At the entrance of the Sanhe town primary school in Shizhu Tujia Autonomous County, in Southwest China's Chongqing Municipality, stands a larger-than-life soccer ball. Inscribed on the wall of the school are some Chinese characters that can be translated as "Play soccer for a better future."

In the past decade, hundreds of left-behind children developed their passion for soccer at their primary school located deep in the mountains and some of them have kicked their way into big-name universities or even into professional clubs. 

In China, the term "left-behind children" refers to minors under 16 whose parents have left them in their hometown to go and work in urban areas, or minors who are left to the care of only one of the parents but he or she is incapable of guardianship. 

According to a report jointly released by the China Foundation for Rural Development with Beijing Normal University in August, there were over 9 million left-behind children in elementary and middle schools across China's rural areas at the end of 2022.  

The lack of parental care leaves these children vulnerable to social problems and has a negative impact on their emotional development, leading to problems such as depression, anxiety, or aggression.

The Sanhe town primary school is one of the schools in the poverty-stricken mountainous area where most of the students are left-behind children. 

The disadvantaged backgrounds and lack of qualified teachers make it difficult for the students to achieve academic success comparable to that provided by schools in urban areas. 

In an attempt to pull the children out of this plight, in 2012, then head of school Sun Xiaoming made an odds-defying decision that changed the life of many children.

"Elementary school students are short and thin, making it difficult for them to play basketball or volleyball. Soccer, which doesn't require a hoop or a net, can be either played by a team on the field, or practiced alone at home," explained Sun, talking about his idea of selecting soccer over other sports. 

Based on the school's conditions and an overwhelming number of left-behind girls, Sun decided to establish a girls' soccer team that no one imagined would grow into a formidable force in Chongqing and China. 

The first team of the school was made up of 20 girls, 19 of whom have made it into colleges based on their soccer skills. 

Over 200 girls have played for the school team in the past 10 years with many being admitted to elite middle or high schools of Chongqing for their athletic achievements. 

Current school principal Ma Jianwei told the Global Times that playing soccer offered the disadvantaged girls an opportunity to excel and change their fortunes.

"If not for playing soccer, most of the girls would have dropped out of school or bogged down in the daily grind of hard labor. Soccer offered them a path to get ahead and opportunities of receiving higher education," Ma said.

More than a sport

Recently, four alumni of the school team returned to Sanhe to share their experiences with the students on the school opening ceremony and offered them a boot camp. 

Playing soccer was met with skepticism among parents at the beginning when the school did not even have a soccer field. 

"At first, we played with rubber balls on concrete ground. Rain or shine, we kept training every day. We never gave it up even when we were black and blue," said alumnus Qin Furong.

Years of hard work paid dividends. Sanhe made its mark in the Chongqing varsity soccer league in 2015 and went on to win national varsity competitions in the following years. 

Thanks to the donations from the society, an artificial grass court breathed new life into the girls' dream.

Over the past decade, more than 70 students managed to be admitted to elite schools across Chongqing. 

Tan Siqi was selected to be the flag bearer at the 2019 Women's World Cup in France. Ma Qinglin signed with Shanghai Greenland Shenhua club to become a professional player in 2020. 

Their strong performances earned them the nickname "Steel Roses in the Mountain," drawing a parallel to the name of the national women's soccer team. 

"Soccer is more than a sport. It's the spirit that kept students' dream alive and helped them overcome difficulties," said Sun, who retired in 2018. 

"Soccer has changed children's lives, but it's not just about making it to college. They also built a strong physique and developed resilience and independence," he added.

Ingrained in school life

Ma told the Global Times that currently the school has developed a soccer culture with students taking great pride in participating in the sport. 

From grade two to six, every grade has their soccer team and they have training sessions every day through weekends and holidays. 

League and competitions are organized for all age groups every month. Soccer is ingrained in the students' school life, according to Ma. 

