China Science & Technology Forum

[JSCh]

Chinese scientists develop nanogel for antibacterial textile
Source: Xinhua| 2019-03-06 17:18:24|Editor: Yurou

BEIJING, March 6 (Xinhua) -- Chinese scientists have developed a nanogel that can be applied to textiles for durable antibacterial effects.

Since bacterial infections seriously threaten human's health, the design of nanoscale antibacterial materials has become a hot research area.

Scientists from Shanghai-based Donghua University have developed a kind of environmentally friendly nanogel with long-lasting antibacterial effects, good biocompatibility and positive effects on preventing wound infection.

The nanogel has a regular spherical structure with a size of about 200 nanometers. The nanogel grafted on the surface of cotton fibers displayed good thermal stability, which is essential for the finishing of fabrics.

The cotton fabrics finished with nanogels can prevent the adhesion and the proliferation of bacteria. After 50 rounds of machine washing, the grafted cotton fabric still had an antibacterial efficiency of more than 86 percent against certain bacteria such as Escherichia coli.

The research provides a reference for the future design of functional clothing, antibacterial dressings and other biomedical materials, according to Qin Xiaohong, one of the researchers.

The research was published in the journal Advanced Functional Materials.

 

[JSCh]

These falling drops don’t splash—they spin | Science | AAAS
By Lakshmi Supriya Mar. 5, 2019 , 11:00 AM

Falling drops usually make a splash, but these drops do the twist. Researchers have created surfaces that can make droplets spin and whirl at more than 7300 revolutions per minute when they rebound.

To make the water droplets spin, researchers first had to make sure they didn’t wet the surface they fell on—otherwise, they’d just splash. The researchers did this by coating alumina plates with a fluorinated nonstick coating, similar to those found in nonstick cooking pans. Next, they masked some regions of the surface and shone ultraviolet (UV) light on the entire plate. The regions exposed to the UV became highly “wettable,” meaning water touching those regions spread out immediately rather than bouncing back up. The team created several designs of the wettable regions, including one with spiral arms radiating out from a center, much like a pinwheel.

As the droplet bounds up from the patterned surface, the portions encountering the wettable spirals stick to the surface, whereas the parts of the droplet in contact with the water-repelling surface rebound immediately. This creates a set of unbalanced forces, pulling on the droplet more in some parts than in others, twisting it, the team reports today in Nature Communications.

Depending on the design of the wettable and nonwettable regions, not only can drops be made to rotate, but can also roll, deflect, or show a combination of different motions, making droplets dance to the tune of the surface patterns. Controlling how liquid drops bounce off a surface may be useful in many areas such self-cleaning surfaces, deicing applications, or for mixing different materials.

 

[JSCh]

A Flexible Way to Hide the Heat
Patricia Daukantas

Thermal image of an electric heating plate, with all but the bottom section covered with a new aerogel film developed by researchers at the Chinese Academy of Sciences. The film effectively hides the hot object from infrared detection. [Image: American Chemical Society]

As long as scientists have been improving thermal imaging systems for military and commercial purposes, other scientists have sought new coatings and materials to make objects invisible to heat-seeking cameras. A team based in China has developed an inexpensive, flexible film that the researchers say renders the objects it covers virtually invisible in infrared light (ACS Nano, doi: 10.1021/acsnano.8b08913).

The film, developed by Xuetong Zhang's group at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, has the consistency of an aerogel—an extremely low-density solid that looks like a frozen cloud. This particular aerogel consists of two familiar main ingredients: DuPont's Kevlar, a synthetic fiber with high tensile strength, and polyethylene glycol (PEG), a water-soluble polymer with many applications.

The burgeoning world of nanostructures and metamaterials has led to numerous schemes for using static nanopatterns to hide thermal emitters from infrared detectors, but such patterns cannot be fine-tuned, according to the researchers. Some dynamic methods for controlling infrared emissivity consume a fair amount of electricity or respond slowly to temperature changes. Plain old thermal blankets can be thick and heavy.

Constructing the aerogel
To create the aerogel, Zhang's team dissolved Kevlar into dimethyl sulfoxide (DMSO), resulting in a nanofiber solution. The researchers subsequently solidified the material, rinsed off the remaining DMSO and freeze-dried the solids. Finally, the scientists allowed the aerogel to absorb PEG, a phase-change material that can store heat, and shaped it into a film attached to a protective waterproof layer.

