China's newest quantum computer Wukong is expected to launch in July, which is now in the final stage of debugging and adjustment by its developer Origin Quantum Computing Technology Co, according to media reports.

The construction of an intercity backbone network of quantum communication in the Yangtze River Delta region was proposed at a recent meeting held in Hefei, East China's Anhui Province from Monday to Tuesday, gathering major provincial and city leaders in the region,according to a report by the Shanghai Securities Journal.

The backbone network will have a total distance of about 2,860 kilometers, forming a ring network with Hefei and Shanghai as core nodes while linking cities in the region.

The network will also adapt self-developed quantum service operation support system and satellite scheduling system to protect the space-ground integrated quantum confidential communication network, which also marks the first of a space-ground integrated quantum network in the world with protection coverage of thousands of kilometers.

The first quantum super collaborative innovation in the Yangtze River Delta region was also established by the Shanghai Supercomputing Center and the Origin Quantum, while the soon-to-be released new quantum computer "Wukong" now is in the final stage for adjustment, per the report from the Shanghai Securities Journal.

A 176-qubit quantum computing platform named Zuchongzhi went online for global users on May 31, which is expected to push forward the development of quantum computing hardware and its ecosystem, the Xinhua News Agency reported.

Original Quantum has developed quantum computers and delivered one to a user, per a statement sent to the Global Times by the Anhui Quantum Computing Engineering Research Center in January, marking China the third country in the world with the ability to deliver a complete quantum computer.

Over four millennia ago, in the final days of the Akkadian Empire in Mesopotamia, a drought swept over the region, afflicting lands as far away as Greece and what’s now Pakistan. Probably driven by the eruption of a distant volcano, the drying climate devastated local agriculture. A contemporary text, The Curse of Akkad, noted that “the large arable tracts yielded no grain … the irrigated orchards yielded no syrup or wine, thick clouds did not rain.”
As once-prosperous farmlands collapsed in the northern part of the empire, people fled to the south. The southern Akkadians’ response? Build a more than 150-kilometer-long wall between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, barring entry to any migrants. Soon after, history’s first empire crumbled, dying of thirst in the cradle of civilization.

Climate systems and civilizations are stable only up to a point. In Our Fragile Moment, climate scientist Michael Mann reminds us that today we are pushing the limits of both.

In the book, Mann looks back at episodes of global climate change over the last 4.5 billion years, from eras of deadly heat to wastelands of widespread ice. With each instance, he draws out lessons about what happens to Earth in periods of changing climate. Sometimes, the result is dramatic mass extinctions or geologic upheavals (SN: 8/28/15). Other times, as with the Akkadians, it’s societal collapse.

Earth’s climate system includes regulating forces that tend to buffer against small shifts in climate; ice caps and low clouds reflect sunlight and help cool the planet, for instance. But pushed too far, regulating forces can be overwhelmed, causing the climate to spiral out of control.

This was the case 55 million years ago. As a steady set of volcanic eruptions spewed carbon dioxide into the air, Earth warmed. The heat may have contributed to thinner and less reflective clouds. This in turn would have made the planet even hotter. Eventually, the low-lying clouds disappeared, and average global temperatures soared to 32° Celsius (90° Fahrenheit) in what is referred to as a Hothouse Earth (SN: 11/3/15).

Today, with unchecked greenhouse gas emissions, we may face a similar, though less sweltering, spiral with the disappearance of our reflective ice caps (SN: 11/9/22).

But what makes current climate change different is its source — humankind — and our ability to stop it. This is a benefit that is unique to our changing climate. It comes with blame, but it also comes with agency.

That agency is an important source of hope for Mann. Melting ice caps could raise sea levels and displace some 40 percent of the global population. Rising heat could make swaths of the planet uninhabitable (SN: 5/8/20). But if we act, we can preserve a world that looks much like ours. The limit is not geologic or even technological, Mann argues; it is political.