Ma said one of the four physical education lessons a week is dedicated to soccer, as the sport has been incorporated into the school curriculum as well. 

Additionally, the school has also struck up partnerships with neighboring middle schools, who will admit 10-15 talented players from Sanhe every year to further their studies and pursue a career in soccer. 

To promote the joint development of campus soccer around the region, the school has hosted an annual tournament since 2018, thus allowing schools from neighboring counties and provinces to connect with each other.

"Our goal is to strive for academic excellence while helping students develop an interest in soccer and offer them more options to get ahead," said Ma.

Cluster munitions provided by the US arrived in Ukraine in mid-July, while controversies abound as multiple human rights groups and some US congressmen express concern over long-term harm to civilians. At least 38 human rights organizations have publicly opposed the transfer of cluster munitions to Ukraine, where the weapons have already been used in the war to devastating effect, the Hill reported on July 7. 

These human rights groups have urged Russia and Ukraine not to use cluster munitions - which are banned by more than 100 countries - and have asked the US not to supply them.

The Global Times contacted several organizations including Legacies of War, the US-based advocacy and educational organization working to address the impacts of the American Secret War in Laos and conflict in the neighboring countries of Cambodia and Vietnam, and Code Pink, a women-led grassroots organization working to end US wars and militarism, to hear their voices and concerns, many of which are tied to the already dark legacy of cluster munition deployment. 

Growing up in Laos, Sera Koulabdara, the CEO of Legacies of War, witnessed her father, Sith Koulabdara, operate on countless victims of cluster munition accidents, including a little girl who attended the same school as her and shaped her passion for her role today.

"I know firsthand the horrors of cluster munitions. Given Laos' own history of subjugation and foreign invasion, I deeply value freedom and respect each country's right to defend its territory. I stand firmly behind the US' commitment to help Ukrainians. However, not by sending cluster munitions," Koulabdara told the Global Times.

She called the US' decision to send cluster munitions to Ukraine "short-sighted, inhumane, and shows an inability to learn lessons from its own history, and a complete disregard for international law." 

"Cluster munitions are not the 'winning weapon' but one that will prolong suffering for Ukrainians now and for decades to come," she stressed. This is a subject with which Koulabdara is familiar. 

"During my last trip to Laos in 2022, I had the opportunity to meet with and hear 64-year-old Yong Kham's story while visiting a demining site in Sepon, Laos, in fall 2022. I learned that he and his family endured the nine-year air war waged by the US from 1964-1973. Most of his childhood was spent in a muddy, foul trench or dark cave to avoid death. He was injured during one of the bombing raids by a cluster bomb. He survived it, but two of his siblings were not so lucky. Cluster munitions claimed their lives in the trench," she recalled.

"Decades later, in 2003, his eldest son, Tong Dum, was fatally killed by cluster bombs while collecting wood and scraps. His life was just getting started at the young age of 21," she continued. 

Koulabdara noted that as a result of the war, one-third of Ukrainian soil is already polluted with unexploded ordnances (UXO) and mines, and that is before Ukraine uses its vast new arsenal of cluster munitions from the US. She urged the US government to reconsider their decision, given the fact that the long-term impact of cluster munitions and other explosives will negatively affect all aspects of life for the people of Ukraine.

Medea Benjamin, the co-founder of Code Pink, said they believe that cluster munitions can result in a high civilian casualty rate, "severing the limbs of adults who, decades later, accidentally step on unexploded grenades, as well as children who picked up the small shiny bombs thinking they were toys, only to lose their hands."

"Some claim Ukraine can 'clean up' [the cluster bombs] after the war, but we have seen over and over again -  in Laos, Cambodia, Kosovo, Lebanon, and Afghanistan - how unlikely that is. There is no magic eraser," Benjamin told the Global Times. 

The co-founder of Code Pink also noted that the organization is pleased to see that 49 democrats and 98 republicans voted for an amendment to stop Biden from sending these weapons to Ukraine. "Although the amendment failed, it showed bipartisan opposition," Benjamin said.