Adjusting the percentage of Kevlar by weight in the nanofiber solution significantly changed the pore size and mechanical properties of the resulting film. The optimal thickness and concentration was a film 150 μm thick, made of a solution of 2 percent Kevlar nanofibers by weight; that film had a tensile strength of 1.27 MPa. The film survived 20 rounds of folding and unfolding, and it can also be rolled up.

To test the aerogel film's thermal properties, the researchers exposed it to a simulated outdoor cycle of day–night lighting variations and found that its temperature rose more slowly in mock sunlight than that of the target material underneath the film. Infrared imaging showed that one, three and five layers of the Kevlar–PEG aerogel transmitted significantly less heat than the same number of layers of aerogel that did not contain PEG.

Zhang is currently a Royal Society fellow at University College London, U.K.

Publish Date: 06 March 2019


A Flexible Way to Hide the Heat | Optics & Photonics News

 

[JSCh]

Chinese scientists develop early diagnosis of liver cancer for hepatitis B carriers
Source: Xinhua| 2019-03-12 19:33:25|Editor: ZX

BEIJING, March 12 (Xinhua) -- Chinese scientists have designed a new screening method for hepatitis B carriers, to detect early-stage hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC), the most common type of primary liver cancer.

The new method was developed by researchers from Cancer Hospital, Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences and Genetron Health, a biomedical company. Through a liquid biopsy that detects cell-free DNA somatic mutations in combination with protein markers, researchers can efficiently identify early-stage HCC cases of less than 3 cm.

According to Yan Hai, one of the researchers, the method showed 100 percent sensitivity, 94 percent specificity and 17 percent positive predictive value in the validation cohort, proving it a feasible approach to identify early stage HCC.

The research team will optimize this screening method through systematic research in a multi-center, large prospective cohort study, Yan said.

After rigorous clinical validation, this method is expected to become a more convenient, non-invasive and standardized early screening program for liver cancer.

The research was published in the U.S. journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

 

[JSCh]

PUBLIC RELEASE: 19-MAR-2019
Uncovering the superconducting phosphine: P2H4 and P4H6
SCIENCE CHINA PRESS

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The high pressure phase diagrams of PH3 at room temperature and low temperature. ©Science China Press

Searching high-Tc superconductor has become a hot topic in physics since superconducting mercury was first reported more than one century ago. Dense hydrogen was predicted to metalize and become superconductor at high pressure and room temperature. However, it has been very challenging and no widely accepted experimental work has been reported yet. In 2004, Ashcroft predicted hydrogen-dominant hydrides could become high-Tc superconductor at high pressure, due to the 'chemical precompression'. Later, Drozdov et al. observed the superconductive transition of H2S at 203 K and 155 GPa, which broke the highest Tc record. Very recently, LaH6 was reported to shown superconducting behavior at ~260K. Motivated by these works, extensive investigations on hydrides system have been reported.

PH3, a typical hydrogen-rich hydride, has attracted a great deal of research interest because of its superconducting transition discovered at high pressure. However, structural information was not provided, and the origin of the superconducting transition remains puzzling. Although a series of theoretical works suggested possible structures, the PH3 phase under compression has remained unknown and no relevant experimental studies have been reported.

In a recent research article published in National Science Review, scientists from the Center for High Pressure Science and Technology Advanced Research, School of Physics and Electronic Engineering, Jiangsu Normal University, Key Laboratory of Carbon Materials of Zhejiang Province, College of Chemistry and Materials Engineering, Wenzhou University and Shanghai Institute of Applied Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences present their results on the studies of stoichiometric evolutions of PH3 under high pressure. It was found that PH3 is stable below 11.7 GPa and then it starts to dehydrogenate through two dimerization processes at room temperature and pressures up to 25 GPa. Two resulting phosphorus hydrides, P2H4 and P4H6, were verified experimentally and can be recovered to ambient pressure. Under further compression above 35 GPa, the P4H6 directly decomposed into elemental phosphorus. Low temperature can greatly hinder polymerization/decomposition under high pressure, and retain P4H6 up to at least 205 GPa. "Our findings suggested that P4H6 might be responsible for superconductivity at high pressures." said Dr. Lin Wang, the corresponding author of the article.

