Named Long Chenchen, or the "dragon of Chenchen," the mascot for China's upcoming Dragon Spring Festival Gala has been released, with a lot of design details showing the aesthetics of Chinese cultural elements.
To celebrate 2024, which will be the Year of the Dragon in Chinese culture, "Long Chenchen" has been designed as a cute yet lively dragon, colored orange and red and with a pair of doll eyes.
The seemingly cute-looking dragon takes inspiration from Chinese archaeological discoveries. The design of its nose was inspired by a dragon shaped jade item that was discovered in the Erlitou Ruins, a major site in Luoyang, Central China's Henan province that witnessed the rise and fall of the Xia (c.2070BC-c.1600BC) and Shang (c.1600BC-1046BC) dynasties.
The fire shape pattern on its shoulder was inspired by a bronze piece with cloud patterns that dates back to the Spring and Autumn Period (770BC-476BC).
The bronze piece has 12 vividly depicted dragon sculptures, showing ancient Chinese creativity as well as skill for handicrafts.
Another source of inspiration was a gilded dragon sculpture that is currently in the Xi'an Museum.
The dragon mascot has been praised by netizens on China's social media platforms such as Sina Weibo. Some said Chenchen looks "amiable" and can bring more international visitors to see the profound yet adorable Chinese culture.
"I like this cartoon version of a dragon, as it is amiable and friendly. Those characteristics also represent the modern China," a netizen posted on Sina Weibo.
Despite receiving many likes, the mascot has also sparked criticism. It has four claws, some of which have five toes and others have three. This made some netizens speculate the dragon character might have been synthesized by artificial intelligence.
"The Spring Festival Gala is the gala of the year for all of us in China. It deserves a professional team to design a character for it," one netizen wrote.
On Thursday morning, China Media Group (CMG), the media platform that is going to be in charge of the gala, officially declared on Sina Weibo that the dragon mascot was created entirely by human beings but not AI.
Admitting that it has some "imperfections," CMG said that it was created by designers "one stroke after another." All the details about the dragon, including its patterns, colors and face have been revised by designers through many versions.
Along with such verbal explanations, a short video showing the design team working on the mascot has been posted on Sina Weibo by CMG. The media group's response to the character's design has become a trending topic on Sina Weibo and has been viewed by more than 200 million netizens.
"Whether it was created by AI or human beings, I think the mascot has successfully delivered the spirit of the dragon. The dragon is important to show the life-force of Chinese culture," one netizen posted on Sina Weibo.
Sichuan is experiencing light rain as Wu Lian walks on her way to work. Meanwhile, the earthworms emerging from the muddy ground along the road are also undergoing a migration.
However, some earthworms are getting stranded on the cement pavement. At moments like these, Wu Lian picks them up one by one and places them back into the soil, despite her hands getting covered in mud.
"Otherwise, they could easily be stepped on by passersby," she says. This unique habit stems from her trip to Lhasa, capital of the Xizang Autonomous Region, three years ago.
This "Earthworm Rescue Operation" is a very unique manifestation of the spirit of cherishing and protecting life that the Tibetan people have continued for centuries.
Near the Potala Palace, in the vicinity of Zong Juelu Kang (Dragon King Pond), during the rainy season, you can see people of all ages bending down to gently pick up earthworms that haven't been able to complete their journey and placing them back onto the grass.
This is because once the sun comes out in Lhasa, the worms quickly lose moisture and face danger. Some local children even take the initiative to inform unaware tourists to watch their step. Of course, this isn't just about rescuing earthworms; it's just that because earthworms are particularly fragile and inconspicuous, such a scene arises.
Even today, many Tibetan people still recite a protective mantra when drinking water, intending to liberate the microorganisms in the water about to be consumed. And they will tell their grandchildren the story of this small ritual like a tale.
Similar to how the Han people usually call for compassion for even the tiniest of ants, Tibetans start from rescuing earthworms. This custom originates from the core doctrine of "equality of all sentient beings" in Tibetan Buddhism.