 "There is no moral sanctity - only moral atrocity- in choosing to ship hideous weapons to Ukraine while dismissing calls from the Global South, the UN Secretary General, and the Pope to support an immediate ceasefire and peace negotiations," said the co-founder. 

"While the US did not sign the treaty banning cluster munitions, it did pass a law against their transfer. President Biden's choice to bypass the law in the supposed interest of national security undermines congress' constitutional authority," Benjamin argued. 

Rather than "escalating an arms race to risk nuclear war," Code Pink believes that the Biden administration should "promote a ceasefire and negotiations without preconditions."

"Instead of breaking international law, the US should break the military stalemate by joining the global call for a diplomatic resolution to the conflict. We oppose shipping cluster munitions, as well as all weapons to Ukraine because there is no military solution - only more heartache as the war escalates," said Benjamin.

The Peace in Ukraine Coalition anchored by Code Pink has been tabling, petitioning, writing op-ed pieces, taking out full page ads, and meeting with congressional staff on Capitol Hill to promote a ceasefire and diplomatic resolution.

"It is incumbent upon us to support a diplomatic resolution and not sabotage peace negotiations by sending more and more barbaric weapons, from tanks with depleted uranium, to nuclear-capable long range fighter jets to cluster bombs," warned Marcy Winograd, the coordinator of Peace in Ukraine Coalition.

The School of Electrical and Information Engineering, Tianjin University, is about to celebrate the 90th anniversary of its founding. The school traces its origins back to the Department of Electrical Engineering at Peiyang University (the predecessor of Tianjin University), China's first modern university. Established in 1933, the school has now grown into a prestigious institution with a complete range of majors and disciplines in electrical engineering, electronics, control science and engineering. It also possesses an internationally renowned faculty and offers a comprehensive education program from undergraduate to doctoral levels.

Li Jiping, secretary of the school's Party committee, said, "Our School has three first-level disciplines - electrical engineering, control science and engineering, and information and communication engineering. Together with our university's School of Future Technology and the National Innovation Platform (Center) for Industry-Education Integration of Energy Storage Technology, we fully implement the emerging engineering education concept and have made significant progress in fundamental research, talent development, and achievement transformation. By this collective effort, we hope to contribute to the university's world-class construction and the comprehensive development of our education powerhouse."

From Professor Xu Qingchun, one of the trailblazers of China's power system discipline, to Professor Yu Yixin, academician of Chinese Academy of Engineering and founder of the Smart Grid Research Team, and Professor Wang Chengshan who was newly promoted to the Chinese Academy of Engineering in 2021, the School has cultivated numerous outstanding talents who have engaged in the development of China's electric power industry and prioritized scientific research aligned with the needs of the national industry.
Wang is most renowned for his research in distributed power generation and Micro-Grid. The Micro-Grid design and operation control systems and equipment developed by Wang's team have been adopted as international standards and applied in various projects both domestically and internationally. They proposed the technical solution for the energy management system of the Micro-Grid on the Maldives Islands and deployed the system on 10 islands in the Maldives within three months.

So far, the island's Micro-Grid systems have been operating stably, saving nearly 28-44 percent of diesel consumption and reducing power supply costs by 27-65 percent.

In addition, the team is dedicated to implementing Micro-Grid technology in China to ensure a reliable power supply in challenging areas such as plateaus, islands, and uninhabited regions.

This summer, the School of Electrical and Information Engineering organized the "Unmanned Systems Wisdom Show" summer camp. Twenty-eight exceptional students from middle schools across China participated in this camp to explore the fascinating world of advanced automated unmanned systems. They had the opportunity to learn on-site and engage in practical operations, allowing them to truly experience the charm of this field.
"There is no end to knowledge, and there is no end to scientific development." On the occasion of the 90th anniversary of the School, Professor He Jiali, a renowned electrical expert in China and a foreign academician of the Russian Engineering Academy, expressed his sincere wish for the future: "I hope our School can keep moving forward and develop nonstop!"