To determine the possible structure of P4H6 at high pressure, structural searches were further performed. Theoretical calculations revealed that two stable structures with space group Cmcm (< 182 GPa) and C2/m (> 182 GPa) were found. Phonon dispersions calculations of the two structures do not give any imaginary frequencies and therefore, this verifies their dynamic stabilities. The superconducting Tc of the C2/m structure at 200 GPa was estimated to be 67 K. "All of these findings confirmed P4H6 might be the corresponding superconductor, which is helpful for shedding light on the superconducting mechanism." Dr. Wang added.


Uncovering the superconducting phosphine: P2H4 and P4H6 | EurekAlert! Science News

Ye Yuan, Yinwei Li, Guoyong Fang, Guangtao Liu, Cuiying Pei, Xin Li, Haiyan Zheng, Ke Yang, Lin Wang. Stoichiometric evolutions of PH3 under high pressure: implication for high Tc superconducting hydrides. Natl Sci. Rev. (2019). DOI: 10.1093/nsr/nwz010​

 

[JSCh]

3D-printed electrical room starts operation in southern China
New China TV
Published on Mar 20, 2019

Lower pollution, more efficient! A power distribution room that was built using 3-D printing technology is now operating in southern China's Guangzhou. It took the engineers only 35 days to create it.

 

[JSCh]

SPOTLIGHT * 20 MARCH 2019
Materials science is helping to transform China into a high-tech economy
Researchers are reaping the benefits of carefully built programmes and a surge in funding.

Sarah O’Meara

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A flexi-screen mobile phone is on display at an exhibition in Chengdu last year.Credit: Wang Xiao/Chengdu Economic Daily/VCG/Getty

By the time Dawei Zhang’s study visa to the United States had been renewed, it was too late. The 29-year-old materials scientist was back in China with his wife and son, ready to begin a postdoc at the University of Science and Technology Beijing — one of the country’s leading materials institutes. The delay had prompted him to accept a position in China, rather than pursue research on self-healing materials in the United States.

Looking back, Zhang realizes that the unexpected move worked out well for him. Six years later, his research into materials corrosion has become part of a national 1-billion-yuan (US$150-million) programme to revolutionize the speed and efficiency with which China can develop new materials, known as the Materials Genome Engineering (MGE) project.

Such large-scale scientific ventures have become common in China over the past decade, forming key elements of the government’s plan to transform the country into a high-tech economy that can match, and eventually surpass, the world’s leading scientific nations.



Continue reading -> Materials science is helping to transform China into a high-tech economy | Nature

 

[JSCh]

PUBLIC RELEASE: 21-MAR-2019
Plant scraps are the key ingredient in cheap, sustainable jet fuel
CELL PRESS

Scientists in China have developed a process for converting plant waste from agriculture and timber harvesting into high-density aviation fuel. Their research, published March 21 in the journal Joule, may help reduce CO2 emissions from airplanes and rockets.

Cellulose, the main component in the biofuel, is a cheap, renewable, and highly abundant polymer that forms the cell walls of plants. While chain alkanes (such as branched octane, dodecane, and hexadecane) have previously been derived from cellulose for use in jet fuel, the researchers believe this is the first study to produce more complex polycycloalkane compounds that can be used as high-density aviation fuel.

Ning Li, a research scientist at the Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics and an author of the study, believes this new biofuel could be instrumental in helping aviation "go green."

"Our biofuel is important for mitigating CO2 emissions because it is derived from biomass and it has higher density (or volumetric heat values) compared with conventional aviation fuels," says Li. "As we know, the utilization of high-density aviation fuel can significantly increase the range and payload of aircraft without changing the volume of oil in the tank."

To produce this biofuel, Li and his team found that cellulose can be selectively converted to 2,5-hexanedione using the chemical reaction hydrogenolysis. They then developed a method of separating the compound 2,5-hexanedione by converting the 5-methylfurfural in hydrogenolysis product to 2,5-hexanedione, while keeping 2,5-hexanedione in the product unchanged. This resulted in a 71% isolated carbon yield--a 5% increase from the product yield in their initial work. Finally, they reacted hydrogen with the 2,5-hexanedione from wheatgrass cellulose to obtain the final product: a mixture of C12 and C18 polycycloalkanes with a low freezing point and a density about 10% higher than that of conventional jet fuels. Much of the biofuel's magic lies in this high density--it can be used as either a wholesale replacement fuel or as an additive to improve the efficiency of other jet fuels.