Carried on to the present day, it can be said that rather than merely being a religious tradition, it has long been internalized as a guiding principle in the daily lives of ordinary people.
Another story is about the origin of the Shoton Festival. Before the 17th century, the Shoton Festival was a primitive religious celebration.
According to folk tradition, as the weather warmed in the summer and all living things revived, monks going out for activities would inadvertently harm living creatures, violating the precept of "do not kill."
Therefore, the Gelug sect's monastic rules stipulated that from the fourth to the sixth month of the Tibetan calendar, monks could only recite scriptures and practice in the temples.
On the day the ban was lifted, monks would leave the temples and descend from the mountains. To thank the monks, local residents would prepare yogurt and organize outings and feasts, including traditional Tibetan opera performances, to celebrate the occasion.
It can be said that the practice of loving and protecting life is the starting point of the socialization process for Tibetan children. Life is adorable, life is respectable.
Tibetans believe that one should do everything possible to avoid harming any life. If there is truly no choice, then one should still hold an attitude of respect and gratitude.
Such beliefs permeate through people's daily lives, in the cycles of seasons, and in their daily activities.
The fundamental principle that every newborn baby first learns is a profound empathy toward the existence of any life. As an extension of this spirit, Tibetans often exhibit the utmost compassion toward the weak.
The essence of compassion includes, but is not limited to, "tolerance." Its broader meaning encompasses acknowledgment, empathy, and an emotionally driven commitment to action.
In Xizang, during feasts, not only were beggars not driven away, but they were also treated as honored guests.
Even in contemporary urban life, Tibetans are still able to treat all members of society more equally. On this land, the quality of being "snobbish" is disliked by everyone.
Faith is not confined to temples but also ingrained in everyday activities. When we talk about culture, it is never limited to external forms like singing, dancing, or intricate artwork.
The local people's outlook on life has gradually extended beyond the region with the opening up of Xizang.
Therefore, when you hear tourists from other regions or countries expressing admiration for how Tibetan culture has purified their souls, it is likely not an exaggeration.
Large, detachable scales make a newly discovered species of gecko a tough catch. When a predator grabs hold, Madagascar’s Geckolepis megalepis strips down and slips away, looking more like slimy pink Silly Putty than a rugged lizard.
All species of Geckolepis geckos have tear-off scales that regrow within a few weeks, but G. megalepis boasts the largest. Some of its scales reach nearly 6 millimeters long. Mark Scherz, a herpetologist and taxonomist at Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, and colleagues describe the new species February 7 in PeerJ.
The hardness and density of the oversized scales may help the gecko to escape being dinner, Scherz says. Attacking animals probably get their claws or teeth stuck on the scales while G. megalepis contracts its muscles, loosening the connection between the scales and the translucent tissue underneath. The predator is left with a mouthful of armor, but no meat. “It’s almost ridiculous,” Scherz says, “how easy it is for these geckos to lose their scales.”
Two New York researchers have found the hallucinogenic drug will markedly increase the rate of abnormal change in chromosomes. [Scientists] tested LSD on cell cultures from the blood of two healthy individuals … [and] also found similar abnormal changes in the blood of a schizophrenic patient who had been treated with [LSD]. The cell cultures showed a two-fold increase in chromosomal breaks over the normal rate. — Science News, April 1, 1967
Update Psychedelic-era reports that LSD damages chromosomes got lots of press but fell apart within a few years. A review in Science in 1971 concluded that ingesting moderate doses of LSD caused no detectable genetic damage. Researchers are still trying to figure out the molecular workings of the drug. Recent evidence suggests that the substance gets trapped in a pocket of the receptor for serotonin, a key chemical messenger in the brain. Its prolonged stay may explain why LSD trips can last up to a day or more (SN: 3/4/17, p. 16).
The Milky Way’s black hole may finally get its close-up.
Beginning on April 5, scientists with the Event Horizon Telescope will attempt to zoom in on a never-before-imaged realm: a black hole’s event horizon. That’s the boundary at which gravity’s pull becomes so strong that nothing can escape.