Despite the far-reaching themes Mann weaves throughout the book, it may not be for everyone. There is a strong academic bend to the writing, which leans heavily on jargon. The book also features a dizzying parade of researchers, and Mann often emphasizes his connection to climate researchers and events, at one point reminiscing about how he “was known as a bit of a statistics guru.” The technical terms, acronyms, initialisms and self-referential tangents can distract from the book’s broader arguments and message.

Even though Mann’s dedication to precise academic language comes at the expense of some clarity, climate buffs will appreciate the deep dives into the scientific process. Many of the dense sections reward the reader with a satisfying tidbit of fascinating information or an illuminating insight. On occasion, I laughed out loud at Mann’s puns, jokes and barbs. (A reference to The Princess Bride’s ROUSs — Rodents of Unusual Size — landed particularly well.)
After journeying through the past, Mann brings us to the present and looks toward the future. Though past climates may offer lessons, those lessons only go so far. We are unlikely to bring about another Hothouse Earth, but the climate is warming faster than it has in millennia, thanks to human actions. If current climate policy holds, the best scientific predictions show things will be painful, but civilization won’t end. But climate scientists are not oracles. They can’t be sure.

That uncertainty, rather than being a cause for complacency, should spur us to action, Mann argues. “The impacts of climate change, no doubt, constitute an existential threat if we fail to act,” Mann concludes. “But we can act. Our fragile moment can still be preserved.”

A video clip showing a group of tourists traveling in the desert with their hair standing on end, sparked heated discussion on Chinese social media, dividing experts on how to respond to the situation and whether running away was the best option. 

The video went viral on Tuesday showing a group of tourists traveling in the desert in Turpan, Northwest China’s Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, suddenly experiencing their hair standing on end, like hedgehogs. According to the tourists, their hair returned to normal status after they drove 3 kilometers down the road. 

Many netizens said the phenomenon is a sign of an approaching storm and suggested that the group should have run away as soon as possible. 

However, Feng Minxue, director from the lightning prevention and disaster reduction institution in East China’s Jiangsu Province noted that running away is not the best measure to adopt in such a circumstance, China Youth Daily reported. 

According to Feng, if an individual’s hair is dry and there is a little too much static electricity, there is still time to leave. However, if the hair has already stood on, people should not run. Running can form step voltage which is more dangerous. 

The correct approach is to lower one’s body height. If they can’t leave the mountain top in time, they should quickly crouch down on the spot, bring their feet as close together as possible, and use their hands to shield their heads, avoiding touching the ground, Feng said. 

Wu Xueke, associate professor from the College of Atmospheric Sciences, Lanzhou University, thinks that the clouds above the head of the tourists charged with electricity caused the situation. The electric field distortion above the head becomes very serious, which can induce static electricity in the hair. In the most extreme cases, the person might be struck by lightning. 

According to Wu, if people encounter such a situation outdoors, they should immediately find a relatively low place, crouch down with their feet close together, and avoid walking or running. If there are vehicles parked nearby, it’s also advisable to quickly take shelter inside a vehicle. 

A representative from the meteorological disaster prevention technology center of the local meteorological bureau in Xinjiang told Jiupai News that despite the phenomenon occurring in a desert and there are clouds in the sky, the situation might not be due to encountering thunderstorm but was actually caused by static electricity instead. 

The center has never received reports of such a phenomenon in the past and thunderstorms are relatively rare in desert areas. As long as appropriate protective measures are taken and seeking shelter in a timely manner, there should be no problem. 

The ninth Kubuqi International Desert Forum (KIDF), which aims to promote ecological civilization construction and scientific innovation in sand control and land restoration, providing the international community with China's experience in the prevention of desertification, kicked off on Saturday in Ordos, North China's Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region.

An important effort to combat desertification - the China-Arab International Research Center for Drought, Desertification and Land Degradation - was established at the forum's opening ceremony. Representatives of the meeting signed the memorandum of understanding on building the center and launched the first batch of collaboration projects, including greening the upgrading projects for Saudi new cites and exporting knowhows to other Gulf Cooperation Council countries, and Saudi 10 billion trees and shrubs nursery, plantation, and eco-solar desert control engineering projects.

