Concerns about arsenic in food have grown in recent years with high concentrations found in rice, fruit juices and even baby food. A naturally occurring element found in soil and water, arsenic has also been used as a pesticide, and is taken up by plants and can then enter the food chain. The issue has led to scientific work to investigate how plants deal with arsenic and research has identified that some plants are able to pump out the poison, but not how they do this.
Just a few days ago, the Chinese Academy of Sciences hosted a small workshop which involved scientists from around the world that work on a device called the Expendable Bathythermograph, or XBT for short. The obscurity of the conference speaks volumes; it didn't get much, if any, press attention. This fact tells a lot about the host nation.
Wetlands are among the most productive ecosystems on Earth. Yet with increasing urbanization and agricultural expansion, wetlands around the globe are in danger. Better mapping of wetlands worldwide will help in their protection.But compiling globe-spanning maps of wetlands is impeded by the dramatic diversity and evolving dynamics of wetlands, and by myriad difficulties in doing field work. To develop a better model, Gong Peng and other scientists at the State Key Laboratory of Remote Sensing Science, Chinese Academy of Sciences, in Beijing incorporated hydrologic, climatic and topographic data sets into a global wetland suitability map; this new map also matches individual wetland sites with local water table depth.
China and Africa on Thursday enhanced their scientific collaboration with the launch of Sino- Africa Joint Research Centre at a local university. Kenya's Deputy President William Ruto, the Charge d'affaires of the Chinese Embassy in Kenya Tian Lin, and the Deputy Director General of the Bureau of International Cooperation of Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) Qiu Huasheng attended the ground breaking ceremony of the Sino-Africa Joint Research Centre.
EURAXESS country representative Andrea Strelcova had an interview with Prof. BAI Yuhong who is the director of Editorial Department of CIOMP. The interview was published in the EURAXESS Links China Newsletter on Oct.31, 2014. The interview demonstrated the work of CIOMP female staff as well as provided a window to display CIOMP and its English journal Light: Science & Application to the outside world, which is a good opportunity to bridge CIOMP and researchers abroad to cooperate in the future.
Chinese botanists have found that 515 invasive plant species have taken up residence in the country, covering both inland and coastal areas. The species, more than half of which are native to South and North America, are seen in all of China's provincial-level regions and even in national nature reserves, Chen Xiaoya, director of Shanghai Chenshan Plant Science Research Center under the Chinese Academy of Sciences, told Xinhua on Sunday.
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