March 8 marks International Women's Day. This year, the official theme of the United Nations observance of the day is "Invest in women: Accelerate progress."

In China, there is a saying, "Women hold up half the sky," which affirms women's pursuit of dreams and achievements in their careers. In modern terminology, this is called "the power of her."

There have been many outstanding women in Chinese history. In the new era, Chinese women in various industries are continuing to promote self-respect, self-confidence, self-reliance and self-improvement, resonating their personal dreams with national development.

Chinese women are increasingly playing an important part in building a stronger country.

They actively participate in the country's whole-process people's democracy, showing their talents in the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation. According to the list published on the website of the National People's Congress (NPC) and the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC), there are 790 female deputies to the 14th NPC, accounting for 26.54 percent of the total, and 487 female members of the National Committee CPPCC.

These female top legislators and political advisors play a major role in speaking up for Chinese women, especially those in remote and undeveloped areas. They also provide a female perspective in many livelihood issues like education, fertility and employment, in order to help Chinese governments solve relevant problems while taking gender equality into account.

Far out in space, the first Chinese female taikonaut Liu Yang arrived there in the Shenzhou-9 spacecraft in 2012. On November 7, 2021, Wang Yaping became China's first female astronaut to walk in space. In the history of human spacewalks, the beautiful figure of a Chinese female astronaut finally appeared for the first time.

On the field of sports, Chinese skier Xu Mengtao remained determined and stepped onto the Winter Olympics stage for the fourth time in 2022 despite being plagued by injuries. Finally, she scored 108.61 to win gold in the women's freestyle skiing aerials at the Beijing Winter Olympics, interpreting the power of dreams with her resilient will. Zhang Weili became China's as well as Asia's first Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) champion in 2019, demonstrating the power of Chinese women to the world with her fists.

Not to mention that the spirit of perseverance, courage and unity of the Chinese women's volleyball team is widely recognized and admired in China, becoming a spiritual symbol and role model.

No matter if they are in the military, or in ordinary posts in factories… the power of women is never absent. They can be seen fighting in every position and every field during China's journey of development.

While applauding their shining moments, China is also providing stronger guarantees for the work and life of women. China has established a comprehensive legal system to protect women's rights, including more than 100 laws and regulations.

It has been listed by the World Health Organization as one of the top 10 countries with high performance in women and children's health, and has basically eliminated the gender gap in compulsory education.

The dividends brought by policies have effectively activated "the power of her" in the development of our society, allowing more women to be active on the stage of the new era.

The average life expectancy of women exceeds 80 years, the gender gap in compulsory education has been basically eliminated, the proportion of female students in various higher education institutions exceeds that of male students, and the proportion of women in the total employed population remains above 40 percent.

"The power of her" will continue to growing in the new era in China, continuing to write new stories about "half the sky."

China successfully launched the first Long March-6C carrier rocket at the Taiyuan Satellite Launch Center in North China's Shanxi Province on Tuesday, carrying four satellites into planned orbit.

The rocket sent the Neptune-01 and Smart-1C, as well as a wide-band optical satellite and a high-resolution video satellite into space, according to China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation (CASC). The mission marks the addition of new members to the Long March rocket family, further improving China's new generation of Long March series of launch vehicles, and promoting the accelerated modernization of China's active launch vehicles.

The rocket is a new generation of liquid launch vehicle developed by the CASC for the future commercial launch market, and it has a single-core and two-stage design, powered by liquid oxygen and kerosene engines.

The total length of the rocket is about 43 meters and its lift-off mass is about 215 tons. The rocket can be adapted with multi-specification satellite payload fairings according to different tasks.

The control system of this rocket adopts technology of Adaptive Augmentation Control (AAC), which is the first application of the technology on a domestic launch vehicle. The AAC can be simply understood as intelligent driving, which automatically adjusts the steering wheel and throttle by judging the road status, Hu Cunming, a rocket expert from the eighth Academy of CASC, told the Xinhua News Agency.

The technology can further enhance the adaptability and intelligence of the rocket's flight by adjusting the rocket's flight control strategy in real time online.

The development team developed a new lightweight storage box to realize the reduction of the rocket's weight by reducing the excess space between two boxes under the condition of carrying as much fuel as possible, which can further improve the structural efficiency of the rocket, Xinhua reported.

