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29/04/2020

Coronavirus outbreak in France did not come directly from China, gene-tracing scientists say

  • Researchers conclude that the virus was circulating undetected in France in February
  • Findings highlight the difficulties governments face in tracing the source of coronavirus outbreaks
Researchers in France have carried out genetic analysis and found that the dominant types of the viral strains in the country did not come from China or Italy. Photo: AP
Researchers in France have carried out genetic analysis and found that the dominant types of the viral strains in the country did not come from China or Italy. Photo: AP
The coronavirus outbreak in France was not caused by cases imported from China, but from a locally circulating strain of unknown origin, according to a new study by French scientists at the Institut Pasteur in Paris.
Genetic analysis showed that the dominant types of the viral strains in France belonged to a clade – or group with a common ancestor – that did not come from China or Italy, the earliest hotspot in Europe.
“The French outbreak has been mainly seeded by one or several variants of this clade … we can infer that the virus was silently circulating in France in February,” said researchers led by Dr Sylvie van der Werf and Etienne Simon-Loriere in a non-peer reviewed paper released on bioRxiv.org last week.
The Covid-19 pandemic has infected more than 128,000 people in France and caused more than 23,000 deaths.
France detected the virus in late January, before any other country in Europe. A few patients with a travel history that included China’s Hubei province were sampled on January 24 and tested positive.
The Covid-19 pandemic has infected more than 128,000 people in France and caused more than 23,000 deaths. Photo: AFP
The Covid-19 pandemic has infected more than 128,000 people in France and caused more than 23,000 deaths. Photo: AFP
The French government took quick and decisive measures to trace contacts of the infected people and shut down the chance of further infection.

However, these strains were not found in patients tested after the initial imported cases, suggesting “the quarantine imposed on the initial Covid-19 cases in France appears to have prevented local transmission”, the researchers said.

The Pasteur institute collected samples from more than 90 other patients across France and found the strains all came from one genetic line. Strains following this unique path of evolution had so far only been detected in Europe and the Americas.

Singapore Covid-19 cases to rise as not all migrant workers being tested

28 Apr 2020

The earliest sample in the French clade was collected on February 19 from a patient who had no history of travel and no known contact with returned travellers.

Several patients had recently travelled to other European countries, the United Arab Emirates, Madagascar and Egypt but there was no direct evidence that they contracted the disease in these destinations.

To the researchers’ surprise, some of the later strains collected were genetically older – or closer to the ancestral root – than the first sample in this clade.

Spanish official cries reading names of health workers killed by coronavirus
A possible explanation, according to the authors, was that local transmission had been occurring in France for some time without being detected by health authorities.
The French government may have missed detecting the transmission. According to the researchers, a large proportion of those patients might have had mild symptoms or none at all.

The researchers also found that three sequences later sampled in Algeria were closely related to those in France, suggesting that travellers from France might have introduced the virus to the African country and caused an outbreak.

China says US politicians are lying as Trump calls for Covid-19 damages

29 Apr 2020

Benjamin Neuman, professor and chair of biological sciences with the Texas A&M University-Texarkana, said the French strains might have come from Belgium, where some sequences most closely related to the original strain from China were clustered.

“Since the earliest European strains of [the coronavirus] Sars-CoV-2 seem to be associated with Belgium, the idea that the virus spread from Belgium to both Italy and France at around the same time seems plausible, as this paper contends,” he said.

France is the latest in a growing number of countries and areas where no direct link between China and local outbreaks could be established.

The dominant strains in Russia and Australia, for instance, came from Europe and the United States, respectively, according to some studies.

These findings have drawn fire from some politicians who have tried to deflect domestic anger over their handling of the crisis by blaming China.

US President Donald Trump lashed out on social media after two separate teams in the US found the strains devastating New York came from Europe.

Is this the next big hotspot for the ‘little flu’?

28 Apr 2020

“So now the Fake News @nytimes is tracing the CoronaVirus origins back to Europe, NOT China. This is a first!” he tweeted on April 11, referring to a story about the studies in the The New York Times’ science section.

The findings also highlight the difficulties governments face in tracing the source of coronavirus outbreaks.

Less-developed countries may never know where their strains came from due to inadequate testing and sequencing capability.

India, for example, has released the genetic sequence of fewer than 40 samples to the public so far, a small number considering its huge population.

Most of the strains sampled in 35 early cases came from clades that could be traced to Italy and Iran, with only a few from China, according to a recent study. But researchers were not able to track further because of the lack of data.

A scientist on the study, Dr Mukesh Thakur, of the Zoological Survey of India, said it was too early to rule out China as the source of outbreaks in India because the number of samples at hand was limited.

A 20-year-old student studying medicine in Wuhan, for instance, might have come in contact with many people on the way home before she was tested positive on January 30.

