上海龙凤宝贝后花园

A deputy to the National People's Congress (NPC) called for efforts to tackle shortage and bottleneck in China's roll-on/roll-off (Ro-RO) cargo vessel capacity so as to improve transportation conditions of the country's surging new-energy vehicle (NEV) exports. 

Deputy Yan Keshi submitted a motion to the ongoing NPC session in Beijing, noting that the limited capacity of Ro-Ro vessels has emerged as a significant problem hindering the export of Chinese NEVs, which Yan said warrants urgent attention. 

Rising output of NEVs is an important contributor to China's economic growth. Last year, export of NEVs rose 77.6 percent from a year earlier, standing at 1.203 million units, which accounted for almost one-third of the global market share, Yan wrote in his motion.

But, China is experiencing a pronounced supply-demand imbalance in ocean transportation capacity, especially in the shipment of NEVs. The higher weight of all-electric NEVs, about 15-25 percent weightier than ordinary petrol or hybrid vehicles, has exacerbated the shortage of Ro-Ro vessels in China, Yan said.

Yan put forward measures of facilitating long-lasting cooperation among ship manufacturers, ports and other stakeholders, in order to ramp up sustainable Ro-Ro vessels manufacturing and optimizing the hardware and software support for exporting NEVs.

The Government Work Report released on Tuesday highlighted China's automobile industry, showcasing the remarkable performance of Chinese NEV manufacturing and marketing in 2023. Domestic auto brands have now exceeded joint ventures in passenger car sales, solidifying the NEV sector as a cornerstone of China's growing manufacturing strength. Amid this backdrop, how to shore up ocean shipping capacity of Chinese-made NEVs has drawn rising attention.

In a related development, Da Fei Monaco, a new generation of dual-fuel-powered Ro-Ro vessel, successfully completed its first voyage from Yantai Port, East China's Shandong Province, carrying 4,631 vehicles bound for the US, on March 5. 

In January, BYD's "Explorer NO 1" and SAIC Motor Cor's inaugural transoceanic Ro-Ro vessels also embarked on their maiden voyage from Chinese ports.

Chery Automobile Group, in collaboration with its shipyard in Wuhu, East China's Anhui Province, has established a NEV transport vessel manufacturing base in Weihai city, Shandong Province. Three large vessels with a capacity of 7,000 cars each have been ordered, according to the Securities Daily.

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.”