With a shocking 75-96 loss to the host nation, the Philippines in the FIBA Basketball World Cup on Saturdays, team China failed to qualify for the Paris 2024 Summer Olympics, to the despair of the country's of die-hard basketball fans and netizens who regard this dismal performance as the "deepest humiliation."
This was China's first loss to an Asian rival in a major international men's basketball tournament.
Fans and netizens expressed their frustration on Sina Weibo social platform, where a hashtag about their defeats in the tournament racked up 120 million views.
"Our performances couldn't have been any worse, that's so heartbreaking to see such an outcome, " said one comment on the Sina Weibo.
"The players don't have any hustle. Is this going to be like Chinese football?" quipped one Weibo user.
Others mocked the loss is related to the country's recent social problem. "Basketball and football are the microcosm of our society," wrote another Weibo user.
While the top Chinese performers Li Kai'er and Zhang Zhenlin collected 17 points and 13 points each in this tournament, the Chinese team nailed only five three-pointers out of 22 attempts and fell behind in rebounds (31:46). Jordan Clarkson, the star of the Philippine team, played well in the game, scoring 24 points in the third quarter and collecting 34 points.
In2019 China, was defeated by Nigeria in the FIBA Basketball World Cup, at the time the Chinese team failed to qualify for the Tokyo 2020 Summer Olympics. In this year's tournament, Chinese men's team failed again to qualify for the Olympic games, making it the first time that the Chinese men's basketball team has missed two consecutive Olympic Games.defeats
After the game, most insiders believe that the Chinese men's basketball team defeat, was wnot due to Clarkson's sudden outburst, but to a decision by head coach Aleksandar Djordjevic's that people cannot understand: abandoning the use of Wang Zhelin even in the 8 minutes when Zhou Qi was injured and could not continue the game,, which transformed the team's advantage into a liability, according to media reports.
The Chinese famous commentator, Yang Jian, also let his tears flow freely during the post-game interview, "I'm quite upset and I felt aggrieved for our players,". Former Chinese men's basketball coach Du Feng commented:, "This is not the real level of our men's basketball team".
After the post-game, Djordjevic noted that "Everyone in the team is responsible for the loss of the game, and as the head coach, I should take the main responsibility, we will gradually improve the level in later training and matches. "
"China still has a lot of young players waiting to be discovered. " he said.
After the World Cup, the Chinese men's basketball team will rest to solve injury problems to prepare for the Hangzhou Asian Games at the end of September.
The Naturalized Chinese men's basketball player Li Kai'er is scheduled to return to the United States to prepare for the new NBA season, and he will not participate in the Hangzhou Asian Games according to media reports today.
Despite worldwide oppositions and criticism, the Japanese government went ahead with its nuclear-contaminated wastewater dumping plan on August 24, opening a Pandora's Box of unfathomable consequences. Rather than responding to global concerns, the Japanese government attempts to obfuscate public spotlight by transforming itself into a victim.
In the first installment of the investigative story, the Global Times reveals the fallacy propagated by Japan and some Western media outlets to slander China in an attempt to shift international focus away from the culprit and suggests other efforts that can be made by the international community. In the second installment, the Global Times will look into Japan's strategies to whitewash its unilateral move and ill intentions behind the wastewater dumping implementation.
Hours after Japan started to dump nuclear-contaminated wastewater into the ocean on August 24, Chinese seafood distributor Xiao Maoxu posted an advertisement on social media promoting her crabs. "Buy the crabs as early as possible," she wrote. "No one knows whether we will be able to eat them in the future."
A resident of the Zhoushan Islands, the largest Chinese archipelago in the East China Sea, Xiao has been selling local freshly caught marine products for years. The Kishida administration's reckless dumping of Fukushima nuclear-contaminated wastewater has worried people engaged in seafood-related industries, including Xiao. They are angry and perplexed about the reckless dumping, but sadly can do little about it.
