News on China's scientific and technological development.

solarz

Brigadier
This blows me away at the simple but effective, ingenious low cost, low tech methods that are being used to beat desertification and reclaim China's deserts back to green, arable land.

Who would have thought --- raising grapes?!?


I remember learning about this stuff in elementary school in the 80's. Looks like it is finally coming into fruition now. Another example of China's long-term vision.

Also, Xinjiang has always been famous for its grapes.
 

ZeEa5KPul

Colonel
Registered Member
Grapes naturally grows/prefers in sandy soil. But most of the reclaimed land won't be arable for hundreds of years.
While it's true that it takes natural process hundreds or thousands of years to restore soil (if at all), the process can be greatly accelerated - down to a matter of years - with amendments like this, which the video posted by @Tam touched on
Here's the paper that discusses the work:
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Many types of plants, such as rice, corn, and sweet potatoes, were planted in the “soilized” sand. In each year of the experiment, the plants have survived the heavy rains and continuous high temperature over consecutive sunny days that are characteristic of the climate in Chongqing, China. During these periods of continuous high temperature, the plants have been appropriately watered at different intervals. The constraining material was added to the “soils” only once in the spring of 2013, and no further supplementation has been made to the “soils” after that, except for the addition of an appropriate amount of fertilizer each year since 2014. There have been two harvests each year, and the plants have always grown luxuriantly and fruitfully in the different “soils.” In the years 2014 and 2015, the comparison of the yields of the plants including corn, potatoes, sweet potatoes, radish, and oilseed rape was made with those grown in the nearby fields of natural soil. The results show that all yields in the experiment field were higher, and in particular, the yields of three plants (potatoes, sweet potatoes, and radish) with tuber or tuberous roots were 50% higher (with the reasons and underlying mechanism to be elaborated upon in our next paper on eco-mechanics of soil).
 
now I read
Chinese colleges could capitalize on US immigration policy flaws
Source:Global Times Published: 2019/8/28 20:58:41
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Ismail B. Ajjawi, a 17-year-old Palestinian resident in Lebanon, was supposed to move to and enroll at Harvard on Tuesday. But his visa was canceled, and he was then deported by a US immigration officer on Friday shortly after he arrived at Boston Logan International Airport, as he was claimed to be "inadmissible" to the US. According to statement Ajjawi provided to the US media, he was deported because he followed friends on social media who posted content deemed by US immigration officials as "anti-American."

Top Chinese universities like Tsinghua University and Peking University should seize the opportunity provided by US President Donald Trump to admit more talented foreign students like Ajjawi.

In the current age of globalization, receiving a higher education in the US may no longer be the best option. With 11 universities among the top 100 universities in the world, China is increasingly capable of offering high-quality higher education to international students.

International education makes a country stronger. When China passed Japan as the world's second-largest economy in 2010, universities on the Chinese mainland enrolled 265,360 foreign students that year. That rose to 492,185 in 2018.

Since Ajjawi was admitted by Harvard, his basic education is of good quality.

Students like him have the right to access higher education. It is a loss for the US to reject such talented students both academically and financially - international students contributed $42.4 billion to the US economy in 2017.

The case of Ajjawi and others reflect the flaws of Trump's immigration policy, which has made applying the student visa process a "nightmare." US universities have seen a decline in new international student enrollments for two years in a row. Limiting the number of international students would ultimately stifle a country's competitiveness.

In sharp contrast to a cold reception in Trump's US, foreign students are warmly welcomed by China. The world's second-largest economy is willing to enroll more international students to its universities whom it treats as priceless assets to the country.

As the China-proposed
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Initiative (BRI) prevails, of which education is an important part of cooperation between China and countries along the BRI, China has opened its arms wider to embrace more international students with its increasingly quality higher education.

Thanks to the US that is becoming more exclusive, China gets more opportunities to establish stronger ties across the world through its inclusive international education. In the meantime, Chinese universities should also raise the standards of enrollment, setting up criteria on par with other world's top universities to enroll talented foreign students, and award these students scholarships to help them study and live in China.

"Expanding access to opportunity through international education helps us build stronger ties across the world," said Allan E. Goodman, president and CEO of the New York-based Institute of International Education. This works for the US and certainly for China as well.
 

PiSigma

"the engineer"
While it's true that it takes natural process hundreds or thousands of years to restore soil (if at all), the process can be greatly accelerated - down to a matter of years - with amendments like this, which the video posted by @Tam touched on
Here's the paper that discusses the work:
Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!
Chongqing is not a dessert, in fact it's known for lots of rain.
 

ZeEa5KPul

Colonel
Registered Member
Chongqing is not a dessert, in fact it's known for lots of rain.
The study plot wasn't planted in Chongqing, it was planted in Inner Mongolia. The study was conducted by researchers from Chongqing Jiaotong.

As for the broader point about deserts, land suitable for reclamation (at least the easier kind) isn't "desert", it's land degraded by centuries of overgrazing, deforestation, and other harmful practices. It's an annoying misuse of terminology that's unfortunately caught on. China - having supported an extensive agrarian civilization for quite some time, add to that the frenetic industrialization that saw widespread clearing of forests - has a lot of degraded land suitable for rehabilitation. Such land typically gets sufficient rain (else it wouldn't have been what it was before it was moonscaped), which in fact can be a problem since the lack of vegetative cover and topsoil usually means that water runs off and floods rather than infiltrate and drain into aquifers.

Even deserts proper can be greened if sufficient water can be transferred or pumped from the ground, but that's not needed in China's case. There's plenty of ravaged land to fix before considering that.
 