"The aircraft using this fuel can fly farther and carry more than those using conventional jet fuel, which can decrease the flight number and decrease the CO2 emissions during the taking off (or launching) and landing," says Li.

Although the researchers produced the biofuel at a laboratory scale in this study, Li and his team believe the process' cheap, abundant cellulose feedstock, fewer production steps, and lower energy cost and consumption mean it will soon be ready for commercial use. They also predict it will yield higher profits than conventional aviation fuel production because it requires lower costs to produce a higher-density fuel. The biggest issue holding the process back is its use of dichloromethane to break down cellulose into 2,5-hexanedione; the compound is traditionally used as a solvent in paint removers and is considered an environmental and health hazard.

"In the future, we will go on to explore the environmentally friendly and renewable organic solvent that can replace the dichloromethane used in the hydrogenolysis of cellulose to 2,5-hexanedione," says Li. "At the same time, we will study the application of 2,5-hexanedione in the synthesis of other fuels and value-added chemicals."



Plant scraps are the key ingredient in cheap, sustainable jet fuel | EurekAlert! Science News

Yanting Liu; Guangyi Li; Yancheng Hu; Aiqin Wang; Fang Lu; Ji-Jun Zou; Yu Cong; Ning Li; Tao Zhang. Integrated Conversion of Cellulose to High-Density Aviation Fuel. Joule (2019). DOI: 10.1016/j.joule.2019.02.005​

 

[JSCh]

Fossil Bonanza in China Reveals Secrets from the Dawn of Animal Life
Newly-discovered fossil deposit contains more than 50 unknown species from the Cambrian Explosion, when most complex body plans appeared.

Team digging up Qingjiang Fossils along the Danshui River, in Hubei Province, China.
Image credits: Dong King Fu

Thursday, March 21, 2019 - 14:00

Charles Q. Choi, Contributor

(Inside Science) -- A new trove of outstandingly preserved fossils in China from the dawn of animal life rivals the horde of weird creatures found in legendary sites such as the Burgess Shale, and may shed light on many puzzles concerning the animal family tree, a new study finds.

The earliest hints of life in the roughly 4.5 billion-year history of Earth may have appeared 3.95 billion years ago, but for a long time after that, life consisted of relatively simple organisms. However, about 540 million years ago, early in the Cambrian period, the simple animal life that already existed exploded in complexity and diversity. During this outburst, known as the Cambrian explosion, all the major groups of animals seemed to appear rapidly.

Much of what scientists know about the Cambrian explosion started with the 508 million-year-old site known as the Burgess Shale, discovered in 1909 in the Canadian Rocky Mountains, which exquisitely preserved fossils of many soft body parts, including skin, eyes, guts and brains. This site not only contains members of nearly all major animal groups alive nowadays, but also creatures with strange anatomies that do not resemble any organism seen today, leading to lively debates as to how they might be related to living animals.

The past decade has seen a big jump in the discovery of new Burgess Shale-type fossil sites, with researchers examining geological maps and seeking out the kinds of rock they know have a high potential of preserving these fossils, said paleontologist Allison Daley at the University of Lausanne in Switzerland.

Now scientists have revealed new Cambrian fossils from China that not only rival the quality and diversity of fossils at the Burgess Shale, but also reveal an unexpectedly large number of previously unknown species from the Cambrian explosion.

The newfound fossil bounty is located on a bank of the Danshui River in the southern Chinese province of Hubei. At roughly 518 million years old, this collection, dubbed the Qingjiang biota, is about 10 million years older than the Burgess Shale and thus closer to the start of the Cambrian explosion, said study co-author Xingliang Zhang, a paleontologist at Northwest University in Xi'an, China.

Of the 101 animal species identified from the Qingjiang biota so far, more than 50 were previously unknown to science. Moreover, "the fossils are really exceptionally preserved, including soft tissues that you don't normally see in the fossil record," said paleontologist Jean-Bernard Caron at the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto, who did not take part in this research. "It's basically a new window to the Cambrian world."