Now, Japan has brought the sword of Damocles, which was hanging over its own national and global security, crashing down regardless of strong condemnation from the international community. The wastewater dumping, which may last as long as 30 years, is going to have far-reaching effects on global marine ecosystem and organisms therein, and no humans will be spared in the end. The confusion, worry, and concern witnessed in the marine industry in East Asia is just the tip of the tragedy iceberg.
Xiao heard that the discharged nuclear-contaminated wastewater will reach the coastal waters of China some 240 days after release, based on research conducted by Tsinghua University scholars. "By that time, if no one buys my products, I will have to change my profession," Xiao told the Global Times. "I didn't expect Japan to be so shameless and unconscionable."
A heavy blow
Those who live on marine products will be the first to bear the consequences of the wastewater dumping.
Crabs are likely to be retailed at higher prices in the coming autumn, said Xiao.
After the start of this year's fishing season in early August, she usually waits for the returning fishing boats late at night, and the dock is always crowded with similar seafood distributors. They are enjoying a sort of momentary happiness before being permanently hurt by the "evils" to come from the opened Pandora's Box one day. "There is still a market for aquatic products at present, and the prices are not bad," Xiao told the Global Times. "But it's hard to say what's going to happen after 240 days."
Chinese businesses that import Japanese aquatic products are also on the chopping block. On the same day that Japan started dumping the wastewater, China announced the complete suspension of the importation of aquatic products originating from Japan to protect the health of Chinese consumers.
A company in Zhejiang Province told the media that it would "lose more than 100 million yuan ($13.7 million) a year" if its marine products were detected as containing excessive radiation.
The damage that Japan's wastewater dumping has caused to the upstream fisheries is affecting the downstream catering industry. The irresponsible dumping has dealt a crushing blow to the high-end Japanese restaurants that usually claim that seafood ingredients used at their establishments are flown in from Japan.
An omakase restaurant in Shanghai's Hongkou district whose owner and chef is a Japanese national, for instance, said that more than 90 percent of its ingredients came from Japan. The restaurant suspended its lunch services after China banned seafood imports from Japan, only opening for dinner.
"We well prepared [for the ban] and stockpile a lot of Japanese seafood [ingredients]," a staffer at the restaurant told the Global Times. She nonetheless added that they have no idea what to do when an out-of-stock situation occurs.
An increasing number of Japanese restaurants in China, some of which are well-known, and used to advertise their "Japanese ingredients," now openly acknowledge none of their ingredients are sourced from Japan. In what can only be described as a business survival tactic, such businesses have explained that they only use "Japanese cooking methods" rather "Japanese-imported ingredients."
It is no wonder that such restaurants are eager to distance themselves from Japan: A recent poll by Sina News with some 522,000 Chinese netizen respondents showed that 84 percent have "never" gone or "will no longer" go to Japanese restaurants. It shows an antipathy toward Japan's unscrupulous wastewater dumping, as well as fears for nuclear radiation, according to some respondents.
Such growing fears are also reflected in a sharp increase in the demand in the market of radiation detection instruments: many Chinese radiation detector manufacturers said that they are working overtime to cope with the recent surge in orders. Who is flinging mud at China？
Two hours after the wastewater dumping was initiated, China reacted quickly, instituting a total ban on the importation of all Japanese-origin aquatic products, together with enhanced monitoring measures across the country of the marine radiation environment. However, such moves out of concern for people's health and food security have been hyped as an overreaction out of political concerns by some Western media outlets.
For example, a BBC report on August 24 said that China's claim is not "backed by science." Another report on the Chinese language website of the Voice of America (VOA) on August 25 claimed that governments and people in most Southeast Asian countries still have an open and trusting attitude toward Japan's aquatic products, in stark contrast to "the extreme concerns of Chinese netizens and the Chinese government."
China seems to have become a "lonely fighter" according to the Western media narrative. However, do these stories reflect the whole picture?
What these stories fail to mention is that, although US publicly backs the Japanese government's dumping plan, the country largely reduced the importation of Japanese agricultural, forestry-, and fisheries-related products in the first half of the year, and the main production areas affected by such import reductions are within the nuclear-contaminated wastewater dumping zone.
