Technology News | Guangdong Province achieves “high-speed rail connection between all cities”

【Today’s cover】

Wuyi Mountain in winter is full of sunshine and colorful scenery. This is a panoramic view of the famous Yanzike in Wuyi Mountain. Photo by Zhang Lijun, China News Service

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●According to the latest news from the National Medical Insurance Administration, the direct settlement service for cross-provincial hospitalization expenses has now covered all provinces, all pooling areas, all types of insured persons and major out-of-towners, and has connected to 52,900 networked designated medical institutions, basically achieving full coverage of designated hospitals and the goal of having at least one networked designated hospital in each county. (Source: Xinhua News Agency)

●At 8:11 a.m. on December 10, the Long March 4B carrier rocket successfully launched the Practice 6-05 satellite into space. The satellite will be used to conduct space environment detection and new technology testing and verification. This is the 400th launch of the Long March series of carrier rockets. From the "first flight" of the Long March 1 carrier rocket in 1970 to the present, Long March rockets have carried out 92.1% of my country's space launch missions in the past 51 years, and have sent more than 700 spacecraft into space, with a launch success rate of 96.25%. The four 100 times took 37 years, more than 7 years, more than 4 years, and 33 months respectively. (Source: Science and Technology Daily, Xinhua News Agency)

●On December 10, the G2197 train departed from Ganzhou West Station at 9:00 and headed for Shenzhen North Station, marking the official opening of the Ganzhou-Shenzhen high-speed railway. So far, the fastest railway travel time from Ganzhou to Shenzhen has been shortened from 5 hours and 32 minutes to 1 hour and 49 minutes. The Ganzhou-Shenzhen high-speed railway starts from Ganzhou City, Jiangxi Province in the north and ends in Shenzhen City, Guangdong Province in the south. The line is 434 kilometers long and has a designed speed of 350 kilometers per hour. After it is opened to traffic, the history of the southern part of Jiangxi Province without a direct high-speed railway to Guangdong has ended, and Guangdong Province has achieved "high-speed railways in every city." (Source: Science and Technology Daily)

Pure Technology

● Probiotics that promote intestinal motility are extremely sensitive to oxygen, making their manufacture, storage and transportation difficult. The Journal of the American Chemical Society published a new study on the 10th. Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology covered bacteria with a coating material made of metal ions and polyphenolic organic compounds to help them survive better during the manufacturing process. The researchers said that in addition to being used to treat human gastrointestinal diseases, this coating can also be used in agricultural applications or to protect microorganisms used as vaccines. (Source: Science and Technology Daily)

●The Photosynthetic Membrane Protein Structural Biology Research Group of the Institute of Botany, Chinese Academy of Sciences, and the Zhang Xing Research Group of Zhejiang University have cooperated to use cryo-electron microscopy technology to analyze the high-resolution spatial structure of the barley chloroplast PSI-NDH membrane protein super-macromolecule complex for the first time. The analysis results show that the complex contains 55 protein subunits, 298 chlorophyll molecules, 67 carotenoid molecules and 25 lipid molecules, with a total molecular weight of about 1.6 megadaltons. It is the largest photosynthetic membrane protein complex structure in the chloroplasts of higher plants that has been analyzed so far. The relevant results were published online in the international academic journal Nature on December 9. (Source: Xinhuanet)

See the world

File photo: Nuclear wastewater storage tanks at Japan's Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant. Xinhua News Agency/Kyodo News

●According to the Japan Broadcasting Association (NHK) on the 10th, in order to detect the concentration of the radioactive element tritium in the discharged nuclear contaminated water, the Tokyo Electric Power Company's Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant has begun to build a special water storage facility before the nuclear contaminated water is discharged into the sea, so as to facilitate the detection of the nuclear contaminated water in the water storage facility. (Source: CCTV News Client)

A worker bee of the Western honey bee family. Image credit: Kim Taylor / naturepl.com

●The origin of honey bees has been widely debated by scientists. Recently, Kathleen Dogantzis' team at York University in Canada solved this problem by analyzing 251 genomes of 18 native subspecies of honey bees in Europe, Africa and Asia. They found that honey bees first evolved in West Asia, then spread to Europe and Africa, where different subspecies were formed through natural selection. The relevant research results were published in Science Advances. (Source: China Science Daily)

Grand View Garden

File photo: On May 20, 2013, in the British capital of London, a staff member of Sotheby's auction house held a first edition of the novel "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone" with author J.K. Rowling's handwritten annotations. Xinhua News Agency/Associated Press

●A first edition of the Harry Potter novel was sold at a price of $471,000 in the United States on the 9th, setting a new record for the auction price of the series of novels, far exceeding the estimated price of $70,000. According to Deutsche Presse-Agentur, this Harry Potter book is one of the 500 hardcover Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone books published in the UK in 1997, with a color cover. (Source: Xinhua News Agency)

Editor: Zhang Shuang

Review: Julie

Final review: Liu Haiying

Science and Technology Daily