Thakur said local media reported that the Indian government quarantined 3,500 people possibly linked to three positive cases imported from Wuhan.

“God knows how many of them tested positive in the subsequent stages,” Thakur said in an email response to the Post’s queries on Tuesday.

Some prominent scientists, including Francis Collins, director of the US National Institutes of Health, said the virus might have been spreading quietly in humans for years, or even decades, without causing a detectable outbreak.

The virus had thus adapted well to the human body. Some genes regulating its binding to host cells were similar, or even identical, to those found in some other highly infectious human viruses, such as HIV and Ebola.

According to some estimates, the ancestor of Sars-CoV-2, the virus causing Covid-19, might have left bats between 50 and 70 years ago. A recent study by a team of geneticists in Oxford University estimated the first outbreak of the current pandemic could have occurred as early as September last year.

They found that the dominant strains circulating in China and Asia were genetically younger than some popular strains in the United States.

Source: SCMP

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09/04/2020

Pass the salt: The minute details that helped Germany build virus defences

MUNICH (Reuters) – One January lunchtime in a car parts company, a worker turned to a colleague and asked to borrow the salt.

As well as the saltshaker, in that instant, they shared the new coronavirus, scientists have since concluded.

That their exchange was documented at all is the result of intense scrutiny, part of a rare success story in the global fight against the virus.

The co-workers were early links in what was to be the first documented chain of multiple human-to-human transmissions outside Asia of COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus.

They are based in Stockdorf, a German town of 4,000 near Munich in Bavaria, and they work at car parts supplier Webasto Group. The company was thrust under a global microscope after it disclosed that one of its employees, a Chinese woman, caught the virus and brought it to Webasto headquarters. There, it was passed to colleagues – including, scientists would learn, a person lunching in the canteen with whom the Chinese patient had no contact.

The Jan. 22 canteen scene was one of dozens of mundane incidents that scientists have logged in a medical manhunt to trace, test and isolate infected workers so that the regional government of Bavaria could stop the virus from spreading.

That hunt has helped Germany win crucial time to build its COVID-19 defences.

The time Germany bought may have saved lives, scientists say. Its first outbreak of locally transmitted COVID-19 began earlier than Italy’s, but Germany has had many fewer deaths. Italy’s first detected local transmission was on Feb. 21. By then Germany had kicked off a health ministry information campaign and a government strategy to tackle the virus which would hinge on widespread testing. In Germany so far, more than 2,100 people have died of COVID-19. In Italy, with a smaller population, the total exceeds 17,600.

CHART: Contrasting curves reut.rs/3c2UZA4

“We learned that we must meticulously trace chains of infection in order to interrupt them,” Clemens Wendtner, the doctor who treated the Munich patients, told Reuters.

Wendtner teamed up with some of Germany’s top scientists to tackle what became known as the ‘Munich cluster,’ and they advised the Bavarian government on how to respond. Bavaria led the way with the lockdowns, which went nationwide on March 22.

Scientists including England’s Chief Medical Officer Chris Whitty have credited Germany’s early, widespread testing with slowing the spread of the virus. “‘We all know Germany got ahead in terms of its ability to do testing for the virus and there’s a lot to learn from that,’” he said on TV earlier this week.

Christian Drosten, the top virologist at Berlin’s Charite hospital, said Germany was helped by having a clear early cluster. “Because we had this Munich cohort right at the start … it became clear that with a big push we could inhibit this spreading further,” he said in a daily podcast for NDR radio on the coronavirus.

Drosten, who declined to be interviewed for this story, was one of more than 40 scientists involved in scrutiny of the cluster. Their work was documented in preliminary form in a working paper at the end of last month, intended for The Lancet. The paper, not yet peer-reviewed, was shared on the NDR site.

ELECTRONIC DIARIES

It was on Monday, Jan. 27, that Holger Engelmann, Webasto’s CEO, told the authorities that one of his employees had tested positive for the new coronavirus. The woman, who was based in Shanghai, had facilitated several days of workshops and attended meetings at Webasto’s HQ.

The woman’s parents, from Wuhan, had visited her before she travelled on Jan. 19 to Stockdorf, the paper said. While in Germany, she felt unusual chest and back aches and was tired for her whole stay. But she put the symptoms down to jet lag.

She became feverish on the return flight to China, tested positive after landing and was hospitalised. Her parents also later tested positive. She told her managers of the result and they emailed the CEO.

In Germany, Engelmann said he immediately set up a crisis team that alerted the medical authorities and started trying to trace staff members who had been in contact with their Chinese colleague.

The CEO himself was among them. “Just four or five days before I received the news, I had shaken hands with her,” he said.