In Thailand, its Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and associated agencies announced a plan to double the volume of seafood samples collected for radioactive material detection, to strengthen consumer confidence in their safety.
Any shipments failing these safety inspections will be sent back, and additional imports will be halted, said Lertchai Lertvut, the Thailand FDA's deputy secretary-general.
In South Korea, survey showed that roughly 80 percent of local residents oppose the Fukushima discharge plan, according to media reports. South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol's ambivalence toward the dumping has "upset many South Koreans," who are "pressing Yoon to push back harder on Japan," reported Wall Street Journal on August 25.
Yoon's approach to the matter upsets many South Koreans, roughly 80% of whom oppose the Fukushima discharge, according to polls. On Thursday, some 16 college students were arrested for attempting to barge into Japan's Embassy in Seoul. Protests are planned across South Korea in the coming days.
The Japanese government itself has also witnessed surging domestic opposition and protests against the plan. According to a recent survey conducted by researchers from the Hainan University's Belt and Road Research Institute based on key word and text sentiment analysis of data collected between August 1 and August 24 from Google trends, more Japanese Google users (22 percent) were opposed to the plan than those who were supportive (19 percent).
The gap between the government's attitude and public opinion is even sharper in the US, as the survey showed only 2 percent of US netizens supported Japan's actions with another 21 percent in opposition.
Google users in South Korea, the UK, Canada, Singapore, Australia, India, and the Philippines were also found to be paying close attention to the developments of the issue given the frequency of their searches related to the issue on Google, according to Shi Xufeng, deputy dean at the institute and a co-author of the abovementioned survey.
In total, the researchers found that more than 23 percent of global Google users who searched relevant content between August 1 and 24 had expressed opposition to Japan's dumping plan, which is about four times the number of those who expressed support. About 68 percent of the netizens were neutral or did not express a clear stance on the issue.
Given the data, "it is extremely irresponsible for the Japanese government to dump the nuclear-contaminated wastewater into the sea regardless of the international community's fierce opposition," Shi told the Global Times.
Opinion warfare against China, South Korea
The claim that "only China opposes Japan's dumping of nuclear-contaminated wastewater into the ocean" is certainly an absurd statement that ignores objective reality. It is also a deliberate attempt to create a narrative based on confrontational sentiment and heroism, said Chen Yang, a guest professor from the Liaoning University Institute of Japan Studies.
The Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) itself admitted that about 66 percent of the water in storage tanks exceeded the standard of radioactive substances, reported Japan's TBS TV station on August 26.
With the rise of China's comprehensive strength and Japan's deep involvement in the "lost two decades," some Japanese politicians have gradually distorted their perspective of China and become enthusiastic about instilling the idea of a "Chinese threat" to the public. Against this backdrop, some Japanese politicians deliberately package themselves as "guardians of national interests" who dare to say no to China, in order to maximize their personal interests, according to Chen.
However, these politicians ignore the public interests of the general society and attempt to feign a hollow form of "heroism" to benefit their personal brand and image, ultimately sacrificing the health and wellbeing of the people and the future destiny of the country, Chen noted.
It is also part of the Japanese government's petty niggling from the very beginning to use the nuclear-contaminated wastewater issue to launch opinion warfare especially against China and South Korea where people have raised the strongest objections - while presenting itself as a victim.
The same day the nuclear-contaminated wastewater dumping began, the Japanese Embassy in China issued a warning to Japanese nationals living in the country, reminding them of not "speaking Japanese loudly" when out in public, and "being cautious in your speech and behavior."
Why did the Japanese government issue such a warning, presenting itself as the aggrieved victim? We all know that the villain in this story is the Japanese government and the victims are all the people living in countries that are a part of the Pacific Rim. Hyping the risk of attack against Japanese people in China clearly demonstrates the Japanese government's vicious intention to shift public attention, Lü Chao, an expert on the Korean Peninsula issue at the Liaoning Academy of Social Sciences, pointed out.