The two-day forum, themed "Technology-empowered Desert Control for the Benefit of Mankind," was attended by more than 300 participants, including foreign political figures, representatives from UN agencies, officials from relevant ministries and commissions, as well as experts, scholars, and entrepreneurs. The attendees reached a consensus that in the face of the current uncertain international environment and the increasingly severe challenges of land desertification, the KIDF is an important platform for countries around the world to exchange experience in combating desertification, and China's efforts to scientifically control deserts have made new contributions to the global response to desertification challenges and ecological crises.

"This time I came to Ordos, I was most impressed by the Kubuqi Desert green area which is getting bigger and bigger. And through the forum, I also saw that the Chinese government is paying more and more attention to the desertification control, this is consistent with the efforts of the international community to manage environmental protection," Former Polish President Bronisław Komorowski told the Global Times on Saturday.

Kubuqi Desert is the seventh largest desert in China, forming a huge yellow sand belt lying toward the north of the Ordos Plateau, only 800 kilometers away from Beijing. The Kubuqi Desert was once known as "the sea of death," however, currently, more than 6,000 square kilometers of the desert have been covered with green vegetation. Animals and plants have grown from more than 100 species to more than 530 species. At the same time, the quality of local people's life has been greatly improved.

The KIDF, jointly held by China's Ministry of Science and Technology, the National Forestry and Grassland Administration, and the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Regional People's Government, is the only large-scale international forum dedicated to promoting global desertification control and green economic development. This year's forum invited the United Nations Environment Programme and the Secretariat of the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification as co-organizers.

"I had the privilege to visit the extraordinary landscapes of the Ordos region. I witnessed firsthand the remarkable, socioeconomic and ecological restoration, an inspiring example for the regions around the world, struggling against land, degrading desiccation and decimation," Amina Mohamed, Deputy Secretary-General of the United Nations said at the forum.

Over the past ten years, China has taken a series of measures in the areas of policy, marketization and industrialization, and encouraged governments, enterprises and social forces to work together to implement a series of major sand control projects, completing the task of sand control and prevention of 282 million mu (18.8 million hectares), reducing the area of sandy land by more than 64.9 million mu, contributing to 25 percent of the world's green increment.

Scholars and experts attending the forum noted that 2023 marks the 10th anniversary of China's proposal of building a community with a shared future for mankind and the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). China actively promotes international dialogue, alignment between international cooperation on the BRI and the implementation of the 2030 Agenda.

The Forum adheres to the concept of "Harmonious Coexistence of Human and Nature," and through the exchange of new concepts and technologies for global desertification control, it promotes international cooperation in desert ecological science and technology and new energy industry, boosts the world's effective response to the challenges of desertification, and facilitates the realization of the United Nations 2030 sustainable development goals.

Sometimes it’s surprising to discover how little we know about common plants or animals. Consider the ruby-throated hummingbird. If you live in the eastern half of Canada or the United States and have spotted a hummingbird hovering around a feeder in the backyard in summer, this is the bird you saw. But while scientists have documented many of the feeding and mating behaviors of the birds and that the birds migrate south to Central America and Cuba, there are still plenty of mysteries, such as whether the birds go the long way through Mexico when they migrate or whether they take a shortcut across the Gulf of Mexico.

It turns out that the tiny birds, some of which are small enough to fit in your hand, could easily take the shortcut, even though they’d get no break on the journey. Based on analyses of wing shape, body size and fat reserves, some of these tiny birds could fly more than 2,000 kilometers in the right winds. That’s more than enough to get them the 1,000 kilometers across the Gulf, researchers report March 9 in The Auk.
Theodore Zenzal Jr. and Frank Moore of the University of Southern Mississippi in Hattiesburg studied ruby-throated hummingbirds at the Bon Secour National Wildlife Refuge in Alabama, one of the birds’ stopovers on their journey south. From 2010 to 2014, they captured birds in the refuge during late summer and early fall. Birds were weighed, measured, banded and released.

