Stephen Chen

Can pointing giant loudspeakers to the sky help regions recover from a drought? The answer may be yes.  A new study out of Tsinghua University in Beijing found that sending powerful, low-frequency sound waves into the sky may have triggered an increase in rainfall on the Tibetan Plateau. The researchers said they recorded increases in rainfall of up to 17% by pointing a giant loudspeaker at the sky.  The sound waves also appear to be safe for the environment, but scientists said the experiment would need to be replicated many times to confirm if the technology works.  The team led by Professor Wang Guangqian from the university’s State Key Laboratory of Hydro-science and Engineering, said i

Sex has come out on top as one of the most important factors in relationships thriving and surviving during the coronavirus pandemic, a new study has revealed. While previously it was thought that sex was not high on the list of reasons that could be attributed to a relationship’s success, it seems coronavirus lockdowns are now largely being praised for helping couples improve their lives together. A new study by Chinese scientists found that sex was three times more important than social or demographic factors such as money and age in improving a couple’s relationship during the coronavirus-related lockdown periods. In a paper published about the study in the journal Sexual Medicine last w

Most patients who received hospital treatment for Covid-19 developed long-term health problems, according to a large-scale study from China. Researchers found that 76% of those discharged from one hospital in Wuhan, the city at the center of the outbreak, still showed at least one symptom associated with the disease six months later. Fatigue and sleep difficulties, which occurred in 63% and 26% of the patients respectively, were the most common problems. To the surprise of the researchers, over a third of the patients showed signs of kidney malfunction, which led to problems such as an increase in bodily waste in the blood and increased risk of sexual dysfunction. “Longer follow-up studies

Chinese researchers claim to have developed a biological sensor that can detect the new coronavirus in just 10 minutes, although it remains unclear if it will ever hit the market.  Team leader Guo Xuefeng said the technology is “ready for immediate application” and is just as accurate as the polymerase chain reaction (PCR) technologies currently in use. It is also much faster. Current testing measures often taking hours or days to produce a result from the standard PCR because of the time-consuming process required to analyze samples in a laboratory.  The Peking University team has rushed to patent a sensing chip that scientists say can detect the Sars-CoV-2 viral gene almost instantly from

Wearing a face mask could cause lung problems due to the inhalation of plastic fibers, a new study has found. But the potential health risks of Covid masks are outweighed by their benefits. “It is a minor problem compared with protecting humans from Covid-19,” said the Chinese research team from Wuhan, the city where the coronavirus is believed to have originated. In the peer-reviewed paper, published in the Journal of Hazardous Materials earlier this week, a wide range of masks were tested for plastic fibers.  While this latest study offers food for thought, the one clear takeaway remains that masks are the most cost-effective way to fight the virus. A recent German study found masks helpe

Scientists are debating if China’s most ancient fish - the sturgeon - has lost its sex drive, putting the species at serious risk of extinction. Regarded as a “national treasure,” the wild Chinese sturgeon, which can only be found in the Yangtze River, is a species that has existed for 140 million years and can grow as big as a shark. Two recent studies have aimed to shed light on why the sturgeon is in danger. But their findings were markedly different – and spawned an unusual and ugly tit-for-tat among the academics.  A member of one study, Professor Liu Huanzhang, accused the other research team of being “narcissists” who “cherry-picked data ... used imagination, made up stories.” One t

Just over a year ago, Google declared it had conquered quantum supremacy, building a supercomputer that could perform an elaborate operation in 200 seconds.  But just as the race for quantum computing looked set to be potentially sealed by the United States, China last week claimed its new prototype had achieved an even bigger breakthrough – and could process a calculation 10 billion times faster than Google’s “Sycamore” machine. Using a process called “Gaussian boson sampling,” researchers said their Jiuzhang prototype quantum computer took a little over three minutes to complete a task that the world’s fastest conventional machine would not be able to complete in 600 million years. “This a

A team of researchers in Shanghai have pinpointed four genes that shape the face of an ethnically Han Chinese person.  According to the new study, changes in these genes could make a chin narrower, eyebrows higher, nose longer and cheeks slimmer. Differences in the genes could also have the opposite effect.  The Journal of Genetics and Genomics published a peer-reviewed paper about the discovery was on Monday. Similar studies have been carried out on European, Latino, African and some Asian populations. The facial genes for ethnic Han, who make up most of China’s population, had previously remained unknown. According to the study, Han Chinese share one face-shaping gene with some people nat

Mother’s milk could prevent or treat Covid-19, according to a new study by Chinese scientists. A research team in Beijing tested the effect of human breast milk on cells exposed to the Sars-CoV-2 virus. The milk was collected in 2017, well before the start of the pandemic, and the cell types tested varied from animal kidney cells to young human lung and gut cells. The results were the same: most living virus strains were killed by the milk. The breast milk was “blocking viral attachment, entry and even post-entry viral replication,” the team led by Professor Tong Yigang from the Beijing University of Chemical Technology wrote in two non-peer-reviewed papers posted on biorxiv.org on Friday.

Recovered Covid-19 patients in China may still be vulnerable to a mutant form of the pathogen spreading overseas, a new study says. Professor Huang Ailong from Chongqing Medical University said there is an urgent need to determine what threat the mutation, known as D614G, poses to people who have recovered from a different form of the virus. D614G began spreading in Europe in early February. By May, it was the dominant strain around the world, having been found in 70% of sequenced samples in Europe and North America. Antibodies found in patients who had been infected with earlier forms of the pathogen failed to neutralize the mutant strain, the scientists said in a paper published on Biorxi