The team also used a method of "de-tasking" to maximize the unification of the product, by firstly creating a standard rocket that can adapt to multi-task requirements and can be put into production in rolling batches, and revising the standard rocket in accordance with the satellite supporting requirements, according to Xinhua. 

The launch of the four satellites was a "carpool" mission carried out through commercialized bidding, and it was the first time that the launch services of the Long March series were put up for public bidding.

It was the 520th flight mission of the Long March series rockets. 

Nestled along the banks of the Yellow River, a picturesque ancient village Qikou, once one of the most prosperous settlements in North China's Shanxi Province, offers breathtaking beauty to visitors. The village, with its traditional architecture nestled amidst rolling hills, exudes an aura of tranquility and timelessness. Travelers from all over the world pass through the ancient town, coming to experience the unique culture of the Yellow River Basin and the picturesque beauty of the ancient villages with distinctive northern characteristics.

In the past, the Yellow River played a crucial role as a transportation route for goods between northern and southern China. To ensure the efficient operation of this transportation system, Qikou emerged as a significant trading port. Merchants would anchor their ships at Qikou and then transfer their goods onto camel or horse-drawn caravans for further transportation over land. Qikou gained prominence during the Ming (1368-1644) and Qing (1644-1912) dynasties, earning a reputation as one of the Yellow River's most significant ports.

In recent years, with the enhanced efforts in cultural preservation, governments at all levels have continuously increased investment in the restoration and protection of historical buildings and ancient residences in Qikou, promoting the integrated development of culture and tourism, making it reborn as a "living ancient town." Ancient buildings such as escort agencies, pawnshops, and warehouses tell the story of the town's past prosperity.

Tourists from all over the country flock to the town, allowing the local people to benefit from the booming tourism relying on the unique culture and ecology of the Yellow River.

The locals, with their warm hospitality, proudly share stories of their ancestors who relied on the Yellow River, known as the "Mother River" of China, for their livelihoods. The name "Qikou," roughly translates to mean "moraine" or "a rock in shallow water." The stone walls, weathered by time, stand as a testament to the resilience of the people who called this place home.

In order to protect them from flooding, many of local houses, known as "yaodongs" or "loess cave houses," have been physically carved into the steep hillside along the banks of the Yellow River.

On a slope that stretches for hundreds of meters and is inclined at about 40 degrees, there are rows of cave dwellings arranged in layers, which are both scattered and unique in their own ways. Rock erosion over the years has created a form of beautiful "modern art."

Located about 10 kilometers south of Qikou, the small village of Lijiashan is renowned for its myriad of over 400 yaodongs carved into the cliff-face of Lijia Mountain.

The Global Times has learned that during this year's Golden Week holidays in October, Qikou was a hot destination for domestic travelers, with a daily flow of people exceeding 10,000. The scenic area has also launched traditional folk agricultural cultural performances with hundreds of participants, showcasing scenes of threshing, winnowing, and transplanting, vividly showing the hardworking and agricultural spirit of their ancestors.

"The ancient village here truly showcases the local folk customs, all of which originate from agricultural culture and the most primitive farming life. This is very attractive and novel for visitors from the south, allowing us to experience the charm of the Yellow River," a tourist surnamed Liang from East China's Jiangsu Province who came to Qikou on November 2 for sightseeing told the Global Times.

Nowadays, the authentic Lijiashan village is attracting more visitors as villagers have transformed their idle cave dwellings into art bases, art studios, and art exhibition halls, creating a renowned art creation base both domestically and internationally, forming the brand of the village. They have also utilized vacant houses to develop rural tourism and accommodation industries, seizing the opportunity of rural tourism and expanding their income channels.

The 62-year-old villager Yang Yanmei often uses her spare time as a tour guide to walk on the paths of Lijiashan and telling stories of past generations. As a fan of traditional opera, she and her husband enjoy spontaneously singing Shanxi opera or local traditional melody adapted from local stories. She always wears a sincere and sanguine smile, impressing tourists with her simplicity and humor.