He has been with the School for 70 years.

"We must answer to the nation's call and cultivate people with virtue." Talking about future development, Wang is full of expectations: "The School of Electrical and Information Engineering is forming a multidisciplinary and integrated talent training system that fosters the development of smart energy, smart grid, intelligent control, and advanced information and communication technologies. It is always our first priority to cultivate high-level innovative talents for the country."

Alcoholism may stem from using genes incorrectly, a study of hard-drinking rats suggests.

Rats bred either to drink heavily or to shun alcohol have revealed 930 genes linked to a preference for drinking alcohol, researchers in Indiana report August 4 in PLOS Genetics.

Human genetic studies have not found most of the genetic variants that put people at risk for alcoholism, says Michael Miles, a neurogenomicist at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond. The new study takes a “significant and somewhat novel approach” to find the genetic differences that separate those who will become addicted to alcohol from those who drink in moderation.
It took decades to craft the experiment, says study coauthor William Muir, a population geneticist at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Ind. Starting in the 1980s, rats bred at Indiana University School of Medicine in Indianapolis were given a choice to drink pure water or water mixed with 10 percent ethanol, about the same amount of alcohol as in a weak wine. For more than 40 generations, researchers selected rats from each generation that voluntarily drank the most alcohol and bred them to create a line of rats that consume the rat equivalent of 25 cans of beer a day. Simultaneously, the researchers also selected rats that drank the least alcohol and bred them to make a line of low-drinking rats. A concurrent breeding program produced another line of high-drinking and teetotaling rats.

For the new study, Muir and colleagues collected DNA from 10 rats from each of the high- and low-drinking lines. Comparing complete sets of genetic instructions from all the rats identified 930 genes that differ between the two lines.

Such a large number of genes, “shows how complex the genetic underpinnings of the drive to consume alcohol might be,” says Miles.

Often, human genetic studies known as genome-wide association studies, or GWAS, can’t determine which of many genes in a particular region of DNA is involved in a disease or addiction. But the Indiana researchers’ DNA data allowed them to pinpoint the exact genetic tweaks implicated in the rats’ drinking. “With GWAS, they’re just trying to get down to the gene — we’ve got it down to the parts of the genes,” Muir says.

That precision “is clearly an advance,” says John Crabbe, a neuroscientist at the Portland VA Medical Center in Oregon. “No one has gone into this much detail before in any alcohol-related trait.”
Most of the time, the genetic variant associated with drinking behavior wasn’t located within the part of the gene containing blueprints for a protein, the researchers discovered. Only four genes contained variants in their protein-producing parts. The majority of the differences were in surrounding DNA that regulates gene activity. Those changes could alter how much protein is produced from the genes, says study coauthor Feng Zhou, a neurobiologist at Indiana University School of Medicine. In turn, altering amounts of proteins could shift biochemical reactions important for determining behavior.

Until recently, scientists thought alcoholism and other problems stemmed from inheriting altered forms of genes that would produce faulty proteins. “Well, that game’s over,” says Crabbe. Now researchers realize that regulating gene activity is often just as important as changing the genes themselves.

The researchers don’t yet know whether the genes identified in the rats are the same ones that lead to drinking problems in people.

A South African flower catches flies with honey, or in this case, the smell of honeybees.

Several plant species lure potential pollinators with false promises of sweet nectar, sex or even rotting flesh. But Ceropegia sandersonii attracts its primary pollinator, Desmometopa flies, with the scent of fear. The flower mimics the chemical signals, or pheromones, released by alarmed western honeybees (Apis mellifera) during a predator attack. For flies that feast on the bees’ guts, it’s the perfect bait, Stefan Dötterl, a chemical ecologist at the University of Salzburg in Austria, and colleagues report online October 6 in Current Biology.
The team compared the compounds that make up the flower’s scent with pheromones released by the bees during simulated attacks. Not only did the two odors have several compounds in common, but the flies were strongly attracted to a mixture of a few of the shared compounds. That chemical cocktail has so far been observed only in the bees and C. sandersonii, the researchers say.