In the telescope’s cross hairs are two supermassive black holes, one at the center of the Milky Way, the other in the nearby galaxy M87. Scientists hope to capture the light emitted by a halo of gas that swirls just outside the event horizon as the black hole swallows it up.
The Event Horizon Telescope is not one telescope, but eight radio observatories linked together into a massive network that spans the globe. The new observations will be the first that include the ultrasensitive Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array in Chile’s Atacama Desert, increasing the possibility that the image will reveal new details. Astronomers will take data for five nights within a 10-day period.
This is no Polaroid picture, though — it will be months before the data have been crunched and the portrait is ready for prime time.
MINNEAPOLIS — Pesticides that kill insects can also have short-term effects on seed-eating birds. Ingesting even small amounts of imidacloprid, a common neonicotinoid pesticide, can disorient migratory white-crowned sparrows, researchers report.
Neonicotinoid pesticides were designed to be safer than traditional pesticides: toxic to insects, but comparatively harmless to other animals. But the new findings add to evidence suggesting that the widely used pesticides, which are chemically similar to nicotine, might be sending ecological ripples beyond the intended targets. In lab studies, researchers captured wild white-crowned sparrows, Zonotrichia leucophrys, that were migrating north and fed them small doses of imidacloprid for three days — the amount that birds would get from eating a few pesticide-coated wheat seeds. The birds that ate the pesticides lost weight, study coauthor Margaret Eng reported November 15 at the annual meeting of the Society of Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry North America.
And when placed in a large, inverted funnel used to study birds’ migratory orientations, the neonic-fed birds tried to fly in directions other than north. Birds that consumed sunflower oil instead showed no ill effects.
For the birds that ate pesticides, the damage was temporary — after two weeks, the birds regained normal function and body weight, Eng, a toxicologist at the University of Saskatchewan in Saskatoon, Canada, and her colleagues also reported November 9 in Scientific Reports.
The fact that the effects reverse after a period of time is “good news,” says Thomas Bean, a toxicologist at the University of Maryland in College Park who wasn’t part of the study. The short-term malaise might incentivize birds to avoid that food in the future. Bean has found that Japanese quail, Coturnix japonica, also show similar temporary behavioral effects in response to neonicotinoids. Preliminary results from field studies also appear to confirm the published lab findings. Eng’s team outfitted white-crowned sparrows in the wild with tiny tracking tags. The scientists gave the birds small amounts of pesticides, held the birds for six hours, and then released them.
When released, the birds still had traces of the chemicals in their blood plasma, the researchers reported at the November meeting. On average, there wasn’t a difference between groups in how long the birds hung around before resuming migration, but all of the birds that waited an abnormally long time had eaten neonics. Those animals’ flight paths also appeared to be slightly skewed from the route favored by the control birds.
Those analyses are preliminary, cautions Eng, and a closer look at the data could change the story.
The first known pedestrian fatality involving a fully autonomous self-driving car will most likely raise questions about the vehicles’ safety.
But “until we know what happened, we can’t really know what this incident means” for the future of self-driving vehicles, says Philip Koopman, a robotics safety expert at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh. Only when we know more about the crash, including details on the actions of the pedestrian as well as data logs from the car, can we make judgments, he says. The incident took place late Sunday night when a self-driving car operated by Uber hit and, ultimately, killed a woman crossing the street in Tempe, Ariz. Early reports indicate that a human safety driver was at the wheel, and the car was in autonomous mode. In response, Uber has suspended testing of its fleet of self-driving cars in Tempe and other cities across the nation. The National Transportation Safety Board is investigating, the New York Times reports.
The NTSB has previously conducted an investigation into the 2016 death of a man who was driving a partly autonomous Tesla, concluding that the driver ignored multiple safety warnings.
Self-driving cars already face high levels of mistrust from other motorists and potential passengers. In a AAA survey in 2017, 85 percent of baby boomers and 73 percent of millennials reported being afraid to ride in self-driving cars (SN Online: 11/21/17).