Chen Yuxiang, 58, who lives in the east of village, wears a white headscarf and a green floral jacket, basking in the warm sun while sitting under the eaves and picking coriander, perfectly harmonizing with the yellow earth behind her.

In 2022, the cheerful Chen started using her mobile phone to record her rural life with her husband - farming, cooking, and showcasing various authentic and unique Shanxi cuisine. She has over 200,000 followers on short video platforms.

Chen showcases her joyful life to tourists with a humorous tone and rich expressions, which earns her a lot applause. People are amazed by the resilience and optimism that have been passed down through generations on the lady living on the Loess Plateau.
71-year-old villager Li Yuecheng leads his donkey through Qikou's ancient town while singing local folk songs. He decorates his donkey and offers it to tourists for rides during the low season for agricultural production.

His powerful and vivid performance while singing folk songs always attracts a crowd. Village officials jokingly say that Li has earned a lot of money in the tourism industry with these skills over the years.

Tour guides, guesthouse owners, restaurant owners, performers… more and more villagers have gained "new identities" by relying on the mountains and rivers. Some like Yang have even moved back to their ancestral homes on the mountains from the town, hoping to live a better and bustling life through tourism.

The recovery of the tourism industry benefits largely from the local government's significant investment in protection of the area. In recent years, local authorities have carried out protection and restoration of historical buildings and ancient dwellings in the Qikou ancient town.

Today the ancient town has become a popular tourist attraction. More than 5,000 people out of a population of about 30,000 in the town are engaged in the tourism industry.

A Chinese mainland spokesperson on Saturday commented on the outcomes of Taiwan leadership and legislature elections.

Chen Binhua, a spokesperson for the State Council Taiwan Affairs Office, said the results reveal that the Democratic Progressive Party cannot represent the mainstream public opinion on the island.

Noting that Taiwan is China's Taiwan, Chen said that the elections will not change the basic landscape and development trend of cross-Strait relations, will not alter the shared aspiration of compatriots across the Taiwan Strait to forge closer ties, and will not impede the inevitable trend of China's reunification.

"Our stance on resolving the Taiwan question and realizing national reunification remains consistent, and our determination is as firm as rock," Chen said.

"We will adhere to the 1992 Consensus that embodies the one-China principle and firmly oppose the separatist activities aimed at 'Taiwan independence' as well as foreign interference," Chen said.

He said the mainland will work with relevant political parties, groups and people from various sectors in Taiwan to boost cross-Strait exchanges and cooperation, enhance cross-Strait integrated development, jointly promote Chinese culture, and advance the peaceful development of cross-Strait relations as well as the cause of national reunification.

In the disguise of maintaining national security, the US has been ratcheting up chip export control measures against China and unreasonably suppressing Chinese semiconductor companies, which is a genuine act of economic bullying, Mao Ning, a spokesperson of China's Foreign Ministry, told a press conference on Monday.

Noting that the US often talks about international rules, but what it really does is to ignore the rules and violate them, Mao said the implementation by the US of semiconductor export control measures against Chinese companies constitutes a discriminatory practice against China and violates the principle of most-favored-nation treatment under Article I of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT). 

Its blacklisting of relevant Chinese telecommunication equipment enterprises and banning of the entry of Chinese telecommunication equipment into the US market under the pretext of threatening its information security is a contravention of the principle of the general elimination of quantitative restrictions stipulated in Article XI of the GATT, the spokesperson said.

"The US uses 'national security' as a pretext to restrict chip exports to China, but in fact its relevant initiatives completely go beyond the boundaries of the concept of national security, so that the normal trade of ordinary civilian-use chips is significantly restricted," Mao said.

The Nvidia RTX4090 chip is positioned as a consumer-grade graphics card, which is mainly designed for gamers. However, due to the impact of US export control measures, the chip was forced to be taken off the shelves in the Chinese market. 

In addition, the US also blackmailed a number of other countries to suppress Chinese enterprises, which has nothing to do with security, but is of typical economic coercion, Mao said.

The facts clearly show that the US' deliberate suppression of the development of China's chip industry is not based on national security considerations, let alone legitimate competitive behavior, but rather unilateral bullying act without any principle or bottom line. It is aimed to deprive emerging markets and developing countries of the right to pursue a happy life, the spokesperson noted.