This fossil trove may fill gaps of knowledge concerning animals largely missing at other Cambrian sites, such as the cnidarians, stinging creatures that include jellyfish and sea anemones. "Cnidarians are extremely rare in other Cambrian sites, but are very well-preserved and make up more than a third of the specimens reported at the Qingjiang biota," Caron said.

The Qingjiang biota also includes many ctenophores or comb jellies, "which in modern seas are sort of jellyfishlike animals with beautiful coloration," said Daley, who did not participate in this work, but wrote an editorial that accompanied the published study. Scientists have debated over whether ctenophores, sponges or cnidarians are the most ancient members of the animal family tree, and fossils from the Qingjiang biota "may help solve the problem of which animal group evolved first," she said.

The discovery of creatures known as kinorhynchs, or "mud dragons," in the Qingjiang biota was highly surprising, Daley said. Today, these invertebrates are roughly 1 millimeter long or less and live buried in marine sediments, but the Qingjiang biota reveals they could get up to 4 centimeters long and apparently lived on top of the seafloor instead. "These fossils may shed light on some of these weird and poorly understood animal groups that are still alive today," Daley said.

The Qingjiang biota may also help solve mysteries regarding enigmatic ancient groups of creatures such as the somewhat tadpole-shaped vetulicolians. Scientists have faced great difficulties pinpointing how vetulicolians were related to other animals, but "the new fossils could potentially allow us to fix vetulicolians on the tree of life," Daley said.

These findings may yield key insights on the relatively sketchy picture scientists currently have of the dawn of animal life, Caron said. "Many new things remain to be found, and hold a great potential to solve many questions," Zhang said.

The scientists detailed their findings in the March 22 issue of the journal Science.


Fossil Bonanza in China Reveals Secrets from the Dawn of Animal Life | Inside Science

Dongjing Fu, Guanghui Tong, Tao Dai, Wei Liu, Yuning Yang, Yuan Zhang, Linhao Cui, Luoyang Li, Hao Yun, Yu Wu, Ao Sun, Cong Liu, Wenrui Pei, Robert R. Gaines, Xingliang Zhang. The Qingjiang biota—A Burgess Shale–type fossil Lagerstätte from the early Cambrian of South China. Science (2019). DOI: 10.1126/science.aau8800​

 

[JSCh]

Metallic Metasurface: How to Stay Under The Radar?

By Jolke Perelaer
Posted on March 19, 2019

Researchers from the Chinese Academy of Sciences have prepared all-metallic metasurfaces as wide-angle microwave diffusers.

Metallic skin has been widely used in various engineering applications because of its excellent mechanical and physical properties, such as high strength, large flexibility, and good ductility, as well as its high temperature resistance and excellent thermal conductivity. As a typical example, aircraft and ship skins often use metal materials to meet the physical requirements.

Schematic of the heat resisting metallic metasurface, showing the electromagnetic scattering in the upper half‐space. Inset illustrates two adjacent elements and the located catenary optical field.

In stealth technology however the strong reflection of electromagnetic waves by metal is disadvantageous in order to remain undetected. Though radar scattering signal could be reduced by changing the geometries of objects to guide the reflected wave into other directions, shaping the physical geometry is usually undesired due to other physical constraints, such as the compatibility of aero- and hydrodynamics.

As a type of two-dimensional metamaterials, metasurface has been a topic of considerable interest in recent years. According to generalized Snell’s law, the reflection and transmission electromagnetic wavefronts can be reshaped by the local phase control of the metasurfaces. Recently, various building blocks based on metal-insulator-metal (MIM) structures have been presented. This approach uses the random distribution of local reflection phases of unit cells, which enables diffuse electromagnetic scattering. Consequently, the radar cross section (RCS) would be dramatically reduced.

Infrared emission characterization for the metasurface at room temperature.

A team of researchers from the State Key Laboratory of Optical Technologies on Nano-Fabrication and Micro-Engineering, from the Chinese Academy of Sciences designed an all-metallic metasurface, using high-temperature resistant metal materials.

