Technology Morning News | The water on Earth may come from the sun

【Today’s cover】

Recently, after a heavy snowfall, a mobile detachment of the Sichuan Armed Police Corps stationed on the western Sichuan plateau organized armed police officers and soldiers to carry out training in subjects such as snow anti-ambush, mountain and forest capture and annihilation, and drone reconnaissance in accordance with regional characteristics in the icy and snowy weather close to minus 10 degrees Celsius to adapt to the plateau environment, so as to hone the military quality and willpower of officers and soldiers in the extremely cold and complex environment.

News Station

Comparison of spike protein mutations between the Delta strain and the Omicron strain. Image from Rome Children's Hospital

●On the 29th, the World Health Organization issued a technical briefing on the novel coronavirus variant "Omicron" to its 194 member states. It stated that given the potential for immune escape and increased infectiousness of the "Omicron" strain, the variant is likely to spread further around the world, and there may be a surge in new coronary pneumonia cases in the future. Therefore, the overall global risk of the "Omicron" strain is assessed as very high. (Source: CCTV News)

●According to the Ministry of Education website on the 29th, the Ministry of Education is now open for public comments on the "Teacher Law of the People's Republic of China (Draft for Revision) (Draft for Comments)". The draft for comments clearly states that the state will establish a teacher honor recognition system and set up a national teacher award. Teachers who have made significant contributions will be awarded titles such as People's Educator, National Model of Teaching and Educating, National Model Teacher, and National Excellent Teacher in accordance with relevant national regulations. (Source: China News Service)

●On the 29th, according to the official website of the Palace Museum, in order to further implement the "Law of the People's Republic of China on the Protection of Minors", the Palace Museum decided to trial free admission to minors on all open days, based on the original free admission for children under 6 years old or under 1.2 meters in height, and primary and secondary school students who make reservations every Tuesday. From 20:00 on December 3, you can make reservations for free tickets for minors (including the Treasure Hall and the Clock Hall) after December 10 through the Palace Museum ticketing website and the "Palace Museum Visitor Service" WeChat public account. (Source: CCTV News)

New findings

The sun, solar wind and the near-Earth asteroid Itokawa. Image source: Curtin University, Australia

●According to a paper published on the 29th in the journal Nature Astronomy, an international research team led by the University of Glasgow in the UK found that water on Earth may come from the sun. The solar wind is composed of charged particles (mainly hydrogen ions) from the sun. Water was produced on the surface of dust particles carried by asteroids that hit the Earth in the early days of the solar system. This water with a lighter isotope is likely to have provided the source of water for the Earth. (Source: Science and Technology Daily)

Pure Technology

●Recently, the Neurotherapy Social Cognition and Affective Neuroscience Laboratory of the University of Electronic Science and Technology of China worked with a collaborative team to develop a highly specific and sensitive neural representation for predicting the degree of fear. Combining behavioral experiments and magnetic resonance imaging, they revealed that the whole brain, rather than a single brain area, encodes fear information, and confirmed that human learned fear has a different neuroscientific representation from the fear emotion generated when facing terrifying things or scenes. (Source: Science and Technology Daily)

Traditional dark field illumination (a) and total internal reflection illumination (b) optical microscopes, and microscopic imaging illumination elements based on optical thin film structures (c). Image from the paper

●Recently, Professor Zhang Douguo's research group at the Anhui Provincial Key Laboratory of Optoelectronic Science and Technology, School of Physics, University of Science and Technology of China proposed and realized a planar microscopic imaging element based on optical film, which is used as a carrier of the sample to be tested, and can realize dark field microscopic imaging and total internal reflection imaging on a conventional bright field optical microscope, and obtain high-contrast optical microscopic images. (Source: Science and Technology Daily)

Image source: Physicists' Organization Network

●According to a recent report by the Physicists' Organization website, an international forward search experiment team led by scientists from the University of California, Irvine, has discovered "traces" of neutrinos for the first time on the Large Hadron Collider in Europe by analyzing data provided by the collider. The latest research is an important step towards a deeper understanding of the properties of neutrinos, an elusive particle, and its role in the universe. (Source: Science and Technology Daily)

See the world

Source: Screenshot of NHK report

●According to a report by the Japan Broadcasting Association on the 29th, Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida announced that due to the impact of the new coronavirus variant "Omicron", new entry of foreigners from all countries and regions will be suspended from 0:00 on the 30th. (Source: CCTV News)

Editor: Liu Yiyang

Review: Yue Liang

Final review: Liu Haiying

Source: Science and Technology Daily