The Japanese government certainly knew that the decision to dump nuclear-contaminated wastewater would make a splash in the international community. In order to help promote the process, they obtained a so-called endorsement from the IAEA to help enhance the "reasonableness" and "legitimacy" of the move and win more support from the international community.
Under these circumstances, the Japanese government would deem itself the loser in an opinion warfare if it halts its plan due to opposition from some of its neighbors like China and South Korea, and the issue will therefore be used as a suppression tool against Japan by other countries, according to Chen.
Claiming that other countries are "politicizing" the issue is a diplomatic card Japanese government is playing to obfuscate and distract from the attention of the international opinion, Chen noted, echoing Lü.
Joint effort
Observers have been calling on countries, regions, and industries to claim compensation from the Japanese government.
Law professor Chang Yen-Chiang, who is also the executive director of the Yellow Sea and Bohai Sea Research Institute at the Dalian Maritime University, said China, for instance, can request an advisory opinion from the International Court of Justice (ICJ) through international organizations such as the United Nations (UN) and the International Maritime Organization (IMO).
The advisory opinion would request for the ICJ to prove that Japan's discharge is fully in line with the requirements of international law, Chang told the Global Times.
"If the ICJ's advisory opinion finds there is no international legal basis for the water dumping, we can then bring the case against Japan as a defendant in the ICJ based on the advisory opinion, after the relevant evidence has been fully collected," he noted.
Chinese researchers also called for continuous international efforts - such as a ban on imports of and boycott against Japanese-origin aquatic products - to compel the Japanese government to terminate the dumping plan and deal with the nuclear-contaminated wastewater using more suitable and responsible methods.
Shi proposed the recognition of August 24 as a global disaster day for the marine environment. He suggested that governments and research institutes globally should enhance the monitoring and testing of relevant sea water, aquatic products, agricultural products, and foodstuffs.
"A nuclear accident in one country often has a direct impact on a large number of countries in the region, and the countries in the region hold a broad common interest," Wu Wei, an associated professor in China Institute of Boundary and Ocean Studies of Wuhan University, told the Global Times.
"[We] suggested that relevant countries cooperate to establish a regional mechanism to regulate the operation of nuclear facilities, and review NACW (water from the nuclear accident) emissions," said Wu.
Taiwan regional leader Tsai Ing-wen delivered her "Double Ten" (October 10) speech on Tuesday. This is Tsai's last "Double Ten" speech before she steps down in May 2024, but also a continued vow by the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) to step up its provocations and rash actions in the future.
It is clear to see what Tsai wants to achieve through this year's speech. Firstly, she gave a long list of her accomplishments since coming to power, which aims to boost DPP's votes for the upcoming elections. Secondly, the Tsai authorities have been pushing forward "de-sinicization" and promoting "incremental independence" on the island of Taiwan. In this year's "Double Ten" speech, Tsai intended to draw Taiwan residents further into her version of "Taiwan independence."
As Tsai's terms come to an end soon, some interesting changes of rhetoric can be witnessed in her Tuesday address. In her "Double Ten" speech in 2019, Tsai specifically mentioned that her authorities "will not act provocatively or rashly" on the cross-Straits issue, and then she didn't mention "We do not provoke" until this year.
With such a seemingly softened tone, Tsai is actually speaking for the DPP and Lai Ching-te, the party's candidate for regional leadership. On the one hand, as China-US relations have shown signs of easing recently, the DPP now needs to assure Washington that it will not intensify its provocations toward the Chinese mainland. On the other hand, the DPP can also use the promise of "not acting provocatively or rashly" to fool voters on the island who are worried that cross-Straits relations will face even greater challenges if Lai becomes the next regional leader.
In addition, experts told the Global Times that Tsai seeks to leave some leeway for herself by continuing to tone down her provocations, because if a non-Green camp comes to power, then there might be a possibility that she will have to face political liquidation for what she has done as the regional leader.
