China’s first deep-sea multi-functional scientific investigation and cultural relic archaeological vessel set to be completed in 2025

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Construction on China's first deep-sea multi-functional scientific investigation and cultural relic archaeological vessel officially began in Nansha, Guangzhou, South China's Guangdong Province on Sunday. The ship is expected to be completed and put into operation in 2025, CCTV reported on Monday. According to the report, the ship has a total design length of approximately 103 ... Read more

Update: 21 people die and 6 are missing due to mountain flooding and mudslides caused by heavy rainfall in Xi’an, NW China’s Shaanxi Province

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Twenty-one people have died and another six are missing as of Sunday evening after heavy rainfall hit Xi’an, Northwest China’s Shaanxi Province, and caused mountain floods and mudslides on Friday evening.  Due to the impact of short-duration heavy rain, mountain floods and mudslides struck a village in Chang’an district in Xi’an around 6 pm on ... Read more

Local govts support state-owned enterprises expanding hiring of graduates, expected to help alleviate unemployment pressure

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Many localities have issued policies to encourage state-owned enterprises to play an exemplary role in stabilizing employment and expand recruitment of college graduates, with some provinces and cities requiring no less than half of the hiring quota at state-owned enterprises be dedicated to college graduates. The office of the Guangdong Provincial People's Government recently published ... Read more

Court sentences high-speed rail employees for illegally selling celebrity travel information

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The local court in Foshan, South China's Guangdong Province, recently announced the verdict in a case involving railway station employees who exploited their positions for financial gain by illegally selling private travel details of celebrities, according to a CCTV report on Saturday. The Nanhai District's People's Court condemned a total of eight defendants to sentences ... Read more

New tyrannosaur bridges gap from medium to monstrous

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A fossil from a new species of dinosaur is helping to bridge a crucial 20-million-year gap in tyrannosaur evolution. The key fossil is a 90-million-year-old, grapefruit-sized partial skull from Uzbekistan’s Bissekty Formation. This tyrannosaur braincase, the first well-preserved one found from the mid-Cretaceous period, shows that, although still small, tyrannosaurs of the time already had ... Read more

Unknown species hide among Texas cave crickets

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There’s no need to trek to the wilds of Borneo or the deepest Amazon if you want to discover a new species. There is at least one — and perhaps more — hiding among Ceuthophilus cave crickets in Texas, a new study finds. Jason Weckstein of Drexel University in Philadelphia and colleagues weren’t looking for ... Read more

Five things to know about Zika

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The mysteries of the Zika virus are slowly but surely succumbing to the scientific method. Last week, scientists revealed the virus’ structure, gleaned further insight into its ties to the birth defect microcephaly and found out just how little some people seem to know about Zika. Public health researchers at Harvard University released the results ... Read more

Itty bitty engine puts a single atom to work

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A team of scientists has built a heat engine out of a single atom. Heat engines, like steam engines or internal combustion engines, convert heat into motion. To create the minuscule engine, physicist Johannes Roßnagel of University of Mainz and colleagues heated and cooled a calcium ion with an electric field and a laser, causing ... Read more

Hubble telescope snaps stunning pic for its 26th birthday

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Time to add another gorgeous space photo to the Hubble Space Telescope’s list of greatest hits. For the orbiting observatory’s 26th anniversary in space, astronomers snapped a picture of the Bubble Nebula, a seven-light-year-wide pocket of gas being blown away by a blazing massive star about 7,100 light-years away in the constellation Cassiopeia. The star ... Read more

Leptospirosis bacterium still haunts swimming holes

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Danger in ‘swimming hole’  — As warm weather approaches, the old swimming hole will again beckon boys and girls in farm areas. But disease germs lurk in waters exposed to cattle and other animals…. One “swimming hole disease” called leptospirosis is caused by water-borne Leptospira pomona…. Warm summer temperatures are ideal for maintaining leptospiral organisms ... Read more