Cutting Edge Fusion Reactor

Barely a year after the Korea Superconducting Tokamak Advanced Research (KSTAR) broke one record for fusion, it's smashed it again, this time holding onto a churning whirlpool of 100 million degree plasma for a whole 30 seconds.


Though it's well short of the 101 seconds set by the Chinese Academy of Sciences earlier this year, it remains a significant milestone on the road to cleaner, near-limitless energy that could transform how we power our society.

Here's why it's so important.

Deep inside stars like our Sun, gravity and high temperatures give simple elements such as hydrogen the energy they need to overcome the repulsion of their nuclei and force them to squeeze into bigger atoms.

The result of this nuclear fusion is heavier elements, a few stray neutrons, and a whole lot of heat.

On Earth, scooping together a Sun's worth of gravity isn't possible. But we can achieve similar results by swapping the crunch of gravity for some extra punch in the form of heat. At some point we can even squeeze enough heat from the fusing atoms to keep the nuclear reaction going, with enough left over to siphon off for power.

That's the theory. But getting that insanely hot plasma to stay in place long enough to tap into its heat supply for a sustained, reliable source of energy requires some clever thinking.  TO READ MORE, CLICK HERE...

Ancient Genetics

A joint research team led by Prof. FU Qiaomei from the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology (IVPP) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences sequenced the ancient genomes of 31 individuals from southern East Asia, thus unveiling a missing piece of human prehistory.

The study was recently published in the journal Cell.

Prof. FU’s team used DNA capture techniques to retrieve ancient DNA from Guangxi and Fujian, two provincial-level regions in southern China. 

They sequenced genome-wide DNA from 31 individuals dating back 11,747 to 194 years ago. Of these, two date back to more than 10,000 years ago, making them the oldest genomes sampled from southern East Asia and Southeast Asia to date.

Previous ancient DNA studies showed that ~8,000-4,000-year-old Southeast Asian Hòabìnhian hunter-gatherers possessed deeply divergent Asian ancestry, whereas the first Southeast Asian farmers beginning ~4,000 years ago show a mixture of ancestry associated with Hòabìnhian hunter-gatherers and present-day southern Chinese populations. 

In coastal southern China, ~9,000-4,000-year-old individuals from Fujian province show ancestry not as deeply divergent as the Hòabìnhian.  READ MORE

Dragon Man

Chinese researchers have unveiled an ancient skull that could belong to a completely new species of human.  The team has claimed it is our closest evolutionary relative among known species of ancient human, such as Neanderthals and Homo erectus.

Nicknamed "Dragon Man", the specimen represents a human group that lived in East Asia at least 146,000 years ago.  It was found at Harbin, north-east China, in 1933, but only came to the attention of scientists more recently.

An analysis of the skull has been published in the journal The Innovation.  One of the UK's leading experts in human evolution, Prof Chris Stringer from London's Natural History Museum, was a member of the research team.

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• Face of long-lost human relative unveiled

The researchers say the discovery has the potential to rewrite the story of human evolution. Their analysis suggests that it is more closely related to Homo sapiens than it is to Neanderthals.

They have assigned the specimen to a new species: Homo longi, from the Chinese word "long", meaning dragon.  "We found our long-lost sister lineage," said Xijun Ni, a professor at the Chinese Academy of Sciences and Hebei GEO University in Shijiazhuang.

He told BBC News: "I said 'oh my gosh!' I could not believe that it was so well preserved, you can see all the details. It is a really amazing find!"  The skull is huge compared with the average skulls belonging to other human species, including our own. Its brain was comparable in size to those from our species.

Dragon Man had large, almost square eye sockets, thick brow ridges, a wide mouth, and oversized teeth. Prof Qiang Ji, from Hebei GEO University, says it is one of the most complete early human skull fossils ever discovered.  TO READ MORE, CLICK HERE...