Chinese tech company EHang Holdings Limited has begun to sell its self-developed unmanned electric vertical take-off and landing (eVTOL) aircraft EH216-S on Chinese e-commerce platform Taobao at a cost of 2.39 million yuan ($332,032) per unit, the Global Times observed on Monday.
He Tianxing, a deputy president of EHang, told the Global Times that it was not only for online sale, but also aimed to inform the public the development potential of low-altitude economy in the future.
The EH216-S last December obtained the standard Airworthiness Certificate from the Civil Aviation Administration of China, which marked the eVTOL aircraft becoming eligible for commercial operation.
EH216-S Passenger-Carrying UAV System Obtains Standard Airworthiness Certificate from CAAC and the Certified Aircraft Delivered to Customer in Guangzhou.
Aside from its main selling points including its small size, easy take-off, landing and re-charge ability, as well as quietness, EHang made multiple backups for core parts such as propellers, electric engine, flying control system and batteries.
The Government Work Report released during the recently concluded two sessions earlier this month stated that China will foster new growth engines in fields such as biomanufacturing, commercial spaceflight, and the low-altitude economy.
Analysts pointed out that low-altitude transport can help reduce waste once ground transport has reached its limit in megacities.
Following the announced policy, many cities have taken measures to develop the sector. As the country's first trial province for low-altitude air space management, Southwest China's Sichuan Province simplified low-altitude flight test applications. East China's Anhui also crafted rules to develop low-altitude economy, stating to accelerate the development of the industry in Hefei and Wuhu, two major cities there.
In addition, Shenzhen city in South China's Guangdong Province has published a set of documents and government regulations supporting the development of the low-altitude economy in the province, according to Xinhua News Agency.
As of 2025, the output value of low-altitude economy in China is estimated to reach 3 to 5 trillion yuan, according to a recent survey by the International Digital Economy Academy.
In his first public appearance before media since taking his new post, Wu Qing, head of China's securities watchdog, outlined on Wednesday his plan to ensure the stable development of the capital market, the world's second largest, and vowed to beef up institutional buildup and to better ensure investor protection.
Chinese analysts noted that the institutional and holistic approach outlined by the head of China Securities Regulatory Commission (CSRC), who takes a harsh tone on illegal behavior while being considerate to small investors, is a pragmatic approach that suits the market reality, and is set to boost market confidence, stabilize expectations and shore up the overall investment value of China's capital market.
A number of delegates to the ongoing two sessions also contributed their thoughts on the topic, which is under the global media spotlight and has become a target for Western doomsayers in recent weeks.
Wu's appearance at the press conference, held during the ongoing two sessions, along with several other top government officials in charge of China's economic and trade affairs, is one of the highlights of the political event, as ensuring the stability of the capital market was mentioned in the Government Work Report for the first time following a period of turbulence in the Chinese A-share market ahead of China's Spring Festival holidays in February.
The Government Work Report, delivered by Chinese Premier Li Qiang on Tuesday at the opening meeting of the second session of the 14th National People's Congress, set a growth target of around 5 percent for the country's economy in 2024.
Notably, the report pointed out that "the underlying stability of the capital market should be enhanced."
Giving his insight on how to ensure the stable development of the capital market, Wu the CSRC chairman, who is one day short of completing his first month in the new post, said enhancing institutional buildup and attracting long-term investment into the market will be among the measures to be taken to accomplish the task outlined in the Government Work Report.
Acknowledging that market operation has its own rules and should not be interfered with under normal circumstances, Wu told the press conference that the regulator "won't hesitate to act to correct extreme situations when the market seriously deviates from its fundamentals, irrational and violent fluctuations occur, liquidity is exhausted, market panic occurs and serious draining of confidence appears."
The first-time ever mentioning of enhancing the underlying stability of the capital market sends a strong signal of China's commitment to building itself into a financial powerhouse and sets the tone for the future development in related fields, delegates to the two sessions said.
Outside of the two sessions venue, Chinese scholars also shared their views on what Wu had said at the press conference.
Dong Shaopeng, a senior research fellow at the Chongyang Institute for Financial Studies at Renmin University of China, told the Global Times on Wednesday that the announcement made by CSRC chairman Wu, with an emphasis on both strength and toughness, laid out a clear-cut vision on improving the construction of fundamental institutions and better regulating the capital market, and is a "pragmatic approach in line with reality."