Regardless of how Tsai gushed about how she wants peace in the Taiwan Straits, in the past seven years we have seen Taiwan enhancing its provocations and rash actions under her leadership. During this period, the DPP authorities' refusal to recognize the 1992 Consensus has grown blunter, and its stance of seeking US support for "Taiwan independence" has become firmer. Taiwan's relationship with certain countries unwilling to adhere to the one-China principle has become closer, while the provocation of the one-China principle in the international arena has grown stronger. As a result, the cross-Straits relations have reached a new freezing point.
In last year's "Double Ten" Speech, Tsai showed her desire to "make Taiwan a Taiwan of the world, and let us give the world an even better Taiwan." But the world will only become a better place if peace and stability in the Taiwan Straits remain - that is when the Taiwan secessionists stop their dangerous moves to stir up troubles and tread on the mainland's red line.
Unwrapping the DPP's pursuit of Taiwan's "visibility" in the international community - or in Tsai's words, "making Taiwan a Taiwan of the world," we see a vicious ambition of pushing for "Taiwan independence." But the more the DPP takes action to achieve this goal, the more the world understands the importance of adhering to the one-China principle.
As Taiwan's elections approach, Tsai's last "Double Ten" speech signifies the beginning of a new round of tricks the DPP will play on cross-Straits issues. However, there is no future for Taiwan secessionists; reunification will and must happen. No matter what kind of approach the DPP authorities will take to promote "Taiwan independence," extermination will ultimately be the end of these forces.
China's solar power industry is generating new income for residents in Yantai, East China's Shandong Province, with fruit, vegetables and other economic crops being planted under photovoltaic (PV) panels, according to a Monday press release.
On the hillside of Fajuan village in Yantai, PV panels continually turn sun lights into green energy to supply many households, while fruits, vegetables and Chinese Traditional Medicine crops planted under the panels brought new incomes for villagers.
"I received 2,000 yuan ($ 280 dollar) per mu for renting the land for the PV panels, and I grow cherry under the panel, which is a double income," said local resident Wang Hongkui.
A new solar power project in Yantai has recently been connected to the power grid and entered operation. The project combined local farming features with solar power, allowed villagers to plant organic vegetables, fruit, and herbs under the PV panels.
The PV power station can produce 70.22 million kWh annually, and bring over 500,000 yuan to more than 700 residents. The solar power can save 21,417 tons of coal and reduce 57,160 tons of carbon dioxide emission.
Yantai power company, under the State Grid Corporation of China, has established PV projects that combined fishery and PV, animal husbandry and PV and farming and PV. The share of power generation rose as established and gridded more new energy projects.
As of the end of September, Yantai's green energy generating capacity has reached highest amount in Shandong to 11.75 million kWh, accounted for 54.49 percent of the Yantai's total generating capacity.
According to data from the local energy administration, Shandong's the new energy generating capacity in the first half of 2023 reached 83.82 million kWh. The PV generating capacity surged by 120 percent to 49.46 million kWh compare to the end of 2020.
China has focused on green energy development in light of the country's "dual carbon" goals.
The Hangzhou Asian Games in East China's Zhejiang Province, as the latest example, applied green sporting venues equipped with wind, photovoltaic and other clean energy, has realized 100 percent green power generation.
Official data showed that China's electricity generated on renewable resource reached to 1.34 trillion kWh in the first half of 2023.
China will further pursue high-level opening-up in the services sector and will shorten the negative list for investment in the country's free trade zones (FTZs). The country will also strive to roll out a negative list for cross border services trade, a vice minister of the Ministry of Commerce said on Wednesday.
"At present, the negative list for foreign investment access in the pilot FTZs has been cleared for the manufacturing industry, and the focus next will be on promoting the opening-up of the services industry," Vice Minister of Commerce Sheng Qiuping told a press conference at the State Council Information Office on Wednesday.
"We will work with relevant departments to conduct in-depth research and promote the rational shortening of the negative list for foreign investment in the pilot FTZs. Meanwhile, we will promote the introduction of a negative list for cross-border services trade and lead the country's continued opening-up," Sheng said.