Before flies have a chance to wise up to the trickery, they become trapped inside the flower. The flies eventually escape about a day later, once the flower wilts, only to be duped by other flowers to finish the fertilizing task, Dötterl says.

The mountain goat (Oreamnos americanus) might be the world’s best climber, able to scale near-vertical cliffs with an ease rivaled only by the world’s best human rock climbers — who have the advantage of safety equipment and opposable thumbs. Just how the goats manage such climbs has been somewhat of a mystery. Researchers suspected that the big muscles in the animals’ neck and shoulders and their low center of mass play a role, but no one had studied this, in part because of the difficulty of doing research in the goats’ home territory — remote mountainous regions of the United States and Canada.

Enter YouTube.

The internet is peppered with videos of these animals’ amazing feats, and biomechanics researchers Ryan Lewinson and Darren Stefanyshyn of the University of Calgary saw an opportunity: There was no need to go to the mountain goats when they could simply go to YouTube.

The researchers found a video (below) that they thought would work for analysis. In it, a young male mountain goat climbs a hill in the Canadian Rockies. They focused on a section in which the animal makes a series of galloping leaps, picking out nine frames to analyze. In the first six frames, the mountain goat pushes off the rock face, with its hindlimbs in contact with the hill surface. In the last three frames, the animal pulls itself up the hill with its forelimbs.
During the push-off phase, the researchers found, the front legs stay close to the animal’s body while the back legs extend, creating a strong propulsive force upward. Then, the mountain goat uses those strong muscles in its neck and shoulders to propel its torso up the hill while keeping its elbows tucked in to keep the motion going straight up, the team reports in the December Zoology.

Now the question is, do all mountain goats climb this way? The researchers note that this was a study of just one animal, and a young one at that. Perhaps other mountain goats, either younger or older, climb in a different way. Plus, this was an opportunistic study, in which the researchers had no control over the setting.
“As a result,” they write, “it is not known if all mountain goats show the same movement pattern, or how this movement pattern changes in regards to the mountain slope the animal is climbing.”

In other words, they’ll need more than your YouTube videos to figure it out.

BOSTON — If kelp growing in an underwater forest makes a sound, such noises could be used to keep tabs on ocean health.

Listening to how projected sound reverberates through kelp beds allows scientists to eavesdrop on environmental factors such as water temperature and photosynthetic activity, bioacoustician Jean-Pierre Hermand reported June 28 at a meeting of the Acoustical Society of America.

Kelp beds and forests, valuable ecosystems that house all sorts of marine life, may help buffer the effects of warmer and increasingly acidic waters (SN Online: 12/14/16). But such communities are also threatened by invasive species and aren’t immune to the effects of climate change, making monitoring kelp crucial, said Hermand, of the Université libre de Bruxelles in Belgium.
Hermand and colleagues set up microphones in Canoe Bay off Tasmania in Australia. There, Ecklonia radiata, a dominant kelp species in Australia’s reefs, grows thickly. For two weeks, the researchers deployed an underwater device that emitted a chirp every second. The underwater microphones — two in the kelp canopy and two above the canopy — recorded the chirps bouncing off everything in the environment from oxygen bubbles from photosynthesis burbling up from the kelp to the kelp itself to the water’s surface.

More than 20 fixed sensors in the water column, within and above the kelp canopy, collected all kinds of environmental data that might relate to ecosystem health. That data included dissolved oxygen in the water, pH, water temperature, salinity, photosynthetic activity and turbidity. Wind speed, which generates audible bubbles in the surface waters, was also logged.