"The dual emphasis by the CSRC on strengthening regulation and bolstering investor protection are set to improve the stability and quality of the Chinese capital market," Dong noted.
Dong said that the emphasis on protecting small and medium-sized investors addresses the root of the problem facing China's capital market, as their ranks formed the ultimate source of long-term funding for the Chinese A-share market.
The stock market has drawn much attention during this year's two sessions, with members, legislators, and officials putting forward practical and broad-perspective suggestions and motions on stabilizing the capital market, Xi Junyang, a professor at the Shanghai University of Finance and Economics, told the Global Times on Wednesday.
Wu's remarks at the press conference will be heard by both domestic and overseas investors, Xi Junyang noted. "And his remarks, including protecting investors' interests, lifting the quality of listed companies, and implementing a stricter delisting system, are conducive to boosting investor confidence and the overall investment value of China's capital market."
"We can expect proactive measures to be announced in these areas," Xi Junyang said.
The Government Work Report set priorities and the direction for this year's economic work, and also offers much-needed reassurance to the capital market, Yang Delong, chief economist at Shenzhen-based First Seafront Fund Management Co, told the Global Times on Wednesday.
"The stock market is a barometer of a country's economy," Yang said. "Stepped-up macro-policies and stable economic recovery will contribute to a rebound in the A-share market."
A note of reassurance
With the sound development of the capital market a matter of vital concern, delegates to the two sessions are also contributing their ideas, with some pointing out that the Government Work Report has brought "a certain sense of reassurance to the market."
"The Chinese equities market was on a turbulent ride at the beginning of 2024, so the statement in the Government Work Report gives investors a sense of encouragement as well as a certain sense of reassurance," Fang Jie, a member of the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) and president of Hubei University of Economics, told the Global Times on Wednesday.
There is a lot of work to be done to improve the underlying stability of the capital market and ensure its sound development, and first and foremost is to continue shoring up the macroeconomy, which provides a foundation for market performance, noted Fang, who has also served as the deputy secretary general of Wuhan government in Central China's Hubei Province and the director of the Wuhan Financial Work Bureau.
Chinese financial authorities also need to further carry out sweeping market reforms, such as creating more innovative capital market products to help release market vigor, and improve the systemic design of the capital market through measures such as increasing the transparency of listed companies' information disclosure and carrying out holistic supervision over the A-share market, Fang said.
Yang Chengzhang, a member of the National Committee of the CPPCC and chief economist with Shenwan Hongyuan Securities, told the Global Times on Wednesday that in order to ensure the stable development of the capital market, the government should also continuously put efforts and resources into stemming risks in the property sector, local debt and small and medium-sized financial institutions, as these three sectors are major sources of concern for capital market investors in 2023.
The Government Work Report's call to tackle risks in key areas and beef up security in key sectors will help ease excessive worries and curb the pessimistic outlook in the market, according to Yang Chengzhang.
In order to promote the sound development of the capital market and protect investors' rights and interests, the CSRC has held symposiums to solicit opinions and suggestions on improving the basic system of the capital market, strengthening the protection of the rule of law, and it has also paid visits to listed firms to help them address difficulties to achieve high-quality development.
Since Wu took office, the Chinese A-share market has recovered much of its losses from the recent cycle, finishing at 3,039.93 points at the Shanghai bourse and 9,395.65 points at the Shenzhen bourse on Wednesday.
Following robust travel and tourism activity during the eight-day Spring Festival holidays, the Chinese economy is off to a good start.
Preliminary economic indicators suggest that China is poised to achieve a good start in the first quarter, Zheng Shanjie, head of the National Development and Reform Commission, the country's top economic planner, said at the same press conference.
Zheng revealed that industrial power use grew at 9.7 percent in the January-February period, exports are likely to grow 10 percent year-on-year, indicating robustness in the economy.
Protecting the legitimate rights and interests of investors, especially small and medium-sized consumers, is the core task of the China Securities Regulatory Commission (CSRC), Wu Qing, chairman of the CSRC, China's top securities regulator, said in his first appearance before media during the ongoing two sessions.
