Australia needs to stay vigilant about 'carrots' the US offers: scholar

Editor's Note: It seems that the frosty China-Australia relations have started to thaw faster. After three years, the bilateral high-level dialogue has resumed and Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has announced a visit to China later this year. However, the relationship between the two countries is still clouded by several factors, Washington's constant pursuit of […]

Landing site ready for Shenzhou-14's return

China's Shenzhou-14 crew, who have stayed at China's space station for half a year, have completed all the assigned tasks and will return to Earth in the coming days, the Global Times learned from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in Northwest China's Gansu Province on Friday. The Shenzhou-14 spacecraft will land at night at the […]

China's health authority launches one-year anti-corruption campaign

Together with other nine departments, the National Health Commission (NHC) has launched a one-year campaign to crack down on corruption in the healthcare sector across the country, focusing on "key few" and key positions in the pharmaceutical industry to ensure high-quality development of the medical and healthcare sector, the NHC announced on Tuesday. Since China […]

Computer program bests world champion 4-1 in strategy game Go

The notoriously intricate strategy game Go has a new champion. AlphaGo, Google’s Go-playing computer program, has topped Lee Sedol, the world’s reigning player, in a five-game match played over a week in South Korea. The program, a breakthrough in artificial intelligence, learned to play Go by watching human experts and by playing millions of games […]

Climate change now bigger menace than forest loss for snowshoe hares

For Wisconsin’s snowshoe hares, climate change now ranks as an even bigger menace than the bulldozing, paving and other destructive things people have done to northern forests. Habitat loss as humans reshape landscapes has loomed for decades as the main conservation problem for a lot of wildlife. It’s still important, says climate change ecologist Benjamin […]

Piggybacking tadpoles are epic food beggars

Tadpoles don’t cry to get their way. But some of them sure can beg. Each bout of hungry-baby drama among mimic poison frogs (Ranitomeya imitator) occupies both parents for hours. The tadpoles get so crazy-frantic that researchers wanted to know whether the begging is an honest call for help or a histrionic scam. Frogs can […]

Gene-edited mushroom doesn’t need regulation, USDA says

A mushroom whose genes have been edited with molecular scissors known as CRISPR/Cas9 doesn’t need to be regulated like other genetically modified crops, the U.S. Department of Agriculture said April 13 in a letter to the mushroom’s creator. The edible fungus is the first CRISPR-edited crop to clear USDA regulation. Yinong Yang, a plant pathologist […]

Lasers unveil secrets and mysteries of Angkor Wat

Smartphone-toting pilgrims regularly stream into northern Cambodia from all over the world. Their destination: Angkor Wat, a medieval temple that’s famous for massive towers and majestic stone carvings of Hindu gods, spirits and mythological battle scenes. The site, considered the world’s largest religious monument, drew more than 2.3 million visitors in 2014. Angkor Wat’s sightseers […]

Venus flytraps use defensive genes for predation

Venus flytraps (Dionaea muscipula) make carnivory look cool. But the genes that make it possible have roots in herbivory. Though modern flytraps eat insects, their ancestors probably didn’t. In search of clues to this transition, Rainer Hedrich of the University of Wurzburg in Germany and his colleagues looked at protein production patterns in in different […]