Then the researchers examined the acoustic data, measured in decibels of energy, alongside the measured environmental variables. Mathematical analyses revealed consistent connections between the recorded sound and the environmental factors, suggesting that eavesdropping could be a good way to monitor the kelp beds, Hermand said.

While the research is preliminary, it could lead to a relatively inexpensive and efficient method for assessing the well-being of kelp beds and other marine ecosystems, says acoustics expert Preston Wilson of the University of Texas at Austin. Current methods, such as using satellite imagery, are expensive and don’t provide much detail, while hand-conducted surveys are time-consuming and labor-intensive, Wilson says, who does related research in kelp and seagrass communities.

Years of research went into learning how to eavesdrop on a sea forest. For example, to tease out what various sound signals might mean, the researchers had to figure out how kelp tissues respond to sound (turns out that it’s highly dependent on alginate content, a gummy cell wall component of kelp). And there’s much work ahead, Hermand said. Rather than relying on a device that chirps and then capturing that sound as it bounces around, the ultimate goal is to be able to learn about the kelp environment from listening alone. “Ambient noise — that’s my dream,” Hermand said.

Getting rid of bodily wastes during long space flights is a problem…. A bizarre possible solution … involves whipping the wastes in with some other ingredients to produce the most unusual rocket fuel…. The four ingredients — carbon, ammonium, nitrate and aluminum — and the waste material are just blended together, and they’re ready to go…. [The material] would probably be used to help a spacecraft change position or to nudge a long-life space station occasionally to keep it up in orbit. –Science News, September 2, 1967
Update
Researchers are still trying to figure out how to turn astronaut excrement into something useful. Another process proposed in 2014 would use microbes to convert the waste and other organic material into fuel. But waste might have other uses that would be especially helpful during long-term flights. Synthetic biologists at Clemson University in South Carolina are working with NASA to use algae and genetically modified yeast to turn astronaut urine into 3-D printable plastics and nutritional omega-3 fats.

Former Raiders receiver Henry Ruggs III has been ordered to appear in Las Vegas court on Monday following a missed alcohol test. That is a violation of his bond release restrictions following a fatal crash in which prosecutors say he was driving under the influence at 156 mph.

According to Clarke County court records, Ruggs missed one of four daily court-mandated alcohol tests at 4:41 p.m. local time on Saturday before completing "a client initiated remote breath test" at 6:28 p.m. the same day. The alcohol monitoring agency noted in court filings that it couldn't verify Ruggs' sobriety at the time he was supposed to complete his test earlier in the day.
Ruggs' attorney David Chesnoff told Judge Suzan Baucum — who has ordered his reappearance in court — that the delay in his test was related to trouble with equipment provided to him. Ruggs, 22, could face a return to jail for violating the terms of his release. Ruggs was released on $150,000 bond on Wednesday, Nov. 3 and was ordered to remain on house arrest while undergoing electronic surveillance. He is also to refrain from alcohol or other controlled substances, among other restrictions.

Ruggs was arrested after his involvement in a fatal drunk-driving accident on Tuesday, Nov. 2. Prosecutors said he was driving 156 mph at the time of the crash, with a blood alcohol content level of .16 — twice the legal limit for Nevada drivers. Ruggs' Chevrolet Corvette struck the back of 23-year-old Tina Tintor's Toyota Rav4. Witnesses to the event indicated they tried to help Tintor and her dog escape the vehicle, but were ultimately forced back from flames emanating from the car.
Ruggs faces two felony charges of DUI resulting in death or serious injury. That is considered a category B felony in Nevada, the second-worst violation of state law. The charges are non-probationary, meaning Ruggs will face jail time if convicted. Each charge carries a minimum two-year sentence, but can go as long as 20 years. He also faces two counts of felony reckless driving — charges with penalties of one to six years in prison — and a misdemeanor weapon charge.

The Raiders released Ruggs on Nov. 2 following his DUI arrest. He was the No. 12 overall pick in the 2020 NFL Draft, and the highest receiver taken in the draft.