"The actions of the US have seriously impacted the stability of the international production and supply chain, poisoned the atmosphere of international cooperation and fostered division and confrontation, and this self-serving approach is destined to lead to shooting itself in the foot," said Mao.

The final competition of the Beijing Central Axis Culture Communication Young Envoy, a sub-track of the 2023 Beijing Central Axis Cultural Heritage Inheritance and Innovation Competition, was held over the weekend.

The event attracted hundreds of young artists from home and abroad to participate in the talent show named: "My Story with the Beijing Central Axis."

The Beijing Central Axis is a 7.8-kilometer-long area that runs through the center of the city from the Drum Tower and Bell Tower north of the Forbidden City to Yongding Gate in the south. 

A total of 650 groups from 16 districts were selected to enter the semi-finals. Among these 120 groups of Chinese and foreign contestants entered the final round, including contestants from the US, the Philippines, Canada, Russia, South Korea and Azerbaijan. 

The contestants showed their understanding of the Beijing Central Axis culture through on-site displays of paper-cut art, Beijing wool monkey art, silk wrapping crafts, fashion shows, piano performances, lyric, street dance and dramatic performances, and for the shows they used Chinese, English, Russian, Spanish, Italian, Korean and other languages to tell their stories and express their love for the Beijing Central Axis.

The sub-track was officially launched on June 15 and received strong support from the district education commissions and primary and secondary schools in Beijing. 

Additionally, it also collected works based on the Beijing Central Axis Heritage Culture Protection Base Schools.

The organizing committee of the event invited 23 experts from the fields of education, culture and history to serve as the final judges for the three sessions of this sub-track. 

"Compared with last year, the overall quality of this year's competition has improved significantly and this was reflected in their understanding of the concept of the Beijing Central Axis," said Yu Dan, a Chinese cultural scholar and professor of Beijing Normal University.

"The understanding of the central axis is not simply in language, but more importantly, a lifestyle. The inheritance of the Beijing Central Axis requires the participation of the public, and this competition starts from the children," Yu said.

During the competition, a special contestant impressed the judges. Wei Jiahong, a hearing-impaired student from the Dongcheng District Special Education School in Beijing, who brought a sketch of the Hall of Prayer for Good Harvests inside the Temple of Heaven, explained his work and background in his own language. 

Guo Hongxia, the principal of Haidian Experimental Second Elementary School, told the Global Times that as a child who has grown and lived in Beijing, he feels obligation to inherit the central axis culture.

"I think the Beijing Central Axis is a tangible line, and the children are the 'extension line' of the Chinese culture gene," he said.

Sometimes body armor just isn’t enough. A car-sized dinosaur covered in bony plates may have sported camo, too, researchers report online August 3 in Current Biology. That could mean the Cretaceous-period herbivore was a target for predators that relied on sight more than smell to find prey.

The dinosaur, dubbed Borealopelta markmitchelli, has already made headlines for being one of the best preserved armored dinosaurs ever unearthed. It was entombed on its back some 110 million years ago under layers of fine marine sediments that buried the animal very quickly — ideal preservation conditions, says study coauthor Caleb Brown, a paleontologist at the Royal Tyrrell Museum of Palaeontology in Drumheller, Canada. The fossil, found in Alberta in 2011, captured not only large amounts of skin and soft tissue but also the animal’s three-dimensional shape.
“Most of the other armored dinosaurs are described based on the skeleton. In this case, we can’t see the skeleton because all the skin is still there,” Brown says.

That skin contains clues to the dinosaur’s appearance, including its coloration. “We’re just beginning to realize how important color is, and we’re beginning to have the methods to detect color” in fossils, says Martin Sander, a paleontologist at Bonn University in Germany who wasn’t part of the study.