Now known as Germany’s “Case #0,” the Shanghai patient is a “long-standing, proven employee from project management” who Engelmann knows personally, he told Reuters. The company has not revealed her identity or that of others involved, saying anonymity has encouraged staff to co-operate in Germany’s effort to contain the virus.

The task of finding who had contact with her was made easier by Webasto workers’ electronic calendars – for the most part, all the doctors needed was to look at staff appointments.

“It was a stroke of luck,” said Wendtner, the doctor who treated the Munich patients. “We got all the information we needed from the staff to reconstruct the chains of infection.”

For example, case #1 – the first person in Germany to be infected by the Chinese woman – sat next to her in a meeting in a small room on Jan. 20, the scientists wrote.

Where calendar data was incomplete, the scientists said, they were often able to use whole genome sequencing, which analyses differences in the genetic code of the virus from different patients, to map its spread.

By following all these links, they discovered that case #4 had been in contact several times with the Shanghai patient. Then case #4 sat back-to-back with a colleague in the canteen.

When that colleague turned to borrow the salt, the scientists deduced, the virus passed between them. The colleague became case #5.

Webasto said on Jan. 28 it was temporarily closing its Stockdorf site. Between Jan. 27 and Feb. 11, a total of 16 COVID-19 cases were identified in the Munich cluster. All but one were to develop symptoms.

All those who tested positive were sent to hospital so they could be observed and doctors could learn from the disease.

Bavaria closed down public life in mid-March. Germany has since closed schools, shops, restaurants, playgrounds and sports facilities, and many companies have shut to aid the cause.

HAMMER AND DANCE

This is not to say Germany has defeated COVID-19.

Its coronavirus death rate of 1.9%, based on data collated by Reuters, is the lowest among the countries most affected and compares with 12.6% in Italy. But experts say more deaths in Germany are inevitable.

“The death rate will rise,” said Lothar Wieler, president of Germany’s Robert Koch Institute for infectious diseases.

The difference between Germany and Italy is partly statistical: Germany’s rate seems so much lower because it has tested widely. Germany has carried out more than 1.3 million tests, according to the Robert Koch Institute. It is now carrying out up to 500,000 tests a week, Drosten said. Italy has conducted more than 807,000 tests since Feb. 21, according to its Civil Protection Agency. With a few local exceptions, Italy only tests people taken to hospital with clear and severe symptoms.

Germany’s government is using the weeks gained by the Munich experience to double the number of intensive care beds from about 28,000. The country already has Europe’s highest number of critical care beds per head of the population, according to a 2012 study.

Even that may not be enough, however. An Interior Ministry paper sent to other government departments on March 22 included a worst-case scenario with more than 1 million deaths.

Another scenario saw 12,000 deaths – with more testing after partial relaxation of restrictions. That scenario was dubbed “hammer and dance,” a term coined by blogger Tomas Pueyo. It refers to the ‘hammer’ of quick aggressive measures for some weeks, including heavy social distancing, followed by the ‘dance’ of calibrating such measures depending on the transmission rate.

The German government paper argued that in the ‘hammer and dance’ scenario, the use of big data and location tracking is inevitable. Such monitoring is already proving controversial in Germany, where memories of the East German Stasi secret police and its informants are still fresh in the minds of many.

A subsequent draft action plan compiled by the government proposes the rapid tracing of infection chains, mandatory mask-wearing in public and limits on gatherings to help enable a phased return to normal life after Germany’s lockdown. The government is backing the development of a smartphone app to help trace infections.

Germany has said it will re-evaluate the lockdown after the Easter holiday; for the car parts maker at the heart of its first outbreak, the immediate crisis is over. Webasto’s office has reopened.

All 16 people who caught COVID-19 there have recovered.

Source: Reuters

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02/04/2020

China’s race to produce ‘super pigs’ destined to fail amid haphazard biosecurity, experts say

  • China’s pig herd has begun to build again after African swine fever devastated hog populations across the country 18 months ago
  • Scientists are racing to create disease-resistant pigs, but analysts say that will be undermined by basic hygiene problems in China’s pork industry
China’s pork industry has been severely dented by African swine fever disease in the past 18 months. Photo: Bloomberg
China’s pork industry has been severely dented by African swine fever disease in the past 18 months. Photo: Bloomberg

China should focus less on developing disease-resistant “super pigs” to protect its hog herd from infection and do more to improve basic biosecurity, analysts say, as several companies claim to be close to a breakthrough treatment for African swine fever.

China’s hog herd has begun to steadily rebuild after swine fever spread across the country a year and a half ago, killing or forcing the culling of 60 per cent of the pig population, according to authorities.

But poor biosecurity – including the transport of pigs in filthy trucks and a lack of disinfection at farms – still threaten the industry, observers said.

There is no commercially available vaccine for the disease – which is not harmful to humans – but a number of researchers claim they are close.