It is widely accepted by experts such as Koopman that autonomous cars will eventually be safer drivers than the average person, because the vehicles don’t get distracted, among other things. But proving that safety may be time-consuming. A 2016 study by Nidhi Kalra, an information scientist at the RAND Corporation in San Francisco, found that self-driving cars might have to drive on roads for decades to statistically prove their superior safety. When — or if — self-driving cars are proven safer than human drivers, the vehicles will still have to contend with other questions, such as whether to take steps to protect passengers or pedestrians in a collision (SN: 12/24/16, p. 34).
Cocooned within the bowels of the Earth, one mineral’s metamorphosis into another may trigger some of the deepest earthquakes ever detected.
These cryptic tremors — known as deep-focus earthquakes — are a seismic conundrum. They violently rupture at depths greater than 300 kilometers, where intense temperatures and pressures are thought to force rocks to flow smoothly. Now, experiments suggest that those same hellish conditions might also sometimes transform olivine — the primary mineral in Earth’s mantle — into the mineral wadsleyite. This mineral switch-up can destabilize the surrounding rock, enabling earthquakes at otherwise impossible depths, mineral physicist Tomohiro Ohuchi and colleagues report September 15 in Nature Communications. “It’s been a real puzzle for many scientists because earthquakes shouldn’t occur deeper than 300 kilometers,” says Ohuchi, of Ehime University in Matsuyama, Japan.
Deep-focus earthquakes usually occur at subduction zones where tectonic plates made of oceanic crust — rich in olivine — plunge toward the mantle (SN: 1/13/21). Since the quakes’ seismic waves lose strength during their long ascent to the surface, they aren’t typically dangerous. But that doesn’t mean the quakes aren’t sometimes powerful. In 2013, a magnitude 8.3 deep-focus quake struck around 609 kilometers below the Sea of Okhotsk, just off Russia’s eastern coast.
Past studies hinted that unstable olivine crystals could spawn deep quakes. But those studies tested other minerals that were similar in composition to olivine but deform at lower pressures, Ohuchi says, or the experiments didn’t strain samples enough to form faults.
He and his team decided to put olivine itself to the test. To replicate conditions deep underground, the researchers heated and squeezed olivine crystals up to nearly 1100° Celsius and 17 gigapascals. Then the team used a mechanical press to further compress the olivine slowly and monitored the deformation.
From 11 to 17 gigapascals and about 800° to 900° C, the olivine recrystallized into thin layers containing new wadsleyite and smaller olivine grains. The researchers also found tiny faults and recorded bursts of sound waves — indicative of miniature earthquakes. Along subducting tectonic plates, many of these thin layers grow and link to form weak regions in the rock, upon which faults and earthquakes can initiate, the researchers suggest.
“The transformation really wreaks havoc with the [rock’s] mechanical stability,” says geophysicist Pamela Burnley of the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, who was not involved in the research. The findings help confirm that olivine transformations are enabling deep-focus earthquakes, she says.
Next, Ohuchi’s team plans to experiment on olivine at even higher pressures to gain insights into the mineral’s deformation at greater depths.
Potential hints of weird new particles in a dark matter detector have evaporated with new data.
Following up on a beguiling result from its predecessor experiment, the XENONnT experiment found no sign of extra blips that could point to new particles or another phenomenon, scientists report July 22 in Vienna at the International Conference on Identification of Dark Matter.
The XENONnT experiment (pronounced “xenon n ton”), at the Gran Sasso National Laboratory in Italy, uses 5.9 metric tons of liquid xenon to search for dark matter, an elusive substance that so far has been seen only via its gravitational effects in the cosmos (SN: 10/25/16). The detector is designed to look for dark matter particles crashing into xenon atoms’ nuclei, causing them to recoil. But the detector can also spot recoiling electrons. In 2020, a smaller version of the experiment, called XENON1T, reported greater-than-expected numbers of those ricocheting electrons (SN: 6/17/20). “This caused a lot of stir when we published it,” says physicist Rafael Lang of Purdue University in West Lafayette, Ind.
