming than previously recorded, and the structural support holding these glacial systems in place has grown far more fragile. As marine-terminating glaciers flow faster into the ocean, they release more ice into the water, contributing directly to global sea level rise that threatens coastal communities worldwide.

Beyond its core finding, the research marks a major advance for climate science. It deepens the global scientific community’s understanding of Antarctic ice sheet dynamics and the complex interactions between ice sheets and the surrounding ocean, while also providing critical empirical data to improve projections of global sea level rise and refine the accuracy of global climate models.

Looking ahead, Kang’s research team plans to expand their investigation, testing whether the 0-300 meter upper-ocean warming driver they identified is a generalizable mechanism across other regions of Antarctica. The team also aims to build out longer-term observational datasets to further explore the long-term stability of the Antarctic ice sheet and identify the critical temperature thresholds that could trigger irreversible ice loss, building a stronger scientific foundation for global polar cryosphere research and climate action.

On Monday, a Beijing-based academic seminar marked the official launch of the Chinese translation of *Questions of the Future*, a notable work by German molecular biologist Patrick Cramer, president of the Max Planck Society. This release marks the first time the book, originally published in German under the title *Zukunftswelten* in March 2024, has been adapted into a foreign language, bringing Cramer’s insights on global scientific progress to a new Chinese-speaking audience.

Hosted under the theme “Interdisciplinary Dialogues for the Science of Tomorrow,” the event brought together leading scientific experts from across sectors to explore how collaborative research can answer pressing global challenges. During his keynote address, Cramer walked attendees through the core arguments of his book, sharing his perspectives on the future direction of scientific inquiry, the power of cross-disciplinary research, and the irreplaceable role of international partnership in advancing knowledge.

Cramer stressed that foundational basic research, trailblazing original innovation, and open cross-border collaboration are non-negotiable for driving meaningful scientific progress. He further noted that a growing number of issues once considered far-off future concerns have now evolved into critical threats that will define the trajectory of human civilization. These pressing issues span the global transition to clean energy to reverse climate change, the far-reaching social disruption of rapid artificial intelligence advancement, and the systemic shifts required to accommodate aging populations worldwide amid modern medical progress.

Attending experts reinforced Cramer’s views during a subsequent roundtable discussion, pointing out that no single academic discipline or individual nation has the capacity to independently solve shared transnational challenges, from climate change and population aging to responsible AI governance and biodiversity protection. They concluded that expanding cross-disciplinary dialogue, deepening coordinated investment in basic research, and fostering consistent international scientific and technological exchange are critical not only for pushing the boundaries of human knowledge, but also for building collective solutions to the challenges that unite all countries.

The seminar was sponsored by the Bureau of International Cooperation of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and organized by the Institute for the History of Natural Sciences of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

For hundreds of years, one of the most persistent unanswered questions in human biology has confounded researchers across the globe: why do approximately 90% of people worldwide naturally favor their right hand? This long-elusive puzzle has finally been cracked by a team of Chinese scientists from the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), whose groundbreaking findings were recently published online in the *Journal of Genetics and Genomics*.

To unpack the origins of hand preference, the research team designed a series of controlled animal experiments that challenged existing assumptions about handedness being an innate human trait. Their work led to the proposal of a new framework: the Hypothesis of Acquired Conservation of Right-Hand Preference, which redefines how we understand the development of limb preference.

In initial observations, the team confirmed that untrained laboratory mice show no inherent bias toward using one paw over the other when feeding, demonstrating equal usage of both limbs. To test how preference develops, scientists engineered a specialized experimental cage with a food access hole positioned in a way that forced mice to reach for food using only a single designated paw — either the left or the right.

Within just five to seven forced feeding trials, the mice developed a lasting preference for the trained paw. Mice trained to use their right paw retained this “right-pawed” bias for more than a month even after all movement restrictions were lifted, and the same pattern held for mice trained on the left. This experiment provided clear evidence that limb preference can be formed rapidly through repeated practice rather than being present from birth.

A subsequent follow-up experiment uncovered a critical asymmetry that mirrors real-world human handedness distribution. After mice had established a solid paw preference, researchers attempted to force them to switch their habits. What they found was striking: right-paw preferences were far more persistent and resistant to change, while left-paw preferences could be readily redirected to right-paw use.

Even when mice were forced to alternate between paws repeatedly over the course of the experiment, the vast majority ultimately settled into a stable right-paw preference, leaving only a small minority of consistent left-paw users. This outcome almost exactly replicates the 9-to-1 split of right- to left-handedness seen in human populations worldwide.

Drawing on these consistent experimental results, the research team concluded that human handedness is not a genetically predetermined innate trait, but instead is established quickly during early childhood through repeated, consistent use of one hand for daily tasks. “A right-hand preference, once formed, is more stable and easier to sustain than a left-hand one, granting it a cumulative advantage in individual development,” explained Sun Zhongsheng, a lead researcher from the CAS Institute of Zoology. “Reinforced by a right-hand-dominant social environment, where tools, infrastructure, and social norms are built around right-handed use, this cumulative tendency ultimately creates the predominantly ‘right-handed world’ we see today.”

Beyond resolving a centuries-old behavioral mystery, the study opens new avenues of research into broader questions of human brain asymmetry and the plasticity of human behavioral traits, offering a new foundational perspective for future work in developmental biology and neuroscience.

A groundbreaking international research collaboration has made a historic discovery: the first confirmed identification of nitrogen-bearing organic compounds in lunar soil, a finding that opens critical new avenues for understanding how life’s chemical precursors spread across the early solar system.