Swine fever could kill 25% of the world’s pigs, scientists say
China’s Harbin Veterinary Research Institute, the country’s top research body on animal diseases, said last month it had developed a vaccine for African swine fever (ASF) that laboratory testing showed was safe and effective. However, it did not give a timetable on when it would be available for commercial use.

Meanwhile,Shandong Landsee Genetics, a company in China’s eastern Shandong province, was reported this week to have successfully bred ASF-resistant pigs. The pigs, called Lansibai-2, are from the large white breed, one of the most common raised in China.

When approached for comment, a spokeswoman for the company said the research was confidential and she was not authorised to speak to media.

Despite the apparent progress, analysts are generally sceptical that a silver bullet to prevent the disease will be developed on a large scale any time soon.

“Because this disease has been found in many countries, I don’t think there has been major progress [when it comes to eliminating the disease],” said Chenjun Pan, senior analyst for animal protein at Rabobank. “There have been some vaccines, but the effectiveness of the vaccines is not that satisfactory. So far there haven’t been any solutions from a medical perspective.”

There have been some vaccines, but the effectiveness of the vaccines is not that satisfactory – Chenjun Pan

China’s swine fever problem was complicated by an unwillingness from local governments to diagnose and report ASF cases, said E.W. Johnson, of Enable AgTech Consulting in Beijing. It was also complicated by basic hygiene problems, he added.

“Pigs with ASF are sold to slaughter every day, and dirty trucks are going everywhere, spreading the disease as much as they did when the ASF outbreak began,” Johnson said.

“There is no doubt that people are very excited and extremely zealous about these super-pigs. [But] China seems intent on living with ASF rather than getting rid of it.”

“The most important problem now is how to control the ASF epidemic, and this is not the way to do it,” said Feng Yonghui, chief analyst at pork industry website Soozhu.com. “The whole global industry recognises that the greatest preventive measure is improving biosecurity.”

he whole global industry recognises that the greatest preventive measure is improving biosecurity – E.W. Johnson

Improved hygiene can lower the risk of disease in production, said Feng, including sickness caused by bacteria and viruses, like transmissible gastroenteritis, a coronavirus found in pigs.
“It’s a system – you can’t just do one step in the process,” he said. “The whole industry has to study it, and we still need time to improve.”
Basic controls – like keeping pig transport trucks clean, or disinfecting protective equipment used by workers on pig farms – is simple but comes at a price, and some smaller pig farms are struggling to keep up.
China’s outbreak of African swine fever pushes pork off the Lunar New Year menu
“What we’re worried about are the people on the lower rungs of the ladder who aren’t able to keep up with better practises,” Feng said. “If we are to get pig stocks back up to where they were before the outbreak within three years, this is the key issue that stands in the way.”
China’s pork industry is at a turning point in production unlike at any other time in history, he said.
“In the past, when it came to upgrading production, or when the industry went into loss, all producers big and small began again at the same starting line,” he said. “That’s because there was no threat of disease. Now, those with money get to run first.”
Pork prices in China, the world’s top consumer and producer of pork, have surged since AFS began cutting back supply, driving margins up for both domestic and imported pork.
The world’s biggest pork processor, Hong Kong-listed WH Group, reported a 32 per cent jump in profits last year as record high pork prices in China boosted the value of the company’s exports from the United States and lifted margins on its China sales.
China’s deadly African swine fever epidemic is spreading across Asia
China’s total pork production in 2019 was 42.55 million tons, a decrease of 21.3 per cent from 2018, data from the National Bureau of Statistics showed. In 2018, the total pork output was 54.037 million tons, down 0.9 per cent from 2017.
While researchers race to find a cure for swine fever, new cases keep cropping up across the country. On Wednesday, the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs said local authorities in Sichuan had detected infections in piglets transported from outside the province.
Another outbreak was recorded in Inner Mongolia, where local authorities detected the disease in a herd of 200 piglets on a farm in Ordos city, which killed 92 of the animals, according to the agriculture industry.
Authorities are also monitoring cases of ASF in piglets smuggled into the country and would launch a 60-day investigation into illegal transport of hogs this month.
Source: SCMP

Posted in African swine fever, ASF-resistant pigs, ‘super pigs’, biosecurity, China’s race, destined, devastated, disease-resistant pigs, Enable AgTech Consulting, haphazard, Harbin Veterinary Research Institute, hog populations, hygiene problems, Inner Mongolia, Lansibai-2, Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs, national bureau of statistics, pig transport trucks, pork industry, produce, racing, scientists, Shandong Landsee Genetics, Shandong Luneng, sichuan province, Soozhu.com, to fail, Uncategorized, United States, WH Group | Leave a Comment »

02/04/2020

Shenzhen becomes first Chinese city to ban eating cats and dogs

A cat waiting to be adopted looks out of its cage at the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (RSPCA)Image copyright GETTY IMAGES
Image caption Most Chinese people don’t actually consume dogs and cats and never plan to

Shenzhen has become the first Chinese city to ban the sale and consumption of dog and cat meat.

