China's icebreaker Xuelong docks at an ice covered area in the Antarctic during a 2014 expedition. [Photo/Sina Weibo] China's first home-built polar research vessel and ice breaker has been named Xuelong 2, or Snow Dragon 2, according to a report of Science and Technology Daily on Tuesday. The construction of the ship, jointly designed by China State Shipbuilding Corporation and Finland-based Aker Arctic Technology, was launched by Jiangnan Shipyard (Group) in December. The new vessel will be 122.5 meters long and be able to break through 1.5-meter thick ice at a maximum speed of 3 knots, said the Polar Research Institute of China. Xuelong 2 is scheduled to be completed in 2019, when it will team up with the country's currently only icebreaker Xuelong to form a polar research fleet, conducting scientific research missions and supplying resources to polar regions. Xuelong, the country's first icebreaker, was built in Ukraine and put into service in 1994. China first sent an expedition team to the Antarctic in 1984. Since then, the country has established four scientific research stations in the Antarctic. wristbands with a messagemotivational wristbands for athletespink wristbands bulkballer bands24 hour wristbands coupon codejordan wristbandyouth wristbands
For the first time, scientists have successfully obtained the genome of a man who lived 40,000 years ago in China. The man from Tianyuan Cave in Beijing becomes the oldest individual whose genome researchers have obtained in East Asia. Chinese and foreign scientists probed the sequences of the ancient man while studying the structure of ancient populations. In 2013, Fu Qiaomei, a female researcher from the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology under Chinese Academy of Sciences, investigated the sequences of chromosome 21. Scientists later drew other chromosomes. Fu told thepaper.cn that the Tianyuan individual's genome was not a complete set as it lacked some gene segments, but it contained the data of most sites that researchers are interested in comparing population genetics. The scientists discovered that the man's genes had more in common with ancient and present-day East and Southeast Asians than any Basal Eurasian ancestry. They also found that he shared more alleles with a 35,000-year-old European individual found in Belgium. The discovery showed that there was not a single population split between early Europeans and early Asians, Fu said. Meanwhile, scientists also discovered that the present-day East Asians do not share any direct genetic ancestry with the man, indicating the diversity of humans living in Asia 40,000 years ago.