But despite ample tissue, the researchers didn’t find any melanosomes, cellular structures that often preserve evidence of pigment in fossilized remains. Instead, Brown and colleagues turned to less direct evidence: molecules that appear when pigments break down. The researchers found about a dozen types of those molecules, including substantial amounts of benzothiazole, a by-product of the reddish pigment pheomelanin. That might mean the dinosaur was reddish-brown.
The distribution of pigment by-products also gives clues about the dinosaur’s appearance. B. markmitchelli had a thin film of pigment-hinting organic molecules on its back, but that layer disappeared on the belly. That pattern is reminiscent of countershading, when an animal is darker on its back than its underside, Brown says. Countershading is a simple form of camouflage that helps animals blend in with the ground when seen from above or with the sky when seen from below.
This is not the first time countershading has been proposed for a dinosaur (SN: 11/26/16, p 24). But finding the camouflage on such a large herbivore is somewhat surprising, Brown says. Modern plant eaters that don similar camouflage tend to be smaller and at greater risk of becoming someone’s dinner. B. markmitchelli’s skin patterning suggests that at least some top Cretaceous predators might have relied more on eyesight than today’s top carnivores, which often favor smell when hunting, Brown says.

Some experts, however, want stronger evidence for the coloration claims. Molecules like benzothiazole can come from melanin, but they can also come from a number of other sources, such as oils, says Johan Lindgren, a paleontologist at Lund University in Sweden. “What this paper nicely highlights is how little we actually know about the preservation of soft tissues in animal remains. There’s definitely something there — the question is, what are those [molecules], and where do they come from?”

Sander does buy the evidence for the reddish tint, but it might not be the full story, he says. The dino could have displayed other colors that didn’t linger in the fossil record. But the countershading findings “point out the importance of vision” for dinosaurs, he says. Sharp-eyed predators might have made camouflage a perk for herbivores — even ones built like tanks.

A single genetic mutation made the Zika virus far more dangerous by enhancing its ability to kill nerve cells in developing brains, a new study suggests.

The small change — which tweaks just one amino acid in a protein that helps Zika exit cells — may cause microcephaly, researchers report September 28 in Science. The mutation arose around May 2013, shortly before a Zika outbreak in French Polynesia, the researchers calculate.

Zika virus was discovered decades ago but wasn’t associated with microcephaly — a birth defect characterized by a small head and brain — until the 2015–2016 outbreak in Brazil. Women who had contracted the virus while pregnant started giving birth to babies with the condition at higher-than-usual rates (SN: 4/2/16, p. 26).
Researchers weren’t sure why microcephaly suddenly became a complication of Zika infections, says Pei-Yong Shi, a virologist at the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston. Maybe the virus did cause microcephaly before, scientists suggested, but at such low rates that no one noticed. Or people in South America might be more vulnerable to the virus. Perhaps their immune systems don’t know how to fight it, they have a genetic susceptibility or prior infections with dengue made Zika worse (SN: 4/29/17, p. 14). But Shi and colleagues in China thought the problem might be linked to changes in the virus itself.
The researchers compared a strain of Zika isolated from a patient in Cambodia in 2010 with three Zika strains collected from patients who contracted the virus in Venezuela, Samoa and Martinique during the epidemic of 2015–2016. The team found seven differences between the Cambodian virus and the three epidemic strains.

Researchers engineered seven versions of the Cambodian virus, each with one of the epidemic strains’ mutations, and injected the viruses into fetal mouse brains. Viruses with one of these mutations, dubbed S139N, killed brain cells in fetal mice and destroyed human brain cells grown in lab dishes more aggressively than the Cambodian strain from 2010 did, the researchers found.
“That’s pretty convincing evidence that it at least plays some role in what we’re seeing now,” says Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.

The mutation changes an amino acid in a Zika protein called prM. That protein helps the virus mature within infected cells and get out of the cells to infect others. Shi and colleagues don’t yet know why tweaking the protein makes the virus kill brain cells more readily.

The alteration in that protein probably isn’t the entire reason epidemic strains cause microcephaly, Shi says. The Cambodian strain also led to the death of a few brain cells, but perhaps not enough to cause microcephaly. “We believe there are other changes in the virus that collectively enhance its virulence,” he says. In May in Nature, Shi and colleagues described a different mutation that allows the virus to infect mosquitoes more effectively.

Brain cells from different people vary in their susceptibility to Zika infections, says infectious disease researcher Scott Weaver, also at the University of Texas Medical Branch but not involved in the study. He says more work on human cells and in nonhuman primates is needed to confirm whether this mutation is really the culprit in microcephaly.

