Category: CULTURE

(Xinhua)09:25, June 28, 2019

VIENTIANE, June 28 (Xinhua) — The new compound of Confucius Institute of National University of Laos (NUOL) has been handed over in Lao capital Vientiane, with Chinese Ambassador to Laos Jiang Zaidong and Lao Minister for Education and Sports Sengduean Lachanthaboun signing the handover certificate.

A ceremony was held to mark the handover and the compounds putting into operation at the NUOL campus on Wednesday, at which Chinese Ambassador Jiang noted, soon after China and Laos established the comprehensive strategic cooperative partnership in 2009, the Confucius Institute was also formally inaugurated at NUOL in 2010.

Jiang, when addressing the ceremony, said the NUOL Confucius Institute has been a front-line platform for bilateral education and training cooperation, which has not only excellently accomplished its teaching cause, but also brought up 185 local Chinese language teachers.

Jiang said the NUOL Confucius Institutes development will take advantage of the implementation of the action plan on building the China-Laos community with a shared future.

Sengduean said education cooperation is among the important sectors of the Laos-China practical cooperation. That China provides various scholarships and training opportunities to Laos every year, has made important contribution to exploring human resources for socio-economic development in Laos.

While the new NUOL Confucius Institute compound is spacious and bright with sufficient equipment, the Lao minister hopes the NUOL can make effective use of the facilities, to further build the Confucius Institute into a window for Lao people to look into China, a platform for bilateral culture exchanges, a bridge for the two peoples heart-to-heart communication, as well as to train more talent for the countrys development.

(Xinhua)14:28, June 26, 2019

CHICAGO, June 25 (Xinhua) — Researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have found that the link between amyloid beta and tau, the two proteins that lead to Alzheimers disease, may lie in the brains immune cells that hem in clumps of amyloid.

If the immune cells falter, amyloid clumps, or plaques, injure nearby neurons and create a toxic environment that accelerates the formation and spread of tau tangles.

In a study, the researchers used mice prone to developing amyloid plaques and modified in various ways their TREM2 genes to influence the activity of their microglia. The result was four groups of mice: two with fully functional microglia because they carried the common variant of either the human or mouse TREM2 gene, and two with impaired microglia that carried the high-risk human TREM2 variant or no copy of the TREM2 gene at all.

The researchers then seeded the mices brains with small amounts of tau collected from Alzheimers patients. The human tau protein triggered the tau in mice to coalesce into tangle-like structures around the amyloid plaques.

The researchers also showed that people with TREM2 mutations who died with Alzheimers disease had more tau tangle-like structures near their amyloid plaques than people who died with Alzheimers but did not carry the mutation.

Drugs that enhance the activity of microglia by activating TREM2 already are in the pipeline. It soon may be possible to identify using a simple blood test people with amyloid buildup but no cognitive symptoms. For such people, drugs that break the link between amyloid and tau might have the potential to halt the disease in its tracks.

The findings were published on Monday in Nature Neuroscience.

(Xinhua)10:20, June 26, 2019

VANCOUVER, June 23 (Xinhua) — Vancouver International Dragon Boat Festival took place in Vancouver Sunday with 200 dragon boat teams participating in the two-day event, attracting hundreds of thousands of local and foreign visitors.

The 200 teams are from Canada, Germany, the United States, Australia and the Philippines.

The international festival introduced from China to Vancouver during the 1986 Vancouver World Expo has become an international event in Canada.

One of the characteristics of this years dragon boat festival is that a large number of young people have joined the dragon boat race.

At the event, the Chinese community in Vancouver performed traditional Chinese lion dance, traditional music, martial arts and Peking Opera. They also held Chinese food-making and tea art shows.

Consul General of the Chinese Consulate-General in Vancouver Tong Xiaoling spoke highly of the festival. She said the performances and shows by the Chinese community in Vancouver present excellent aspects of the Chinese culture, adding that it is important to reflect the integration of the Chinese community and the local Canadian society, especially to promote the relationship between people.

(Xinhua)09:52, July 02, 2019

BEIJING, July 1 (Xinhua) — China has made steady progress in the prevention and control of African swine fever, a senior official said Monday.

A total of 143 cases of African swine fever had been reported in China as of June 30, said Vice Agriculture and Rural Affairs Minister Yu Xinrong at a news briefing, adding that the affected areas of 131 cases had been unblocked, while 25 provincial-level regions had unblocked all their affected areas.

As of the end of last month, the country had reported 44 outbreaks since the beginning of the year, maintaining a single-digit monthly occurrence except in April, according to Yu.

While intensifying epidemic monitoring and waste disposal, the country will step up efforts to prevent the spread of overseas outbreaks by strengthening quarantine inspection at ports of entry, Yu added.

(Peoples Daily)08:19, July 03, 2019

The @China global short video contest, sponsored by the Peoples Daily, is underway. The contest is accepting work from short video creators, enthusiasts, and vloggers worldwide from June 18 to August 15. Candidates can enter by logging on to the contests official website (hellochina.pdnews.cn) and submit a 3-minute or less video.

The contest will run from June to September and is divided into multiple stages including submission gathering, judge evaluation, public viewing, and outstanding work recognition. Prizes for first, second, third place and awards for Most Creative, Best Photography Best Editing, Best Animation Design, Best Visual Effect, Most Popular, and Outstanding Organization, with a top cash bonus upwards of 100,000 yuan.