On Tuesday, a seminar was held in Beijing to mark the 10th anniversary of the establishment of China's first pilot FTZ.
China's top leaders have recently delivered instructions on advancing the development of pilot FTZs, calling for higher-level pilot FTZs and enabling the pilot FTZs to play an exemplary role.
China should pursue high-level opening-up with institutional innovation at the core, coordinate development and security, align domestic rules with international economic and trade rules, further promote institutional opening-up, strengthen overall planning and systematic integration of reform, and promote innovative development of the entire industrial chain, according to the instructions.
Tu Xinquan, dean of the China Institute for WTO Studies at the University of International Business and Economics in Beijing, told the Global Times that China's FTZs have made great progress in the past decade but further improvement and breakthroughs are needed.
"The further opening-up of the services sector will be a major area to work with," Tu said. "Due to the nature of services, there would be better results if all FTZs could implement new and innovative opening-up measures in services simultaneously, under coordinated orchestration by the central government."
Experts said that as China is preparing to join high-level international agreements such as the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP), further liberalizing the services trade and investment will be productive.
Li Yong, a senior research fellow at the China Association of International Trade, told the Global Times on Wednesday said that it is important that the experience from the FTZs should be a template for other areas in the country.
Over the past decade, each pilot FTZ has made many iconic and groundbreaking achievements in institutional innovation, playing the role of comprehensive experimental platforms for reform and opening-up, according to officials at Wednesday's press conference.
China has 21 pilot FTZs. While they occupy less than 0.4 percent of China's land area, they attracted 18.1 percent of total foreign investment and contributed 17.9 percent of the country's total foreign trade in 2022. In the first half of 2023, the ratios were further increased to 18.4 percent and 18.6 percent, respectively.
The China (Shanghai) Pilot Free Trade Zone (FTZ), the inaugural pilot FTZ in China, has seen an increasing number of newly established firms and an improving business environment over the past decade, according to a white paper released Wednesday. The zone had attracted 84,000 new enterprises by the end of 2022.
In the first eight months of this year, the foreign trade volume in the China (Guangdong) Pilot Free Trade Zone grew by 17 percent year-on-year to 341.18 billion yuan ($46.67 billion), state broadcaster CCTV reported on Wednesday. The growth rate was way higher than the province's foreign trade growth, which came in at 0.2 percent during the period.
A Shenzhen-based taekwondo gym has been punished by the Chinese Taekwondo Association after performing 'zombie taekwondo' in Qing Dynasty zombie costumes at a world taekwondo competition in South Korea.
The "Zombie Taekwondo Dance," which was directed by coach Liu Hao from the X-Taekwondo Gym under Aix Sports and Cultural Communication Co in Shenzhen, has caused a harmful impact by promoting negative traditions and customs, tarnishing the national image, and disrespecting Chinese culture, the Chinese Taekwondo Association said on Monday.
An online video clip showed that at the 2023 World Taekwondo Hanmadang which took place from July 21 to 24 in Seongnam, the Chinese team made a collective appearance in Qing Dynasty zombie costumes with fake braids and gave a performance with a mixture of zombie dance and Taekwondo on the stage, surprising the hosts and amusing the South Korean audience.
Chinese netizens criticized the performance, saying the actions of the Chinese team have reinforced people's stereotypical impressions of Chinese people, as the performers' Qing Dynasty zombie appearance carried echoes of the harmful "Fu Manchu" stereotype in Western movies.
The Chinese Taekwondo Association canceled the membership of "X-Taekwondo Gym" within the association and revoked Liu Hao's coaching registration qualifications. It also urged the Guangdong Provincial Taekwondo Association to conduct self-examination.
"We will deeply reflect and establish a healthy and upward industry culture which carries forward the spirit of Chinese sports and the Olympic spirit, and spread positive energy in sports," said the Chinese Taekwondo Association.
Three vaccines offer complete protection against Zika virus in monkeys.