It comes after the coronavirus outbreak was linked to wildlife meat, prompting Chinese authorities to ban the trade and consumption of wild animals.

Shenzhen went a step further, extending the ban to dogs and cats. The new law will come into force on 1 May.

Thirty million dogs a year are killed across Asia for meat, says Humane Society International (HSI).

However, the practice of eating dog meat in China is not that common – the majority of Chinese people have never done so and say don’t want to.

“Dogs and cats as pets have established a much closer relationship with humans than all other animals, and banning the consumption of dogs and cats and other pets is a common practice in developed countries and in Hong Kong and Taiwan,” the Shenzhen city government said, according to a Reuters report.

“This ban also responds to the demand and spirit of human civilization.”

Animal advocacy organisation HSI praised the move.

“This really could be a watershed moment in efforts to end this brutal trade that kills an estimated 10 million dogs and 4 million cats in China every year,” said Dr Peter Li, China policy specialist for HSI.

However, at the same time as this ruling, China approved the use of bear bile to treat coronavirus patients.

Bear bile – a digestive fluid drained from living captive bears – has long been used in traditional Chinese medicine.

The active ingredient, ursodeoxycholic acid, is used to dissolve gallstones and treat liver disease. But there is no proof that it is effective against the coronavirus and the process is painful and distressing for the animals

Brian Daly, a spokesman for the Animals Asia Foundation, told AFP: “We shouldn’t be relying on wildlife products like bear bile as the solution to combat a deadly virus that appears to have originated from wildlife.”

Banner image reading 'more about coronavirus'
Banner

A wildlife market

In February, Chinese authorities banned the trade and consumption of wild animals.

The move came after it emerged that a market in Wuhan selling wild animals and wildlife meat could have been the starting point for the outbreak of the new coronavirus, providing the means for the virus to travel from animals to humans.

News of this led the Chinese government to crack down strongly on the trade and on the markets that sold such products.

Covered market in ShenzhenImage copyright GETTY IMAGES
Image caption File photo of a wet market in China

There are now close to one million confirmed cases of the virus worldwide, and more than 47,000 deaths, according to a Johns Hopkins University tally.

In China alone, there are 81,589 confirmed cases and 3,318 deaths, said the National Health Commission.

Scientists and researchers are still no closer to finding out what the source of the virus is and how it could have spread to humans.

Source: The BBC

Posted in Animals Asia Foundation, ban, bear bile, captive bears, cats, Chinese city, chinese government, coronavirus outbreak, dissolve, dogs, eating, first, gallstones, Hong Kong, Humane Society International (HSI), humans, Johns Hopkins University, liver disease, Meat, National Health Commission, researchers, Reuters report, scientists, Shenzhen, source, spread, Taiwan, treat, Uncategorized, ursodeoxycholic acid, Virus, wet market, wildlife | Leave a Comment »

17/03/2020

China gives go-ahead for human trials of potential COVID-19 vaccine – state media

BEIJING (Reuters) – China has given the go-ahead for researchers to begin human safety tests of an experimental coronavirus vaccine in the race to develop a shot against the COVID-19 epidemic that has killed more than 7,000 people worldwide.

Researchers at China’s Academy of Military Medical Sciences, – affiliated to the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) -received approval to launch early-stage clinical trials of the potential vaccine starting this week, the ruling Communist Party’s People’s Daily reported on Tuesday.

Scientists in the United States said on Monday that clinical trials had begun for a vaccine developed by its National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and the U.S. biotech firm Moderna.

Details in the Chinese clinical trial registration database show that a “Phase 1” test that will examine whether experimental shot is safe in humans aims to recruit 108 healthy people to take part between March 16 and December 31.

The trial will be conducted by China’s Academy of Military Medical Sciences and the Hong Kong-listed biotech firm CanSino Biologics, the database showed.

Experts at the World Health Organization say they do not expect any fully tested and approved vaccine to reach the market until the middle of next year.

Source: Reuters

Posted in Academy of Military Medical Sciences, CanSino Biologics, China, Communist Party's, COVID-19, gives, go ahead, Human, Moderna, People’s Daily, People’s Liberation Army (PLA), potential, scientists, trials, U.S. biotech firm, Uncategorized, United States, Vaccine, World Health Organization | Leave a Comment »

23/10/2019

Have scientists discovered why China is so rich in rare earth elements the world’s smartphones need?