Zenzal and Moore found that older birds tended to arrive at the refuge earlier and stayed for shorter times than younger birds. They also had more fat that could fuel a long voyage, and older males had the most. Based on these fuel loads, the birds could fly for another 2,260 kilometers on average without stopping for food, the team calculates.

That was just the average, though. Some very skinny birds arrived at the refuge, and had enough fat for just a short trip of less than 20 kilometers. This may explain why some hummingbirds stuck around in the refuge for a couple of weeks — they may have needed to bulk up before taking off again. Other birds had plenty of fat, though, enough to go more than 4,000 kilometers.

Hummingbirds’ small size may actually be an advantage when it comes to long-distance flight, the researchers note. These birds are really good at taking in a lot of fuel, and being small means that they can carry a larger percentage of their body weight as fat than can larger birds.

But just because the hummingbirds may be capable of taking the shortcut across the water doesn’t mean they actually do. Weather patterns aren’t favorable for such a flight until late fall, Zenzal and Moore say. So it may make more sense, especially for juveniles, to take the long way around since there are opportunities for pit stops should they be needed.

White-tailed prairie dogs — those stand-up, nose-wiggling nibblers of grass — turn out to be routine killers of baby ground squirrels. And the strongest sign of successful white-tailed motherhood could be repeat ground squirrel kills, researchers say.

At a Colorado prairie dog colony, females that kill at least two ground squirrels raise three times as many offspring during their lives as nonkiller females, says John Hoogland of the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science in Frostburg. The “serial killers,” as he calls repeat-attack females, rarely even nibble at the carcasses and aren’t getting much, if any, meat bonus. Instead, the supermom assassins may improve grazing in their territories by reducing competition from grass-snitching ground squirrels, Hoogland and Charles Brown of the University of Tulsa propose March 23 in Proceedings of the Royal Society B.
“This really caught me by surprise,” Hoogland says. Carnivorous mammals killing other carnivore species wouldn’t be surprising, but prairie dogs and ground squirrels eat plants. He knows of no other systematic study documenting routine fatal attacks by one herbivore species on another.

“It’s also striking because it’s so subtle,” he says. He had been watching prairie dogs in general for decades and the white-tailed prairie dogs in the Arapaho National Wildlife Refuge for a year before he noticed an attack. A female “jumped on something, shook it, shook it hard, kept attacking — and then walked away,” he says. The encounter lasted just minutes. Hoogland rushed from his observation tower to the scene of the fight and, to his surprise, retrieved a dead baby ground squirrel.
Once he and his colleagues knew what to look for, they saw 101 such lethal attacks (mostly from females, but also from some males) over six years and inferred 62 more from carcasses. A propensity for killing ground squirrels turned out to be the only factor (among such possibilities as body mass, age and number of neighbors) that predicted a tendency toward lifetime success in raising lots of young. That factor, which biologists describe as fitness, is a big deal in analyzing how populations change and species evolve.

Hoogland and Brown propose that prairie dogs and ground squirrels compete for grazing. An analysis of the animals’ diets finds at least six plant species in common, the researchers say. Hoogland didn’t directly test to see if the serial killer prairie dogs just had great territories that attracted lots of ground squirrels and thus provided more opportunities for killing. But if that were true, he says, he would predict that the holders of this prime territory would have robust body sizes, and therefore there would be some link between maternal body size and high offspring number. No such link shows up, he says. The best hypothesis explaining the benefit of killing squirrels that Hoogland can think of, he says, is that prairie dogs slay the competition for food resources.