That surplus, some scientists suggested, could have been explained by some unexpected new physics, such as hypothetical lightweight particles that may originate from the sun called solar axions. But the excess wasn’t large enough to be convincing, so more data were needed.
In the new analysis, which uses about 97 days of data, XENONnT spotted as many electron recoils as expected due to known particle interactions, the researchers also reported in a paper posted on the experiment’s website. Scientists don’t know what caused the extra detections in the previous experiment, but it’s possible it was merely a statistical fluke, Lang says. Or it may have been due to small amounts of tritium — hydrogen atoms with two neutrons in their nuclei — in the detector.
With the red herring out of the way, XENONnT researchers are now combing through their data for nuclear recoils, in hopes of detecting the real deal.
It may soon be too late to end the global monkeypox epidemic.
“We are losing the window to be able to contain this outbreak,” Boghuma Titanji, an infectious diseases doctor and virologist at Emory University in Atlanta said July 21 during a seminar sponsored by the Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs.
On July 23, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director of the World Health Organization declared the global outbreak of monkeypox is a public health emergency of international concern, the organization’s highest state of alert. The WHO committee evaluating the matter was split on whether the outbreak constitutes an international emergency, but Ghebreyesus decided that enough conditions were met to warrant the designation. Monkeypox has infected more than 15,700 people since the beginning of May, according to Global.health (SN: 5/26/22). More than 2,800 cases have been reported in the United States as of July 22, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report.
“Although I am declaring a public health emergency of international concern, for the moment this is an outbreak that is concentrated among men who have sex with men, especially those with multiple sexual partners,” Ghebreyesus said in a statement. “That means that this is an outbreak that can be stopped with the right strategies in the right groups.”
Monkeypox has caused outbreaks for decades in some parts of Africa, Anne Rimoin, an epidemiologist at the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health, said at the Harvard seminar. But the virus “has been neglected by the global health community.” Monkeypox “has been giving us warning signals” for years in Congo, Nigeria and other parts of West Africa, but has only gotten attention once it recently started causing cases outside of the continent, Rimoin said.
There has been no concerted global effort to contain the virus, which is related to smallpox, Titanji said. Each country has been left to set its own policies.
That has led to disparities. Well-resourced countries have had at least some access to testing, vaccines and medications, which may help limit the spread of the virus or the severity of the disease. Resource-poor nations often lack that access, leaving them with limited ability to track or control the virus. Continued spread of monkeypox in resource-poor countries could leave places that do manage to contain an initial outbreak vulnerable to reintroductions, Jay K. Varma, director of the Cornell Center for Pandemic Prevention and Response in New York City, said in the seminar. The WHO emergency declaration may lead to a more concerted international effort that could make more resources available to contain the spread of the virus.
Even for the wealthiest countries, containing the outbreak is a challenge. Questions abound about how the virus is transmitted, and whether vaccines and treatments — when people can get them — can halt its spread. Even diagnosing the disease can be tricky, with testing often hard to come by and missed diagnoses potentially leading to more cases.
The vast majority of monkeypox cases in the global outbreak have been among men who have sex with men. Of 528 people infected with monkeypox in 16 countries, 98 percent identified as gay or bisexual men, researchers report July 21 in the New England Journal of Medicine.
In some countries with outbreaks, “gay men are criminalized,” Kai Kupferschmidt, a correspondent for Science magazine, said during the seminar. In those countries, “people cannot access good information to help them keep from getting infected and cannot access health care if they do get infected. In these countries, it becomes really difficult to even see the problem,” he said.
Ghebreyesus urged all countries to “work closely with communities of men who have sex with men, to design and deliver effective information and services, and to adopt measures that protect the health, human rights and dignity of affected communities. Stigma and discrimination can be as dangerous as any virus,” he said in a statement.