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inside:
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"... experimental field is located at 39°36’32”N, 106°39’02”E ..."

Clipboard533.jpg


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is something like ten miles to the north-east
 

Hendrik_2000

Lieutenant General
Sweet watermelons growing on gravel-covered land in Ningxia, China

This is amazing Chinese farmer found by accident that mixing 30% sand/soil with 70% of gravel will reduce evaporation and retain water making it suitable for agriculture, turning barren land into productive agricultural land
Bottomless wisdom of common people in China(Laobaixing) in their struggle for better life . That is why I said trust Chinese people they are tough, hard working and ingenious
Mixing gravel and soil
upload_2019-8-29_9-55-41.png
Sweet watermelon grow on unproductive land
upload_2019-8-29_9-49-20.png
Acres and acres of sweet water melon bringing wealth to the farmer
upload_2019-8-29_9-53-16.png

Here is the video
 
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Mcsweeney

Junior Member
Scientists discover way to grow back tooth enamel naturally

Researchers in China hope to regrow tooth enamel without using fillings and start trials in people within one to two years.

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Fillings could be a thing of the past as scientists say they have found a way to grow back tooth enamel.

Enamel, a highly mineralised substance that acts as a barrier to protect the tooth, can become susceptible to degradation, especially by acids from food and drink.

Despite being the hardest tissue in the body, it cannot self-repair, leaving people exposed to cavities and in need of fillings.

But scientists in China have found that mixing calcium and phosphate ions - two minerals which are found in enamel - with the chemical trimethylamine in an alcohol solution causes enamel to grow with the same structure as teeth.

The discovery has not yet been proven to work in the "hostile environment" of the mouth, but experts say regrown tooth enamel may be tested in people in the near future.

When the mixture was applied to human teeth, it repaired the enamel layer to around 2.7 micrometres of thickness. It also achieved the same structure of natural enamel within 48 hours.


Dr Zhaoming Liu, a co-author of the study from Zhejiang University in China, said: "Our newly regenerated enamel has the same structure and similar mechanical properties as native enamel.

"We hope to realise tooth enamel regrowth without using fillings which contain totally different materials and we hope, if all goes smoothly, to start trials in people within one to two years."

He said past attempts to regrow enamel by using a range of materials such as composite resins, ceramics and amalgam had failed to achieve permanent repair because of the imperfect combination between these foreign materials and the native enamel.

The researchers behind the study, published in the journal Science Advances, managed to defeat this problem by developing a way to produce tiny clusters of calcium phosphate - the main component of enamel - with a diameter of just 1.5 nanometres.

With the presence of trimethylamine, the clusters were prevented from clumping.

Currently, nothing can be done to repair damaged teeth in the dentist's chair apart from fillings or crowns. Many scientists are looking for ways to grow back enamel.

Last year, Researchers at Queen Mary University of London said they had
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.


The team found a protein able to trigger the growth of crystals, in a similar way to how crystals grow when dental enamel develops in the body.

Lead author Professor Alvaro Mata said the "key discovery" had been finding a way to exploit proteins to control and guide the process of mineralisation.

He said: "Through this, we have developed a technique to easily grow synthetic materials that emulate such hierarchically organised architecture over large areas and with the capacity to tune their properties."
 
Scientists discover way to grow back tooth enamel naturally

Researchers in China hope to regrow tooth enamel without using fillings and start trials in people within one to two years.

Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!


Fillings could be a thing of the past as scientists say they have found a way to grow back tooth enamel.

Enamel, a highly mineralised substance that acts as a barrier to protect the tooth, can become susceptible to degradation, especially by acids from food and drink.

Despite being the hardest tissue in the body, it cannot self-repair, leaving people exposed to cavities and in need of fillings.

But scientists in China have found that mixing calcium and phosphate ions - two minerals which are found in enamel - with the chemical trimethylamine in an alcohol solution causes enamel to grow with the same structure as teeth.

The discovery has not yet been proven to work in the "hostile environment" of the mouth, but experts say regrown tooth enamel may be tested in people in the near future.

When the mixture was applied to human teeth, it repaired the enamel layer to around 2.7 micrometres of thickness. It also achieved the same structure of natural enamel within 48 hours.


Dr Zhaoming Liu, a co-author of the study from Zhejiang University in China, said: "Our newly regenerated enamel has the same structure and similar mechanical properties as native enamel.

"We hope to realise tooth enamel regrowth without using fillings which contain totally different materials and we hope, if all goes smoothly, to start trials in people within one to two years."

He said past attempts to regrow enamel by using a range of materials such as composite resins, ceramics and amalgam had failed to achieve permanent repair because of the imperfect combination between these foreign materials and the native enamel.

The researchers behind the study, published in the journal Science Advances, managed to defeat this problem by developing a way to produce tiny clusters of calcium phosphate - the main component of enamel - with a diameter of just 1.5 nanometres.

With the presence of trimethylamine, the clusters were prevented from clumping.

Currently, nothing can be done to repair damaged teeth in the dentist's chair apart from fillings or crowns. Many scientists are looking for ways to grow back enamel.

Last year, Researchers at Queen Mary University of London said they had
Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!
.


The team found a protein able to trigger the growth of crystals, in a similar way to how crystals grow when dental enamel develops in the body.

Lead author Professor Alvaro Mata said the "key discovery" had been finding a way to exploit proteins to control and guide the process of mineralisation.

He said: "Through this, we have developed a technique to easily grow synthetic materials that emulate such hierarchically organised architecture over large areas and with the capacity to tune their properties."
let me add
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(plus it reminded me I should call my dentist on Monday to schedule a regular checkup LOL
 
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