Still, the idea that prairie dogs and ground squirrels compete for plants needs more information, says ecologist Liesbeth Bakker of the Netherlands Institute of Ecology in Wageningen. The total of ground squirrel kills was an impressive number, she says, but it’s unclear what percentage it represents. If the deaths remove only a small proportion of ground squirrels, competition isn’t likely to ease much. Also, any effect would be weakened by the relative sizes of the species. “The ground squirrels are about half the size of the prairie dogs and thus eat less food,” she says.
Behavioral ecologist James Hare wonders why ground squirrels venture into prairie dog territory if it’s so dangerous. One of the ideas Hoogland suggests is that prairie dog vigilance in raising alarms about predators might make the risks of hanging out in a colony worthwhile. Hare, at the University of Manitoba in Canada, also wonders whether ground squirrels have trouble finding good habitat free from prairie dogs.

Hoogland too is left with questions, including one about the big-family bonus of interspecific killing. “Is this really unique to prairie dogs or is this more common?”

A sick bat caught by hikers not far from Seattle has now been confirmed to have the first case west of the Rockies of the deadly bat disease white-nose syndrome.

First noticed in North America in the winter of 2006-2007, the disease exterminated some whole colonies of hibernating bats on the East Coast, though some species have proved less susceptible. White-nose syndrome has now swept from coast to coast, the U.S. Geological Survey confirmed March 31.

So far the USGS’s National Wildlife Health Center has only confirmed the one case, in a little brown bat (Myotis lucifugus) that hikers found near North Bend, Wash., on March 11 and took to an animal welfare center for care. Genetic testing identified it as a little brown bat most likely from the West instead of an accidental hitchhiker that crossed the Rockies in a truck or cargo container, Jeremy Coleman of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service said at a press conference.

Just how the disease reached Washington isn’t clear yet. Twenty-seven other states and five Canadian provinces have reported it, but what was previously the most western location, in Nebraska,was more than 1,000miles away. The fungus causing the disease can spread bat-to-bat or can ride along on travelers’ outdoor gear. Watch for updated decontamination procedures in early April, Coleman said.

With the help of a neural prosthesis, a quadriplegic man used his paralyzed right hand to grab a bottle, swipe a credit card and play a guitar video game. Bypassing his damaged spinal cord, the system restored his ability to use his thoughts to command his hand to move.

Other neural prosthetic systems have allowed paralyzed people to use their brain activity to move computer cursors, robotic limbs and wheelchairs (SN: 11/16/13, p. 22). But the new approach, described online April 13 in Nature, is the first to use brain activity to control a person’s own limb. “We literally are reconnecting the brain to the body,” study coauthor Chad Bouton of the Feinstein Institute for Medical Research in Manhasset, N.Y., said April 12 in a news briefing.
Decoding brain signals and correctly stimulating muscles are “really hard things to do individually,” says biomedical engineer Levi Hargrove of the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago. Putting those together in a human subject is “very impressive,” he says. “There’s more work to be done, of course, but this is very positive and should excite people.”

In 2010, college student Ian Burkhart dived into a shallow wave and struck sand. The accident severed his spinal cord, leaving him paralyzed from the shoulders down. Burkhart volunteered to undergo brain surgery in which doctors implanted a patch of electrodes directly into his brain. These electrodes eavesdropped on the activity of nerve cells that control hand movements.

Scientists listened to these cells’ behavior as Burkhart watched a range of hand and finger movements on a screen and attempted to copy the motions. A computer system then learned to recognize the neural signals that accompanied each type of movement, and an algorithm translated those signals into movement commands.
A flexible sleeve of electrodes strapped to Burkhart’s forearm delivered those instructions directly by stimulating hand muscles. In 2014, Bouton and colleagues announced that Burkhart could open and close his hand using the system. Since then, Burkhart has been able to command more complex hand movements, such as wiggling his thumb in and out and flexing his wrist. The Nature paper describes how this bypass system now allows him to pick up a cup, pour and even pinch his thumb and forefinger together to pluck a skinny stir stick.
“The first time when I was able to open and close my hand, it really kind of gave me that sense of hope again for the future,” Burkhart said in the briefing.