Photo: Peoples Daily

New form, multiple perspectives, encouraging netizens to create

In recent years, the short video has become the fastest growing global internet phenomenon. More people are using short videos to record the changes around them, feelings of walking, and the modern landscape of the country and the world.

To allow more of the world to get to know about China, Peoples Daily, in conjunction with the hottest internet communication form, is sponsoring the @China global short video contest.

The competition is aimed at encouraging netizens both home and abroad to create a short video, capturing the changes of the times through a camera lens, record the beauty of China.

The theme is @China, and the organizing committee has chosen the topics Speed·China, Openness·China, Travel·China, Life·China, Impression·China, and Striving·China, where participants are encouraged to create and expand upon them to produce beautiful stories about @China.

Contestants are free to choose their creative paths while demonstrating their understanding of a chosen theme. Genre is not limited and all video submissions must be less than 3 minutes. Aspect ratios can be horizontal or vertical, and submissions that follow the format conditions will be eligible for the competition.

National selection, deep incentives, the best work will stand out globally

The contest is organized in different stages, including video submission gathering, selection of all participants, and screening outstanding work. The submission stage is underway and will run until August 15. Domestic and foreign participants can submit their work on the contests official website, along with all cooperating agencies and co-organizers.

Once the selection stage is complete, the top videos will be selected to participate in the online voting round. Netizens will be able to log in to the Chinese and English versions of the Peoples Daily App and vote for their favorite videos.

Outside of public voting, to ensure the integrity of the contest, the organizing committee will have a group of judges composed of media professionals, industry experts, professional video production agencies, and well-known directors. The group will judge each video based on content, theme, and communication.

For the final stage, after the online votes have been tabulated and the expert reviews are completed, the award-winning videos will be selected. The winning short videos will be distributed and aired on multiple domestic and foreign media platforms, displayed at major landmarks and at distinguished universities, and shown on cinema screens. The award ceremony will be held in Beijing in late September.

(Xinhua)10:11, July 03, 2019

VALLETTA, July 2 (Xinhua) — An exhibition showcasing Chinese traditional arts and crafts opened here on Tuesday.

During the month-long exhibition titled Craftsmanship-Chinese Traditional Arts and Crafts Exhibition, four Chinese arts masters are invited to exhibit their works at the Chinese Cultural Center in Malta.

The artists and craftsmen displayed artworks with a long history in China, namely filigree inlay, carved lacquer, ceramics and purple clayware.

Yang Xiaolong, the director of the Chinese Cultural Center, said the exhibition will serve to explore traditional craftsmanship, and share the craftsmanship spirit of contemporary arts and crafts.

Melanie Ciantar Harrington, a representative from the Intangible Cultural Heritage Office within the Culture Directorate, Ministry for Culture in Malta, explained that Malta ratified the 2003 UNESCO Convention for the Safeguarding of Intangible Cultural Heritage in March 2017.

We want to follow your journey of safeguarding the Intangible Cultural Heritage, Ciantar said, adding that China can serve as a model example to Malta in this regard.

Twenty-eight art crafts works were displayed at this exhibition, attracting some artists and visitors. Meanwhile, Master Miao Lin demonstrated the art of filigree and answered questions about this traditional art.

The exhibition which is organised by the Chinese Cultural Center and the Network of International Culturalink Entities, is scheduled to run until July 31.

(Xinhua)10:44, July 03, 2019

CHICAGO, July 2 (Xinhua) — With a light-spinning device inspired by the Japanese art of paper cutting, researchers at the University of Michigan (UM) have detected microscopic twists in the internal structure of plant and animal tissue without harmful X-rays.

The approach is the first that can fully rotate terahertz radiation in real time, and could open new dimensions in medical imaging, encrypted communications and cosmology, according to a news release posted on UMs website on Monday.

With an eye to exploring how chirality may help distinguish tissues, the researchers gathered everyday biological materials to look for differences in the absorption of clockwise- or counter-clockwise-rotating radiation in the terahertz spectrum. They studied a maple leaf, a dandelion flower, pork fat and the wing case of an iridescent beetle,

While the leaf and fat showed no difference in absorption of clockwise or counter-clockwise radiation, the flower and wing case preferentially absorbed the one over the other, revealing microscopic twists in their structures.

The new device is deceptively simple, essentially a plastic ribbon, printed with a gold herringbone pattern and sliced with staggered rows of tiny cuts. The incisions are influenced by the Japanese art of kirigami, which uses arrangements of cuts to create 3D structures from paper.

When the ribbon is stretched, the cuts open up and the slices of ribbon twist. The gold lines then guide the radiation, twisting it in turn.

The researchers propose the same design could be scaled for other types of radiation as well, with larger patterns interacting with microwaves or radio waves, or shrinking the pattern down to manipulate infrared light.

As spinning terahertz light wasnt widely studied, one of the challenges for the researchers was figuring out how to see whether the kirigami device worked at all.

In addition to imaging living tissues, terahertz circular dichroism spectroscopy could also aid the development of new medicines based on large biological molecules such as proteins and antibodies.

Our bodies have a lot of twisted structures that are close enough to the surface for terahertz photons to penetrate: vessels, ligaments, muscle fibers, molecules and even some helical bacteria, said Nicholas Kotov, a professor of engineering.

Terahertz radiation is the band of electromagnetic waves that runs from infrared radiation down to the range of the millimeter scanners that peer through your clothing at airports. It can travel about a quarter of an inch into the body, but unlike X-rays, its non-ionizing, which means it doesnt free up potentially damaging electrical charges in the body.

The study has been published in the latest issue of the Nature Materials.