By optimizing the catenary optical fields and dispersion, broadband and wide-angle diffusion in the microwave band was realized. Unlike previous diffusers, the echo reflection is subtly suppressed, thus minimizing the target RCS. In addition, the structure is compatible with both high temperature and infrared camouflage performance. The authors believe that this approach is expected to provide a surface coating for electromagnetic feature control.

Read more about their findings in their full article on Advanced Materials Technologies.



Metallic Metasurface: How to Stay Under The Radar? - Advanced Science News

 

[Bussard Ramjet]

Fossil Bonanza in China Reveals Secrets from the Dawn of Animal Life
Newly-discovered fossil deposit contains more than 50 unknown species from the Cambrian Explosion, when most complex body plans appeared.

Team digging up Qingjiang Fossils along the Danshui River, in Hubei Province, China.
Image credits: Dong King Fu

Thursday, March 21, 2019 - 14:00

Charles Q. Choi, Contributor

(Inside Science) -- A new trove of outstandingly preserved fossils in China from the dawn of animal life rivals the horde of weird creatures found in legendary sites such as the Burgess Shale, and may shed light on many puzzles concerning the animal family tree, a new study finds.

The earliest hints of life in the roughly 4.5 billion-year history of Earth may have appeared 3.95 billion years ago, but for a long time after that, life consisted of relatively simple organisms. However, about 540 million years ago, early in the Cambrian period, the simple animal life that already existed exploded in complexity and diversity. During this outburst, known as the Cambrian explosion, all the major groups of animals seemed to appear rapidly.

Much of what scientists know about the Cambrian explosion started with the 508 million-year-old site known as the Burgess Shale, discovered in 1909 in the Canadian Rocky Mountains, which exquisitely preserved fossils of many soft body parts, including skin, eyes, guts and brains. This site not only contains members of nearly all major animal groups alive nowadays, but also creatures with strange anatomies that do not resemble any organism seen today, leading to lively debates as to how they might be related to living animals.

The past decade has seen a big jump in the discovery of new Burgess Shale-type fossil sites, with researchers examining geological maps and seeking out the kinds of rock they know have a high potential of preserving these fossils, said paleontologist Allison Daley at the University of Lausanne in Switzerland.

Now scientists have revealed new Cambrian fossils from China that not only rival the quality and diversity of fossils at the Burgess Shale, but also reveal an unexpectedly large number of previously unknown species from the Cambrian explosion.

The newfound fossil bounty is located on a bank of the Danshui River in the southern Chinese province of Hubei. At roughly 518 million years old, this collection, dubbed the Qingjiang biota, is about 10 million years older than the Burgess Shale and thus closer to the start of the Cambrian explosion, said study co-author Xingliang Zhang, a paleontologist at Northwest University in Xi'an, China.

Of the 101 animal species identified from the Qingjiang biota so far, more than 50 were previously unknown to science. Moreover, "the fossils are really exceptionally preserved, including soft tissues that you don't normally see in the fossil record," said paleontologist Jean-Bernard Caron at the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto, who did not take part in this research. "It's basically a new window to the Cambrian world."

This fossil trove may fill gaps of knowledge concerning animals largely missing at other Cambrian sites, such as the cnidarians, stinging creatures that include jellyfish and sea anemones. "Cnidarians are extremely rare in other Cambrian sites, but are very well-preserved and make up more than a third of the specimens reported at the Qingjiang biota," Caron said.

The Qingjiang biota also includes many ctenophores or comb jellies, "which in modern seas are sort of jellyfishlike animals with beautiful coloration," said Daley, who did not participate in this work, but wrote an editorial that accompanied the published study. Scientists have debated over whether ctenophores, sponges or cnidarians are the most ancient members of the animal family tree, and fossils from the Qingjiang biota "may help solve the problem of which animal group evolved first," she said.

The discovery of creatures known as kinorhynchs, or "mud dragons," in the Qingjiang biota was highly surprising, Daley said. Today, these invertebrates are roughly 1 millimeter long or less and live buried in marine sediments, but the Qingjiang biota reveals they could get up to 4 centimeters long and apparently lived on top of the seafloor instead. "These fossils may shed light on some of these weird and poorly understood animal groups that are still alive today," Daley said.