"In a market like ours, where small- and medium-sized investors account for the vast majority, protecting the legitimate rights and interests of investors is the core task of the CSRC," Wu said.
Ensuring fairness and openness should be the most important principle for market regulators, according to Wu.
Corporate IPOs should never be focused on extracting money from the market and fraud should be resolutely cracked down upon, said Wu.
Wu vowed to aggressively enhance regulatory oversight on companies seeking IPOs and intermediaries in the IPO process and fix loopholes on illegal selling of shares by shareholders.
In Wu's first open appearance to media since he took his new post, Wu said he is still one day short of completing his first month's tenure at the post that oversees the world's second largest capital market.
Wu joked that "I am still learning and am a rookie," adding that he has been listening to ideas from all sides.
Key work for the CSRC will include enhancing regulatory oversight with severe punishment for violators in accordance with the law and rigorously manage the regulatory team, Wu said.
The regulator won't hesitate to act to correct extreme situations when the market seriously deviates from its fundamentals, irrational and violent fluctuations occur, liquidity is exhausted, market panic occurs and serious draining of confidence appears, Wu said.
Wu was appointed as a new chief of the country's top securities regulatory agency on February 7 amid a whirlwind week in the Chinese stock market, marked by swift efforts by the Chinese government to tackle volatility.
Since he took office, the Chinese A share market has recovered much of its recent losses, finishing at 3,039.93 points at the Shanghai bourse and 9,395.65 points at Shenzhen bourse on Wednesday.
In order to promote the healthy development of the capital market and protect investors' rights and interests, the CSRC has held symposiums to listen to opinions and suggestions on improving the basic system of the capital market, strengthening the protection of the rule of law and visiting listed firms to help them address difficulties to achieve high-quality development.
Back in 2004, archaeologists excavated two pits in northern China that looked a lot like homebrewing operations. Constructed between 3400 and 2900 B.C. by the Yangshao culture, each pit contained the remnants of a stove and assorted funnels, pots and amphorae.
Now, Jiajing Wang of Stanford University and colleagues report that the pottery shards contain residue and other evidence of starches, chemicals and plant minerals from specific fermented grains. The ancient beer recipe included broomcorn millet, barley, Job’s tears and tubers — that probably gave the beer a sweet flavor, the team writes May 23 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
The findings predate the earliest evidence of barley in China by around 1,000 years. Beer may have been consumed at social gatherings, and brewing, not agriculture, spurred the introduction of barley to China, the researchers argue.
Climate commotion In “Changing Climate: 10 years after An Inconvenient Truth” (SN: 4/16/16, p. 22), Thomas Sumner reported on the progress scientists have made revising forecasts of the far-reaching effects of climate change — from extreme temperatures and sea level rise to severe drought and human conflict — in the decade since the Oscar-winning film’s release.
Reader response to the article was overwhelming, with hundreds of online comments. Some people enjoyed the in-depth look at climate change science, while others expressed skepticism about humans’ contribution to climate change and a general distrust of climate scientists.
“One of my goals for this article was to highlight that climate change research has itself changed over the last decade,” Sumner says. Scientists are still working to understand how the consequences of atmospheric warming will play out in the coming centuries. But one big message from the last decade of research is that the fundamentals have held up: Natural variability exists, says Sumner, but human activities are largely responsible for the current warming trend. “The question now is what impact will human contributions have down the line and what should we do to prevent and mitigate those effects,” he says. Plastic feast Sarah Schwartz wrote about the discovery of a microbe, Ideonella sakaiensis, that chows down on a hard-to-degrade polymer in “This microbe makes a meal of plastic” (SN: 4/16/16, p. 5). Online commenters were amazed by this new plastic-gobbling organism. “This is great news,” Dan said. “Our world would be doomed if there wasn’t a microbe able to do this.” Chuckawobbly wondered how long it takes I. sakaiensis to digest the plastic. And Jean Harlow was concerned about the potential by-products of worldwide plastic digestion. “The waste product would be a significant amount … of what?” she asked.
Researchers observed that I. sakaiensis almost completely degraded a thin film of polyethylene terephthalate, or PET, after six weeks in a laboratory. But when extracted from the bacterium, the proteins used to break down plastic begin working in about 18 hours.