The results are the latest step in the quest to create a Zika vaccine that’s safe and effective for humans (SN Online: 6/28/16).
One vaccine, made with a purified, inactivated form of the virus — designated PIV — helped rhesus monkeys fend off infection from both a Zika strain from Brazil and one circulating in Puerto Rico, study coauthor Nelson Michael and colleagues report August 4 in Science. A second DNA-based vaccine that uses snippets of Zika’s genetic material to rev up the immune system was tested against a Brazilian strain. So was a third type of vaccine that relies on a virus called adenovirus to carry Zika genes into the monkeys’ bodies. In recent days, the U.S. government and Inovio Pharmaceuticals have both started human safety trials for two other DNA-based candidates. But Michael, a vaccine researcher at the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research in Silver Spring, Md., thinks the PIV vaccine may have the best shot.
“It’s the one that’s probably going to go the distance,” he says.
DNA-based vaccines have never before been licensed for use in humans, he notes. The technique to make a PIV vaccine “goes back to Jonas Salk and polio,” Michael says. Essentially, researchers grow Zika in a lab, kill it and then purify it. “It’s a classic way to make a vaccine,” he says. “And you know what? It works.”
Human testing of the PIV vaccine will start in October. Still, Michael says evaluating many vaccine candidates is important. Any number of factors, from a bad reaction to a bankrupt manufacturer, can knock a vaccine out of the running.
“You definitely want to bet on more than one horse,” he says.
Galápagos cormorants are the only flightless cormorant species. Their wings are too small to lift their heavy bodies. To trace the genetic changes responsible for the birds’ shrunken wings, Alejandro Burga needed DNA from the grounded bird and from a few related species. For the UCLA evolutionary geneticist, getting the right DNA was a yearlong effort.
After Galápagos cormorants (Phalacrocorax harrisi) split off from other cormorants, their wings shrunk to 19 centimeters long and their bodies grew to 3.6 kilograms, not a flying-friendly combination. Burga suspected he would have difficulty getting permission to collect DNA from the endangered birds. So he e-mailed “anybody who had ever published anything on cormorants” in the last 20 years, he says. He found disease ecologist Patricia Parker of the University of Missouri-St. Louis who had collected blood from Galápagos cormorants in 2000 to monitor the spread of pathogens. Getting to the islands takes special permission, long flights and boat trips, but getting DNA from the meter-tall birds wasn’t hard.
“They’re sluggish, and they just sit there and look at you,” Parker says. She shared DNA that had been sitting in her lab refrigerator for more than a decade. Burga used it to reconstruct the cormorants’ genetic instruction book, or genome.
Next he needed comparison DNA from closely related species, such as the double-crested cormorant — a goose-sized waterbird with a broad wingspan. The bird is protected under a migratory bird treaty between the United States and Canada. Since Burga couldn’t just trap one and collect DNA, he got creative. He tried to extract DNA from preserved specimens at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County, but the genetic material was unusable. The San Diego Zoo sent samples of a too-distantly related great cormorant. An international bird rescue facility in Los Angeles notified him when someone found a dead cormorant on the beach. Burga rushed over, but the bird was a Brandt’s cormorant — also too far removed in the family tree to be of use.
One e-mail chain led to Paul Wolf, a U.S. Department of Agriculture wildlife disease biologist monitoring Newcastle disease virus in double-crested cormorants in Minnesota. With a special permit, Wolf removed one double-crested cormorant egg from a nest. The egg was at just the right stage of development — when the wings were beginning to grow — to determine which genes are active during wing development. Two down, two to go.
While on Alaska’s Middleton Island studying seabird parasites, Andrew Ramey of the U.S. Geological Survey collected two eggs from pelagic cormorants for Burga. Burga also enlisted Claudio Verdugo, a molecular epidemiologist at Universidad Austral de Chile in Valdivia. Bird samples can’t be transported between countries because of fears of disease spread. So Burga sent chemicals and protocols to Verdugo, who took DNA from another species, the neotropic cormorant, and sent it to Burga.