  • Chinese geologists think they have formula that could help to increase control of market in the elements hi-tech industries depend upon
  • Simple combination of clay mined for porcelain production, granite bedrock and acid rain could point to lucrative sources of rare earths
China has 80 per cent of the reserves of rare earth elements the world needs to keep talking on its smartphones, and geologists in Guangzhou think they know why. Photo: EPA
China has 80 per cent of the reserves of rare earth elements the world needs to keep talking on its smartphones, and geologists in Guangzhou think they know why. Photo: EPA
Geologists in southern China say they have isolated a series of critical factors that could make it easier to find rare earth elements used in hi-tech consumer goods such as smartphones.
China has more than 80 per cent of the world’s reserves of heavy rare earths such as terbium, dysprosium and holmium concentrated in a few provinces to the south of the country.
The reason for the concentration is one of the biggest puzzles in geology, but researchers at the Guangzhou Institute of Geochemistry in Guangdong province say the answer may be found in a combination of clay deposits, acid rain and granite that is distinctive to southern China.

Professor He Hongping and his colleagues came to the conclusion by testing the interaction between rare earths and different types of clay. Through their research they found that kaolinite – or china clay – was the best at absorbing rare earths from water.

The clay, named after Gaoling village near Jingdezhen, a centuries-old ceramic production centre in east China’s Jiangxi province, is a raw material for porcelain production.

While kaolinite is found in many countries, those places do not have rare earth deposits – probably because of the lack of acid rain, He said.

“You need the right environment.”

He said that rocks that contained tiny amounts of rare earth elements weathered faster in an acid environment, but the acidity could not be too high or the rare earth might run off before it could be captured by the clay.

Why Beijing cut tax rate on rare earths amid trade war

Rainwater with the right natural acidity often occurred in areas around 20 degrees latitude, such as southern China, he said.

The last step was to locate the source rock. Granite formed in volcanic eruptions between 100 million and 200 million years ago is considered to be the main source of rare earths.

He said that part of the Pacific tectonic plate containing rare elements might have been forced under the Eurasian Plate and was pushed to the surface as magma that formed rocks.

Other countries could learn from the Chinese experience, said He, whose team submitted their findings to the research journal Chemical Geology.

Recent discoveries in Vietnam, Australia and North Carolina in the United States conformed to the Guangzhou team’s theory, but there was still more research to do, he said.

“Rare earth deposits are quite unlike minerals such as copper. Sometimes they occur in this mountain but not in another nearby with almost the same geological features. Sometimes they occur in one half of the mountain but not in the other.”

With China and the US engaged in a trade war, and Beijing cutting taxes on mining companies looking for these elements, the pressure was on to unlock the secrets of China’s abundant rare earth deposits, he said.

Does China’s dominance in rare earths hold leverage in trade war?

Dr Huang Fan, associate researcher with the China Geological Survey, said the Guangzhou discovery would help geologists to find more rare earths.

Most rare earth mines were located along the borders between provinces such as Guangdong and Jiangxi, but recently there were discoveries on a plateau in Yunnan province, where few geologists believed rare earths could be found, he said.

“There are many more rare earth deposits out there waiting for us.”

Source: SCMP

Posted in Acid rain, Australia, Chemical Geology, China alert, china clay, China Geological Survey, copper, discovered, dysprosium, formula, Gaoling, geologists, granite bedrock, Guangdong, guangdong province, Guangzhou, Guangzhou Institute of Geochemistry, hi-tech industries, holmium, Jiangxi Province, Jingdezhen, kaolinite, porcelain production, rare earth elements, rich, scientists, smartphones, terbium, trade war, Uncategorized, United States, Vietnam | Leave a Comment »

04/10/2019

Have scientists discovered why China is so rich in rare earth elements the world’s smartphones need?

Chinese geologists think they have formula that could help to increase control of market in the elements hi-tech industries depend upon

  • Simple combination of clay mined for porcelain production, granite bedrock and acid rain could point to lucrative sources of rare earths
China has 80 per cent of the reserves of rare earth elements the world needs to keep talking on its smartphones, and geologists in Guangzhou think they know why. Photo: EPA
China has 80 per cent of the reserves of rare earth elements the world needs to keep talking on its smartphones, and geologists in Guangzhou think they know why. Photo: EPA
Geologists in southern China say they have isolated a series of critical factors that could make it easier to find rare earth elements used in hi-tech consumer goods such as smartphones.
China has more than 80 per cent of the world’s reserves of heavy rare earths such as terbium, dysprosium and holmium concentrated in a few provinces to the south of the country.
The reason for the concentration is one of the biggest puzzles in geology, but researchers at the Guangzhou Institute of Geochemistry in Guangdong province say the answer may be found in a combination of clay deposits, acid rain and granite that is distinctive to southern China.

Professor He Hongping and his colleagues came to the conclusion by testing the interaction between rare earths and different types of clay. Through their research they found that kaolinite – or china clay – was the best at absorbing rare earths from water.