The Qingjiang biota may also help solve mysteries regarding enigmatic ancient groups of creatures such as the somewhat tadpole-shaped vetulicolians. Scientists have faced great difficulties pinpointing how vetulicolians were related to other animals, but "the new fossils could potentially allow us to fix vetulicolians on the tree of life," Daley said.

These findings may yield key insights on the relatively sketchy picture scientists currently have of the dawn of animal life, Caron said. "Many new things remain to be found, and hold a great potential to solve many questions," Zhang said.

The scientists detailed their findings in the March 22 issue of the journal Science.


Fossil Bonanza in China Reveals Secrets from the Dawn of Animal Life | Inside Science

Dongjing Fu, Guanghui Tong, Tao Dai, Wei Liu, Yuning Yang, Yuan Zhang, Linhao Cui, Luoyang Li, Hao Yun, Yu Wu, Ao Sun, Cong Liu, Wenrui Pei, Robert R. Gaines, Xingliang Zhang. The Qingjiang biota—A Burgess Shale–type fossil Lagerstätte from the early Cambrian of South China. Science (2019). DOI: 10.1126/science.aau8800​

In this very same Science issue, two further papers were published by Yan Nieng's previous group of Tsinghua.

Just goes on to show how productive a good scientist can be. A single scientist like Yan Nieng has published more papers that most university biology departments of China would not have.

But she was still denied funding, which led to her flight to USA.

It was a big loss as Yan Nieng is almost certainly going to win a Nobel prize.

 

[JSCh]

In this very same Science issue, two further papers were published by Yan Nieng's previous group of Tsinghua.

Just goes on to show how productive a good scientist can be. A single scientist like Yan Nieng has published more papers that most university biology departments of China would not have.

But she was still denied funding, which led to her flight to USA.

It was a big loss as Yan Nieng is almost certainly going to win a Nobel prize.

Only the address is Princeton. I see almost exclusively Tsinghua and very sure the funding would be exclusively from China.

​

 

[Bussard Ramjet]

Only the address is Princeton. I see almost exclusively Tsinghua and very sure the funding would be exclusively from China.

View attachment 549264
View attachment 549265
​

Yes, that's because this is research that was conducted when she was at Tsinghua. Her Tsinghua research is still pouring out into journals because it can take many years to conduct research, and then publish it, and then get it peer reviewed.

Her present address is at princeton shows that she has left Tsinghua. It is a huge loss for China. Just imagine, 2 papers in a single issue of Science!

For most researchers even a single paper in Science is an achievement of the life time. But she has two in a single week!

 

[JSCh]

Yes, that's because this is research that was conducted when she was at Tsinghua. Her Tsinghua research is still pouring out into journals because it can take many years to conduct research, and then publish it, and then get it peer reviewed.

Her present address is at princeton shows that she has left Tsinghua. It is a huge loss for China. Just imagine, 2 papers in a single issue of Science!

For most researchers even a single paper in Science is an achievement of the life time. But she has two in a single week!

The team that she led would still be in Tsinghua. That Tsinghua team would be continuing research.

If Nieng Yan could convince Princeton to put up the fund to setup a research team for her, then that is good for her and good for the world.

Two CryoEm team doing research is better than one.

Anyway there is also Shi Yigong - the mentor of Nieng Yan.

He renounced his U.S. citizenship sometime back, and currently doing research in China.

 

[Bussard Ramjet]

The team that she led would still be in Tsinghua. That Tsinghua team would be continuing research.

If Nieng Yan could convince Princeton to put up the fund to setup a research team for her, then that is good for her and good for the world.

Two CryoEm team doing research is better than one.

Anyway there is also Shi Yigong - the mentor of Nieng Yan.

He renounced his U.S. citizenship sometime back, and currently doing research in China.

I am not sure if the team will be at Tsinghua. Junior Researchers and PhD students flock to good researchers wherever they are. That is why a single good professor can attract many many good students and junior researchers.

Something like this happened with Pan Jianwei. His presence in China led to many chinese talents returning back home to do research with him. Like Lu Chaoyang.

Shi Yigong has changed his focus from research to mentoring and bringing up the West Lake University. I don't think he will be as productive in science any more.

I just can't wrap my head around why Chinese authorities let Yan Nieng go who was the best young bio researcher in China.