Scientists have long grappled with a perplexing question: in the early universe, new stars appeared with dazzling frequency, yet today, star formation has clearly slowed. Now, a new study led by Chinese scientists is offering fresh and crucial clues to help unravel this cosmic mystery.

The Institute of Automation under the Chinese Academy of Sciences recently launched an international academic journal titled Data Research and Applications (DRA), which is dedicated to the open sharing of scientific research data.

The latest version of China's first large language model dedicated to the chemical industry was released on Monday, marking a significant leap from knowledge acquisition to intelligent execution of chemical tasks, and providing new support for managing complex chemical operations, said northeast China's Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics (DICP) under the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

An ice-rock avalanche originating from a high-mountain glacier in Nepal has been identified as the cause of a devastating mudslide that struck Gyirong Port in southwest China's Xizang Autonomous Region on Aug. 26, local authorities said Sunday.

Researchers have completed a laser communications test between Earth and the Moon, successfully verifying two-way high-speed laser link capabilities in orbit, the Technology and Engineering Center for Space Utilization (CSU) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences said on Friday.

An unusual mushroom first found growing on an apple is moving closer to mass production, as Chinese researchers seek to turn the chance discovery into a new food product for supermarket shelves. The story began two years ago, when a resident surnamed Deng in Zhejiang province found a white mushroom growing from an apple at her home. The unusual find caught the attention of Xu Rongju, a doctoral student at the Kunming institute, who asked her to send the apple to Kunming for further study.

The catastrophic mudslide that struck the China-Nepal border on August 26 was triggered by a large-scale glacier collapse in Nepal with a close link to the impacts of global climate change, said Amodmani Dixit, a senior Nepalese geologist and seismologist, in an interview, calling for deeper practical cooperation of the two countries to address climate-related disasters in the Himalayas.

The Xinjiang Institute of Ecology and Geography shared field-tested green technologies and offering practical solutions for other countries facing land degradation.

An international team led by Chinese researchers has uncovered an early insect species dating back roughly 324 million years that displays both aquatic and terrestrial features, providing direct evidence of how insects gradually made the transition from water to land.

A system referred to as the "super AI babysitter" is now being used to monitor the endangered Yangtze finless porpoise in Wuhan, Hubei province. The AI system uses an algorithm to identify the daily activities and mother-baby interactions of the species via video. Data from the images is compiled into standardized growth profiles that map out what care each animal needs.

Under the Shanghai Cooperation Organization's green agenda, Chinese and Uzbek scientists have joined forces to restore the ecosystem. Researchers from Xinjiang — home to over 40% of China's saline-alkali land — have developed salt-tolerant plants and water-saving technologies. Since 2018, they have sent more than 1.3 tons of seeds and drip-irrigation systems to Uzbekistan's parched basin. The results include approximately 2 million hectares of revegetated land, weakened dust storms, and cotton yields tripled while water consumption fell by 40% to 50%.

​The 17th UN Conference to Combat Desertification is underway, and scientists are pushing for urgent global action. On the sidelines, the Alliance of National and International Science Organizations for the Belt and Road Regions, known as ANSO, collaborated with the Xinjiang Institute of Ecology and Geography of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Mongolian Academy of Sciences (MAS) and experts and partners, has released a major initiative targeting fragile dryland ecosystems.

A new global study has found that forest trees do not change their internal workings much when faced with long periods of drought, suggesting that such trees may not be able to adjust to drier conditions as easily as some scientists had hoped. This finding offers a robust scientific basis for forest conservation efforts.

Chinese scientists have built a tiny robot that swims like a manta ray -- a large, flat fish that glides through the ocean with wing-like fins -- and it is powered by real frog muscle. Their findings were recently published in the international journal Advanced Functional Materials.

A new species of impatiens has been discovered in the Damingshan National Nature Reserve in south China's Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, adding new evidence to the study of plant evolution and biodiversity conservation.

Chinese researchers recently released a rock glacier dataset for the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau in western China, providing not only baseline data for climate change research, but also a reference for engineering construction and disaster prevention.

A temporary reversal in Antarctic ice-sheet mass loss from July 2021 to April 2023 has been traced to multiyear warming in the tropical warm pool spanning the western Pacific and eastern Indian oceans, according to a study by researchers from China, the United States, Japan, Belgium and Hungary.

China's growing radio astronomy capacity, led by the Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical radio Telescope (FAST), can help scientists tackle some of astronomy's biggest unanswered questions, renowned Polish astronomer Aleksander Wolszczan has said.