The clay, named after Gaoling village near Jingdezhen, a centuries-old ceramic production centre in east China’s Jiangxi province, is a raw material for porcelain production.

While kaolinite is found in many countries, those places do not have rare earth deposits – probably because of the lack of acid rain, He said.

“You need the right environment.”

He said that rocks that contained tiny amounts of rare earth elements weathered faster in an acid environment, but the acidity could not be too high or the rare earth might run off before it could be captured by the clay.

Why Beijing cut tax rate on rare earths amid trade war

Rainwater with the right natural acidity often occurred in areas around 20 degrees latitude, such as southern China, he said.

The last step was to locate the source rock. Granite formed in volcanic eruptions between 100 million and 200 million years ago is considered to be the main source of rare earths.

He said that part of the Pacific tectonic plate containing rare elements might have been forced under the Eurasian Plate and was pushed to the surface as magma that formed rocks.

Other countries could learn from the Chinese experience, said He, whose team submitted their findings to the research journal Chemical Geology.

Recent discoveries in Vietnam, Australia and North Carolina in the United States conformed to the Guangzhou team’s theory, but there was still more research to do, he said.

“Rare earth deposits are quite unlike minerals such as copper. Sometimes they occur in this mountain but not in another nearby with almost the same geological features.

Sometimes they occur in one half of the mountain but not in the other.”

With China and the US engaged in a trade war, and Beijing cutting taxes on mining companies looking for these elements, the pressure was on to unlock the secrets of China’s abundant rare earth deposits, he said.

Does China’s dominance in rare earths hold leverage in trade war?

Dr Huang Fan, associate researcher with the China Geological Survey, said the Guangzhou discovery would help geologists to find more rare earths.

Most rare earth mines were located along the borders between provinces such as Guangdong and Jiangxi, but recently there were discoveries on a plateau in Yunnan province, where few geologists believed rare earths could be found, he said.

“There are many more rare earth deposits out there waiting for us.”

Source: SCMP

Posted in Acid rain, Australia, ceramic production centre, Chemical Geology, China alert, China Geological Survey, Chinese geologists, clay, control, copper, discovered, dysprosium, elements, Eurasian Plate, formula, Gaoling, geologists, granite bedrock, guangdong province, Guangzhou, Guangzhou Institute of Geochemistry, hi-tech industries, holmium, Jiangxi Province, Jingdezhen, kaolinite, lucrative sources, market, mined, need, Pacific tectonic plate, porcelain production, rare earth elements, rare earths, rich, scientists, smartphones, terbium, Uncategorized, United States, Vietnam, World | Leave a Comment »

19/09/2019

Int’l fellowship program shares China’s development with world

LANZHOU, Sept. 18 (Xinhua) — A total of 26 participants from 21 countries including Brazil, New Zealand and the United States attended the closing ceremony of the Gansu International Fellowship Program held Tuesday in the capital city of Lanzhou, northwest China’s Gansu Province.

Held by the provincial government, the 30-day program, starting from Aug. 20, focused on China’s overall development in areas such as the economy, society and culture, as well as its anti-poverty campaign.

Economic experts, scientists and sociologists from local universities and research institutes as well as government departments were invited to share their experience and give lectures.

During the program, all participants visited the Mogao Grottoes, a UNESCO World Heritage site. Based on the culture courses, they exchanged ideas with local officials and experts.

“I was very impressed with the comprehensive structure planning being undertaken to turn Lanzhou and Gansu as a whole into a major hub of China,” said Robert Love, a strategy and policy planner with Selwyn District Council, New Zealand, after his visit to the Lanzhou Urban Planning Exhibition Hall.

Philippe Dall’Agnol, a state attorney from Brazil, told Xinhua that China’s poverty alleviation efforts and means of increasing production were particularly worth studying, adding that when he returns to Brazil, he will continue to be a messenger of peace and a bridge of friendship, to actively promote exchanges and cooperation between the two countries.

Since it was initiated in 2006, a total of 309 participants from 62 countries have graduated from the program, making it an important platform for international exchanges and cooperation.

Source: Xinhua

Posted in anti-poverty campaign, Brazil, China's development, closing ceremony, Culture, Economic experts, economy, experience, Gansu International Fellowship Program, Gansu Province, government departments, Int'l fellowship program, Lanzhou, Lanzhou Urban Planning Exhibition Hall, lectures, local universities, Mogao Grottoes, New Zealand, poverty alleviation efforts, research institutes, scientists, Selwyn District Council, share, society, sociologists, Uncategorized, unesco world heritage site, United States, World, Xinhua News Agency | Leave a Comment »

06/09/2019

Chinese medicine herbs could defeat devastating cotton virus, study suggests

  • Scientists find some chemicals can kill the cotton leaf curl Multan virus and others can boost cotton plants’ immunity to it
  • It is feared the virus could wreak havoc in China’s Xinjiang region, which produces most of the country’s cotton
A cotton picker in Xinjiang, where cases of the virus have been reported. Photo: Xinhua
A cotton picker in Xinjiang, where cases of the virus have been reported. Photo: Xinhua

Chinese scientists have found chemicals in medicinal herbs that could tame a destructive plant virus threatening the cotton industry in its western Xinjiang region.