I. sakaiensisappears to break PET into smaller molecules, like amino acids and carbon dioxide, says coauthor Kenji Miyamoto of Keio University in Yokohama, Japan. But it would probably be hard for the microbe to break down plastic in the outdoors because of its specific growth requirements, he says. Miyamoto envisions that it could be possible to use the specialized proteins in a closed environment to break PET down into molecules such as terephthalic acid— one of the plastic’s main building blocks, which seems benign in the environment.
Prairie dog predators Herbivorous prairie dog mothers routinely kill baby ground squirrels that encroach on their territories, researchers found. Competition for resources may be a contributing factor to the killings, Susan Milius reported in “Killer prairie dogs make good moms” (SN: 4/16/16, p. 14).
One reader had other ideas. Audrey Boag wondered if prairie dog moms kill ground squirrels to protect their pups from predation or from diseases carried by the squirrels. “In either case, minimizing the number of ground squirrels would pay in lifetime biological fitness,” she wrote.
“We never observed a ground squirrel kill or injure an adult or juvenile prairie dog,” says study coauthor John Hoogland. “Perhaps such attacks sometimes occur underground.” Hoogland notes that the majority of ground squirrels killed by prairie dogs were juveniles, which are too small to be a threat.
One threat, however, is a species of disease-carrying flea that infests both animals. Hoogland found that prairie dog killers and their offspring had fewer fleas than nonkillers and their offspring, “but this trend was not significant,” he says.
Microscopy Masters asks one thing of citizen scientists: Find proteins in electron microscope images. The task will probably give participants new appreciation for biologists who decipher the structures of teeny, tiny molecules. It’s not easy.
The goal of the online project, created by researchers at the Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, Calif., is to improve biologists’ ability to construct detailed, three-dimensional models of proteins.
Using cryo-electron microscopy — which involves freezing, then imaging a sample — the researchers have taken thousands of photos of their current target, a protein complex involved in breaking down other, unwanted proteins. Each image contains 10 to 100 copies of the complex. It takes that many images to capture a protein from every angle. Once the 2-D images are stitched together, researchers can reconstruct the protein’s globular, 3-D shape at near-atomic resolution. Microscopy Masters enlists volunteers to do the necessary first step of combing through the photos to find the protein molecules — a time-consuming job that people do better than computers. The task may feel daunting, as each black-and-white image resembles a fuzzy TV screen. Only some of the dark smudges in any given image will be molecules of interest; others will be actual smudges or globs of proteins too jumbled to be of use. Fortunately, a practice tutorial offers a crash course in protein identification. And each image will be classified by many users, alleviating some of the pressure of worrying about marking the wrong thing.
Data from the project will help researchers improve protein-picking computer algorithms, says project member Jacob Bruggemann. That way computers can take over the painstaking work.
SAN DIEGO — On some planets that orbit whirling stars, spring and autumn might be the best time to hit the beach, whereas summer offers a midyear respite from sweltering heat. These worlds’ orbits can take them over regions of their sun that radiate wildly different amounts of heat.
“Seasons on a planet like this must be really strange,” says Jonathon Ahlers, a graduate student at the University of Idaho in Moscow, who presented his findings June 15 at a meeting of the American Astronomical Society. Some stars spin so fast that they bulge in the middle. That bulge pushes the equator away from the blazing core, making it much cooler than the poles. A fraction of these stars also host planets that travel on cockeyed orbits, which take these worlds alternately over the poles and equator of their sun.
Ahlers developed computer simulations to see how the differences in solar energy combined with the tilted orbits might affect a planet’s seasons. The outcome depends on how the planet’s axis is tipped relative to its orbit. For a world whose north and south poles periodically face the star’s equator, “you get a cooler summer than normal and an extremely cold winter, but spring and autumn can be hotter than summer,” says Ahlers. “You get two distinct hottest times of the year.”
How that plays out depends on how the planet is built: an atmosphere or oceans could mitigate climate extremes. Ahlers has yet to work out those details. “It’s doing a lot,” he says, “but what, I don’t really know yet.”