With DNA from four cormorant species in hand, Burga and his newfound friends learned that the Galápagos cormorants’ stubby wings result, in part, from mutations in specific genes that encourage limb growth (SN: 6/11/16, p. 11). Burga is now studying how evolution grounded other birds.
Some discoveries originate in failures. Lab failures, of course, can lead to serendipitous findings. Observations that fail to meet your expectations create space for a new idea to take hold. Imperfections — small failures — may tell volumes about how something was made or what it is made of. Exposing flaws in a theory inches scientists closer to a better one. Failure forces us to ask hard questions and look for new answers. Our cover story follows the aftermath of a recent acknowledgment of a major fail: We haven’t yet taken a complete census of all minerals on Earth. Akin to the search to name all living species on the planet (but less of a moving target), a campaign is under way to add to the more than 5,000 known minerals, freelancer Sid Perkins writes in “Digging Carbon” (SN: 10/15/16, p. 18). It’s a kind of treasure hunt, as these minerals presumably have not yet been found because they are incredibly rare, perhaps existing at only a single location. Especially interesting to rock hounds are the scores of as yet unseen carbon-based minerals predicted to exist by a recent statistical analysis. Hidden in these unexplored gems might lie untold stories about how Earth’s carbon and water cycles have changed over the eons. Just as adding a new bird species to a life list is exciting for bird watchers, finding a new kind of mineral is what many rock hounds aspire to. Another kind of failure may explain a mysterious missing star, Christopher Crockett reports in “Lost star may be failed supernova” (SN: 10/15/16, p. 8). A giant star, 25 to 30 times as massive as the sun, flared and then fizzled in 2009. Scientists now say it might be a failed supernova, a dying star that didn’t have quite the right stuff to explode and instead went from star straight to black hole. If the star is not just hiding somewhere in the dust, it’s a new cosmic character, a new type of behavior to watch for.
Imperfections in humans’ DNA help make each of us unique. These imperfections, viewed at a population scale, also offer a way (still imperfect in itself) to track ancestry, to get some idea of how human populations moved, mingled and changed in the deep past. In “The Hybrid Factor” (SN: 10/15/16, p. 22), Bruce Bower describes how recent DNA studies of ancient hominids are changing views of human evolutionary history. Early humans, the data show, mated with Neandertals and possibly other hominids, producing viable hybrid offspring. The research gives support to a longtime contention by some paleoanthropologists that certain ancient skeletons might represent human-Neandertal mixes. Further evidence for this point of view is now coming from studies of hybrid baboons and other modern species. Mixing species, it seems, was sometimes a success.
Examining the DNA of wide swaths of living people is also revising ideas about when early humans migrated out of Africa to settle the rest of the globe. Three new studies, described by Tina Hesman Saey in “One Africa exodus populated globe” (SN: 10/15/16, p. 6), suggest that the major ancestral mass migration from Africa occurred between 50,000 and 75,000 years ago. Those migrants succeeded in leaving their genetic mark on all of today’s non-Africans. Other evidence points to earlier, smaller migrations from Africa. Perhaps those were failures in a sense, failing to seed lasting populations in far-off outposts. But, perhaps those earlier, smaller scale treks were just the first steps toward success.
The solar panel industry has nearly paid its climate debt. The technology will break even in terms of energy usage by 2017 and greenhouse gas emissions by 2018 at the latest, if it hasn’t done so already, researchers calculate.
Building, assembling and installing solar panels consumes energy and produces climate-warming greenhouse gases. Once in use, though, the panels gradually reverse this imbalance by producing green energy.
The manufacturing process has also gotten greener over the last 40 years, environmental scientist Atse Louwen of Utrecht University in the Netherlands and colleagues report December 6 in Nature Communications. Each doubling of the combined energy-generating capacity of all solar panels has coincided with a 12 to 13 percent drop in the energy used during manufacturing and a 17 to 24 percent drop in their carbon footprint.
