BEIJING, Sept. 27 (Xinhuanet) – The following is a summary of published science and technology news from China.
DIGITAL CIVILIZATION
The Wuzhen Summit of the World Internet Conference 2021 brings people from all over the world together to share knowledge about building a digital civilization through online and offline events.
The summit, which began on Sunday in Wuzhen in the east Chinese province of Zhejiang, comprises 20 sub-forums under the theme “Towards a new era of digital civilization – building a community with a common future in cyberspace”.
The sub-forums should provide insights into data governance, the rule of law on the internet, social responsibility of tech companies, global response to COVID-19 and international communication as well as other topics of public concern through discussions on emerging internet technology trends such as 5G, artificial intelligence, open source Ecology, next generation internet, data and algorithms.
GRAVITATION WAVE
A gravitational wave research center of the China National Space Administration (CNSA) was inaugurated on Sunday in Zhuhai City, Guangdong Province.
According to CNSA, the Sun Yat-sen University’s Zhuhai Gravitational Wave Research Center will develop a number of experimental satellite platforms and payloads to aid China’s space gravitational wave detection.
The Tianqin program, which means “Harp in the Sky”, was launched in 2015 by Sun Yat-sen University. It will consist of three satellites that will form an equilateral triangle around the earth by 2035. Like a harp in space, the “harp strings” are plucked by all incoming gravitational waves.
MICROBIAL DIVERSITY
Chinese researchers have found that microbial diversity is critical to ecological balance and stability in arid and extremely arid regions, according to a research article recently published in the journal Nature Communications.
Since 2013, researchers at the School of Life Sciences at Lanzhou University in northwest China’s Gansu Province have studied several soil function characteristics in 130 arid areas along a 4,000 km long drought gradient in northern China. They had collected more than 20,000 samples and data.
The results showed a strong positive correlation between the abundance of plant species and soil multifunctionality in less arid regions, while microbial diversity, especially of fungi, in arid and extremely arid regions is positively associated with multifunctionality.