No, that’s not the sun. It’s Jupiter, ablaze with infrared light in new images taken in preparation for the Juno spacecraft’s July 4 arrival at the king of the planets. This image shows how heat welling up from deep within the planet gets absorbed by gas in the atmosphere, which can tell researchers how stuff moves around beneath Jupiter’s thick blanket of clouds. Juno won’t look for infrared light, but it will (among other things) measure how much microwave radiation is being blocked by water lurking within Jupiter’s atmosphere.
The map is pieced together from multiple images obtained at the Very Large Telescope in Chile over the past several months. Ground-based images such as these will help researchers understand what Juno is peering at each time it swoops in close to Jupiter’s clouds over the next 20 months.
Normally harmless mouth bacteria can be a bad influence. When they pal around with tooth- and gum-attacking microbes, they can help those pathogens kick into high gear. This teamwork lets infections spread more easily — but also could offer a target for new treatments, scientists report online June 28 in mBio.
The way that bacteria interact with each other to cause disease is still poorly understood, says study coauthor Apollo Stacy, of the University of Texas at Austin. Lab work often focuses on individual bacteria species, but managing the communities of microbes found in living organisms is a more complex task. The new finding suggests that bacteria can change their metabolism in response to the presence or absence of other bacteria. A benign species of bacteria excretes oxygen, allowing the second species to switch to a more efficient aerobic means of energy production and helping it become a more robust pathogen. This is the first time a normally harmless mouth bacterium has been shown to change a pathogen’s metabolism to make the microbe more dangerous, says Vanessa Sperandio, a microbiologist at University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas who wasn’t part of the study. Similar interactions have been shown between gut bacteria, she says, but “it’s a very new field of research and there are very few examples.”
Stacy and his collaborators examined the relationship between two species of bacteria that tend to grow in the same place in the mouth. One, Streptococcus gordonii, is found in healthy mouths and only occasionally causes disease. The other, Aggregatibacter actinomycetemcomitans, frequently causes aggressive tooth and gum infections.
The researchers knew from previous work that the pathogenic bacteria grew better with a coconspirator. To figure out why, Stacy says, “we asked, ‘What genes do they need to live when they’re by themselves?’” The team compared the solo-living genes to those active in the pathogen while growing alongside S. gordonii. The analysis revealed that the pathogenic bacteria switched their metabolism when S. gordonii was around.
When A. actinomycetemcomitans grew alone, they produced energy without using oxygen — a slow way to grow. But with S. gordonii nearby, the pathogenic bacteria took advantage of the oxygen released by their neighbors and increased their energy production. When tested in mice, that increased energy let the pathogen grow faster and survive better in a wound.
The findings are part of a growing body of research showing that bacteria can sense the presence of other bacteria and adjust their behavior accordingly. “This system has allowed us to begin to understand that microbes are really astute at evaluating this biochemistry, and in response, they have very specific behaviors,” says Marvin Whiteley, a microbiologist at the University of Texas at Austin who worked with Stacy.
Stacy plans to test the phenomenon in other bacteria pairs to see whether it holds up beyond these two species. Understanding the way bacteria interact with each other could let doctors target infections more efficiently, he says. For instance, if a bacterial infection isn’t responding to antibiotic treatment, targeting the sidekick bacteria might help take the primary pathogen down.
For women thinking about fertility treatments, there may be one less thing to worry about.
A long-term study shows that women who underwent in vitro fertilization are not significantly more likely to develop breast cancer than women in the general public or women who opted for other fertility treatments. The results are reported July 19 in JAMA.
The fertility treatment alters progesterone and estradiol levels in women trying to get pregnant. Yo-yoing hormones have been linked to an increase in a woman’s odds of developing breast cancer, but studies are divided on whether IVF itself actually ups cancer risk.
Alexandra van den Belt-Dusebout of the Netherlands Cancer Institute in Amsterdam and her colleagues tracked 19,158 women who underwent in vitro fertilization treatment between 1983 and 1995 and 5,950 women who underwent other fertility treatments between 1980 and 1995.
Following up two decades later, the team found that 948 of the women had developed breast cancer. But breast cancer rates didn’t differ much between groups: 163.5 per 100,000 women for those who had IVF compared to 167.2 women on other fertility treatments and 163.3 women in the general public.