Many people may be fuzzy on the details of North America’s colonial history between Columbus’ arrival in 1492 and the Pilgrims’ landing on Plymouth Rock in 1620. But Europeans were actively attempting to colonize North America from the early 16th century onward, even though few colonies survived.

As historian Sam White explains in A Cold Welcome, most early attempts were doomed by fatally incorrect assumptions about geography and climate, poor planning and bad timing.
White weaves together evidence of past climates and written historical records in a comprehensive narrative of these failures. One contributing factor: Explorers assumed climates at the same latitude were the same worldwide. But in fact, ocean currents play a huge role in moderating land temperatures, which means Western Europe is warmer and less variable in temperature from season to season than eastern North America at the same latitude.

On top of that, explorations occurred during a time of global cooling known as the Little Ice Age, which stretched from the 13th to early 20th centuries. The height of exploration may have occurred at the peak of cooling: Starting in the late 16th century, a series of volcanic eruptions likely chilled the Northern Hemisphere by as much as 1.8 degrees Celsius below the long-term average, White says.

This cooling gave Europeans an especially distorted impression of their new lands. For instance, not long after Spanish explorer Sebastián Vizcaíno landed in California’s Monterey Bay in December 1602, men’s water jugs froze overnight — an unlikely scenario today. Weather dissuaded Spain from further attempts at colonizing California for over a century.
Harsh weather also heightened conflict when underprepared Europeans met Native Americans, whose own resources were stretched thin by unexpectedly bad growing seasons.

A Cold Welcome is organized largely by colonial power, which means findings on climate are repeated in each chapter. But White’s synthesis of climate and history is novel, and readers will see echoes of today’s ignorance about the local consequences of climate change. “Human psychology may be both too quick to grasp at false patterns and yet too slow to let go of familiar expectations,” White writes.

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A proposed form of ice acts like a cross between a solid and a liquid. Now, a new study strengthens the case that the weird state of matter really exists.

Hints of the special phase, called superionic ice, appeared in water ice exposed to high pressures and temperatures, researchers report February 5 in Nature Physics. Although such unusual ice isn’t found naturally on Earth, it might lurk deep inside frozen worlds like Uranus and Neptune (SN Online: 3/5/12).
Normal ice is composed of water molecules, each made of an oxygen atom bonded to two hydrogen atoms. As water freezes, those molecules link up to form a solid. But superionic ice is made up of ions, which are atoms with a positive or negative electric charge. Within the material, hydrogen ions flow freely through a solid crystal of oxygen ions.

“That’s really strange behavior for water,” says study coauthor Marius Millot, a physicist at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California. Although the superionic state was first predicted 30 years ago, “up until now we didn’t really know whether this was something that was real.”

At extremely high pressures, familiar substances like water can behave in unusual ways (SN: 1/14/12, p. 26). Working with a sample of ice that was crushed between two diamonds, Millot and colleagues used a laser to create a shock wave that plowed through the ice, boosting the pressure even more. At first, the density and temperature of the ice ramped up smoothly as the pressure increased. But at around 1.9 million times atmospheric pressure and 4,800 kelvins (about 4,500° Celsius), the scientists observed a jump in density and temperature. That jump, the researchers say, is evidence that superionic ice melted at that point. Although we normally think of ice as being cold, at high pressures, superionic ice can form even when heated. The melting occurred at just the conditions that theoretical calculations predict such ice would melt. The physicists didn’t measure the pressure at which the superionic phase first formed.

The electrical conductivity of the material provided another hint of superionic ice: The level of conductivity was consistent with expectations for that phase of matter. Whereas metals conduct electricity via the motion of electrons, in superionic ice, the flowing hydrogen ions transmit electricity.
The researchers “provide quite good evidence” of the new phase, says Alexander Goncharov, a physicist at the Carnegie Institution for Science in Washington, D.C., who was not involved with the study.

Others are more cautious about the significance of the work. “It’s definitely providing more insight into water at these conditions,” says physicist Marcus Knudson of Washington State University in Pullman. But, he says, “I don’t see strong evidence that there’s a melting transition in their data.”

So more work remains before this weird kind of ice is fully understood. For now, the superionic state of water seems likelier, but still on thin ice.