Some small-molecule chemicals in herbs commonly used in Chinese medicine can effectively suppress cotton leaf curl Multan virus, according to ongoing research led by Professor Ye Jian at the Institute of Microbiology in Beijing.

By targeting WRKY20, a gene in the virus’ DNA, the chemicals could disrupt the viral infection and transmission, Ye’s team found.

Some early findings from their research were published last month in the journal Science Advances.

The leaf curl virus – a species of Begomovirus, the largest genus of plant viruses – poses a significant threat to the world’s cotton plantations, causing leaf curling, stunted growth and lower yields of cotton fibre. It costs the cotton industry in the Indian subcontinent about US$1 billion a year, according to a press release about the study from the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

Were there to be a pandemic in China, the drop in output and measures to contain it could cost the cotton farming industry 50 billion yuan (US$7 billion), according to some researchers’ estimates, the academy added.

The first known cases of the virus in China over the past decade were limited to coastal areas in the country’s east, but several cases have now been reported in Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region.

“We are running out of time,” Ye told the South China Morning Post.

Cotton is a pillar industry in Xinjiang, which provides more than 80 per cent of China’s total cotton production. The industry also contributes up to 50 per cent of the income of farmers involved in it, according to government statistics.

Exact figures for infections in the region are not available, but outbreaks so far remain isolated, according to Ye and other researchers with knowledge of the situation.

Double threat to China’s cotton industry: warmer weather and mirid bug

However, Professor Gao Feng, cotton researcher at the Agricultural College of Shihezi University in Xinjiang, warned that leaf curl virus could reduce cotton production in an infected field to almost zero.

“A large-scale outbreak has not occurred yet, but the threat is very serious and people are very nervous,” Gao told the Post. “We are in desperate need of a solution.”

The challenges facing China’s pork industry highlight the danger viruses can pose to the domestic market. A swine fever outbreak that has wiped out 100 million pigs caused pork prices to rise, forcing China to look to new countries to import from, such as Portugal and Argentina.

Its biggest overseas supplier of cotton is the United States, with which it is locked in a protracted trade war. In July, the government allowed some Chinese companies to buy a total of 50,000 tonnes of cotton from the US without tariffs being charged.

The central and regional governments fear that falling incomes caused by the impact of an outbreak on the cotton industry would increase the risk of ethnic conflict, social instability and anti-government thoughts.

Ye’s team adopted two approaches to fighting the virus.

How trade war with the US is changing China’s cotton industry

Some chemicals they discovered could improve cotton plants’ immunity against the infection by stimulating them to generate an antibody that killed the virus. The other chemicals they found could target the virus, directly reducing its intensity.

“They can be used as sprays,” Ye said, adding that he planned to reveal the chemical composites and related herbs in a paper to be published in a peer-reviewed journal in the coming months.

The discovery could offer an environmental benefit, too. Cotton farmers in Xinjiang use pesticides to deter the whiteflies that transmit the virus, but their overuse has affected Xinjiang’s delicate ecology, which in its desert areas is particularly vulnerable to disturbance.

In the agricultural research community, there is growing concern that some whitefly species will become resistant to pesticides. “If that happens, we will have a major problem,” Ye said.

He said the chemicals identified in the ongoing study would not harm the environment.

“These chemicals come from plants, so the negative impact to the environment would be minimal,” he said.

The study also found that it may be possible to use the cotton leaf curl Multan virus to benefit farmers. It stimulates cotton plants to generate a chemical that is harmful to other insects, such as the bollworm, that compete with whiteflies for food, meaning that it could be genetically modified into a pest control agent.

Most cotton species in commercial plantations are genetically modified to produce an insecticide to kill bollworm. Ye said a man-made virus could reduce the dependence on genetically modified plants.

Source: SCMP

Posted in Agricultural College of Shihezi University, agricultural research community, Argentina, Begomovirus, Beijing, bollworm, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Chinese medicine herbs, cotton, cotton leaf curl Multan virus, cotton virus, defeat, devastating, ethnic conflict, indian subcontinent, Institute of Microbiology, pandemic, pork industry, Portugal, Science Advances, scientists, social instability, south china morning post, swine fever outbreak, Uncategorized, whiteflies, wreak havoc, xinjiang region, Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region | Leave a Comment »

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