The team, comprising scientists from the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the University of New Mexico, and the Changsha University of Science and Technology, analyzed pristine soil samples collected by China’s Chang’e 5 and Chang’e 6 lunar exploration missions to map out the likely pathway that delivered organic materials to the inner solar system via asteroid and comet impacts. Their peer-reviewed results, published April 10, 2026 in the journal *Science Advances*, fills a long-standing gap in scientific knowledge about how the fundamental building blocks of life arrived on early Earth.

Unlike Earth, where constant geological activity and pervasive biological processes have erased most evidence of the planet’s first billion years, the moon has functioned as a well-preserved planetary time capsule. With almost no tectonic or atmospheric activity, the lunar surface retains intact traces of space debris impacts that occurred billions of years ago. While earlier analyses of samples retrieved by NASA’s Apollo missions detected carbon- and hydrogen-based organic compounds on the moon, nitrogen-bearing organics — chemical structures commonly found in asteroids sampled by NASA’s OSIRIS-REx and Japan’s Hayabusa2 missions — had never been confirmed in lunar material before this study.

This new research does more than just confirm the presence of these missing organic compounds: it also reveals how asteroid impacts both deliver and reshape these materials on the lunar surface. Using cutting-edge high-resolution microscopy and specialized light-based analytical tools, the research team verified that the detected organics are composed of carbon, nitrogen, and oxygen, and show signs of complex chemical reorganization that sets them apart from inert, simple graphitized carbon.

Dong Mingtan, lead author of the study and a doctoral candidate at the Chinese Academy of Sciences’ Institute of Geology and Geophysics, explained that the team identified amide functional groups in a subset of the samples — chemical structures that are a fundamental component of key biological molecules such as proteins. This discovery, Dong noted, confirms that the organic materials have undergone complex chemical restructuring that brings them closer to the type of organic molecules that can be used as building blocks for life.

To trace the origin of the organics, the team analyzed isotopic ratios — unique elemental “fingerprints” that reveal a material’s geological and cosmic history. They found that the lunar organics had a lighter isotopic signature than organics found in intact asteroids, a pattern consistent with a process of vaporization and redeposition. When an asteroid collides with the moon, the extreme heat generated by the impact vaporizes organic molecules, which then cool and settle back into the cold lunar surface, leaving this distinct isotopic trace.

To eliminate any doubt that the organic compounds could have come from contamination after the samples were brought to Earth, the team tested for evidence of solar wind implantation, a process where charged particles from the sun bombard the lunar surface over millions of years, leaving a unique chemical marker that can only form off-Earth.

Hao Jialong, senior engineer at the Institute of Geology and Geophysics and the study’s corresponding author, confirmed that the presence of this marker confirms the organics were exposed on the lunar surface for an extended period, definitively ruling out terrestrial contamination.

Overall, the study outlines a complete lifecycle for organic materials on the moon: delivery via impacts from small solar system bodies, structural reshaping by the heat and force of those impacts, and final modification by long-term exposure to solar radiation. The research team announced that the same analytical framework developed for this project will be applied to samples collected by China’s upcoming Tianwen 2 mission, which is scheduled to return asteroid samples to Earth by the end of 2027.

BEIJING – A groundbreaking naturally occurring insecticidal protein sourced from common plants is transitioning from lab discovery to large-scale agricultural application, marking a major milestone in China’s homegrown crop protection technology, according to a recent report from Science and Technology Daily.

Discovered and developed by the Institute of Cotton Research (ICR) under the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, the new protein, named iJAZ, offers a fully independent and controllable new pathway for breeding insect-resistant staple crops. To accelerate commercial rollout of the innovation, ICR has entered into a collaborative development agreement with Guangxi Tianyuan Biochemistry Co., Ltd. The partnership will focus on integrating the iJAZ technology into insect-resistant breeding programs for four high-value major crops: cotton, soybean, eucalyptus, and sugarcane, with the goal of making the novel insect-resistant approach widely accessible to global agriculture.

Unlike many synthetic or engineered insecticidal traits, iJAZ occurs naturally in a range of everyday plant species, including cotton, pumpkin, and durian. What sets the protein apart from the current industry standard, Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) insecticidal protein, is its completely unique mechanism of action and structural characteristics. Unlike Bt proteins that are constitutively expressed in modified crop tissues, iJAZ remains inactive in plant cells under normal, undamaged conditions. Only when targeted chewing pests begin feeding on plant leaves and causing tissue damage does the protein activate: it then specifically identifies and binds tightly to unique receptor sites found only in the pests’ digestive tracts, triggering its potent lethal effect.

Independent research data from ICR’s trials confirms the protein’s extraordinary efficacy: it achieves a 99.33 percent resistance rate against cotton bollworm larvae, one of the most destructive and costly pests for global cotton production. Structurally, iJAZ is just one-tenth the molecular size of conventional Bt proteins, a key advantage that allows both iJAZ and Bt proteins to be stacked in the same crop variety. This combined application provides a long-sought solution to one of the most pressing challenges facing modern agricultural biotechnology: the widespread degradation of Bt protein efficacy as pests develop cross-resistance over decades of widespread use.

To complement the discovery of iJAZ, ICR researchers have also developed a cutting-edge high-efficiency genetic transformation system designed to streamline the integration of the iJAZ trait into elite commercial crop varieties. The new system leverages direct shoot regeneration from the apical stem cells of seeds, cutting the traditional transformation cycle dramatically: what previously took between 6 and 8 months to complete now only requires 2 to 3 months. Even more significantly, the new system overcomes the long-standing genotype barrier that has limited the speed of crop breeding, allowing scientists to directly add insect-resistant protection to existing top-performing commercial varieties rather than breeding new varieties from scratch. This tailored approach drastically accelerates the development and release of new insect-resistant crop varieties for farmers.

To date, the combined iJAZ and transformation technology system has already been successfully adapted and tested across a diverse range of additional crop species, including peanut, cucumber, and cowpea, demonstrating its broad applicability to global agricultural production.