The technology isn’t ready for life outside of the lab. In its current form, the system must be calibrated each time Burkhart uses it, and the electrodes in the brain may not perform as well with time. And bulky cables connect the brain electrodes to the computer system and forearm sleeve. Scientists are working on making the technology smaller, wireless and easier to use, study coauthor Nick Annetta of Battelle Memorial Institute in Columbus, Ohio, said in the briefing.

Neural engineer José Contreras-Vidal of the University of Houston points out that technology that can translate neural activity into electrical impulses may ultimately restore other types of muscle activity, such as walking. “What we need to do is provide solutions and options,” he says.

Toddlers, I know from experience, believe themselves to be very, very special — the center, in fact, of the entire universe. With maturity, however, most of us learn that we are not quite as special as we thought. Other people are important, too.

It’s similar with Earthlings in general. As humans have learned about the size of the cosmos (and our not-so-central place in it), we have grappled with weighing our specialness against the possible existence of alien beings on other worlds. Given the amazing diversity of life on Earth, it makes sense that life here is just one example from a cosmic multitude. If so, the next question becomes whether we can find the others.
That quest is at the heart of this special issue, which explores our long fascination with the idea of extraterrestrial life and then examines more practical matters, such as how to go about searching for it. We already monitor radio signals with projects like SETI. So far, we’ve heard nothing. We have sent rovers to Mars to dig in the soil. So far, we have found nothing that resembles a living thing. But we persist in the search.

That persistence has deep roots in human history, as Tom Siegfried describes in his essay. Originally, the question of whether life exists on other worlds was linked to questions of divine power. But in the 20th century, the search for aliens became an issue of logic and probabilities. Siegfried reports on new ideas about why, even if they’re out there, we haven’t yet heard from them.

In contrast to the superintelligent, high-tech aliens that inhabit film and TV, most scientists expect aliens to be some form of microbial life — perhaps not even carbon-based. Tina Hesman Saey discusses the latest thinking about what alien life might look like, and the challenges we may face in recognizing it even if we do encounter it. Telling such life from nonlife is not trivial, even on Earth, Saey reports. Desert varnish, a dark stain on earthly rocks, may be made by living things that have so far escaped detection. Finding signs of past or present life on another planet will be even more difficult. But the possibility of life as we do not know it energizes the debate about how to find ET, and a broader discussion about what counts as living.

The broader search for ET assumes alien life (and a planet) similar to Earth’s. Christopher Crockett discusses new and existing tools that exoplanet hunters can use to peer at faraway worlds. Analyses of exoplanet atmospheres might reveal signatures of life, hints, if not proof, of ET. Geoscientists have also gotten in on the action, trying to understand what planetary processes make Earth habitable, and, in so doing, helping to identify livable worlds in space. Thomas Sumner reveals new findings about alternatives to Earth’s carbon cycle, plate tectonics and other processes that could keep exoplanets temperate and inform the hunt for other life-forms.

It is our obsession with aliens, and whether they exist or not, that motivates much of our search for Earth-like planets and even the exploration of our solar system. And that obsession stems from a deeper, innate curiosity about whether Earth is special or just one of a billion.

There’s nothing like a guy doing all the child care to win female favor, even among giant water bugs.

Thumbnail-sized Appasus water bugs have become an exemplar species for studying paternal care. After mating, females lay eggs on a male’s back and leave him to swim around for weeks tending his glued-on load.

For an A. major water bug, lab tests show an egg burden can have the sweet side of attracting more females, researchers in Japan report May 4 in Royal Society Open Science. Given a choice of two males, females strongly favored, and laid more eggs on, the one already hauling around 10 eggs rather than the male that researchers had scraped eggless.

Females still favored a well-egged male even when researchers offered two males that a female had already considered, but with their egg-carrying roles switched from the previous encounter. That formerly spurned suitor this time triumphed.

A similar preference, though not as clear-cut, showed up in the slightly smaller and lighter A. japonicus giant water bug. “We conclude that sexual selection plays an important role in the maintenance of elaborate paternal care,” says study coauthor Shin-ya Ohba of Nagasaki University.