Doctors might also miss cases of monkeypox because of the unusual presentation of the illness in this outbreak, compared with earlier outbreaks. For instance, in the NEJM study, only a quarter of patients had monkeypox lesions on their faces and only 10 percent had the sores on their palms or soles of their feet. Those body parts have been among some of the most affected in other outbreaks.
Instead, 73 percent of people in the study had lesions in the anal and genital regions and 55 percent on the trunk, arms or legs. Some people also had lesions in their mouths and throats. Most of the people in the study had fewer than 10 lesions, with 54 people having only a single lesion on their genitals, making confusion with herpes or syphilis possible, even easy.
Seventy people in the study were admitted to the hospital. Of those, 21 were hospitalized because of pain, mostly severe rectal pain. Others had eye lesions, kidney damage, inflammation of the heart or throat swelling that prevented them from taking in liquids.
Those complications fit with what health officials across the United States have been seeing. “While mortality appears very low, which is great, morbidity has been much higher than any of us expected,” Mary Foote, the medical director of the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, said July 14 in a news briefing sponsored by the Infectious Diseases Society of America.
“A lot of people with this infection are really suffering, and some may be at risk of permanent damage and scarring. We see many people with symptoms so severe that they are unable to go to the bathroom, urinate or eat without excruciating pain,” Foote said.
A small number of women and children have also gotten monkeypox in the outbreak. Two children in the United States have been diagnosed with monkeypox, CDC director Rochelle Walensky said July 22 in an interview with the Washington Post. Both children were social contacts of men that have sex with men, she said.
A child in the Netherlands who had no contact with anyone known to be infected with the virus also got monkeypox, researchers report July 21 in Eurosurveillance. His case raises the possibility that monkeypox may be spreading undetected more broadly in communities than realized.
“I don’t think it’s surprising that we are occasionally going to see cases in individuals who are not gay, bisexual or other men who have sex with men. The social networks we have as humans mean we have contact with a lot of different people,” Jennifer McQuiston, deputy director of the CDC’s Division of High Consequence Pathogens and Pathology said July 22 during a White House news briefing.
Exactly how the child in the Netherlands became infected is a matter of speculation. Monkeypox typically spreads among people through close contact with infected people or with clothing, bedding or towels used by people with the disease. Examination of viral DNA showed that the boy isn’t connected to any of the known cases in the Netherlands. He traveled to Turkey in June and may have gotten infected there or while traveling.
The boy has very low levels of IgA antibodies, which patrol mucous membranes and help prevent infections there. Low levels of the antibodies could make him vulnerable to respiratory infections. People can get infected with monkeypox through droplets given off by infected people during close face-to-face interactions, such as close conversation, kissing or during medical exams. But patterns of infection clearly indicate that monkeypox isn’t airborne the way COVID-19 or other respiratory viruses are, Kupferschmidt said.
Details of how monkeypox spreads are still unknown. For instance, researchers don’t know whether the virus can be transmitted through semen as a sexually transmitted disease. Researchers have found evidence of viral DNA in semen, saliva, urine and feces, but that may just be inactive remnants of the virus. So far, no researchers have reported finding infectious virus in genital body fluids that might be exchanged during sex. Also unknown is whether getting infected through mucous membranes during sexual contact would shield against catching the virus later, Rimoin said.
Scientists are questioning whether the monkeypox virus has changed or whether it has simply found a niche social-sexual network among gay and bisexual men that may enable the virus to spread more efficiently, Titanji said. It may be that there are different transmission patterns in historically affected countries and newly affected countries that require different strategies to stop the spread, she said.
Researchers also need to do good studies to figure out how well vaccines and therapeutics work and under what circumstances, Rimoin said. WHO’s emergency declaration includes recommendations for increasing testing and surveillance and for seeding up research on vaccines, treatments and other virus containment measures.
One thing is clear, Rimoin said. “We’re giving this virus room to run like it never has before.” People have passed the buck, leaving others to work out the problem of monkeypox, she said. But now, “it’s everybody’s problem to solve.”
