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Photo from Yunnan University of Finance and Economics shows Chinese and British scientists discussing issues in a tea garden in Fengqing County, southwest China’s Yunnan Province on Nov 10, 2024. – Xinhua photo KUNMING (Nov 22): Li Shaojuan, a female meteorologist, has been regularly visiting muddy tea plantations in China’s southwestern mountainous region over the past decade, in her bid to help local farmers cope with climate challenges. Li, a professor at Yunnan University of Finance and Economics, visits the plantations in Fengqing and Baoshan counties, Yunnan Province, four to five times a year to do field studies aimed at better climate forecasting and service solutions. As one of the core origins of tea trees in the world, Fengqing was part of the ancient Tea Horse Road, a trade route dating back to the Tang Dynasty (618-907), and features tea gardens that are harvested three times a year – in spring, summer and autumn. Climate change is becoming a growing concern in terms of both the quality and yield of its tea crops. “Especially in spring, the likes of cold snaps, hail and drought make the most precious spring tea period unproductive,” said Zhang Guoqin, who runs a local tea company, adding that in summer, excessive rainfall fosters wet diseases, while higher temperatures and humidity fuel the spread of pests. “We interviewed local tea farmers, and distributed questionnaires to them, hoping to understand their specific needs in detail,” Li said. The scope of the interviews also included consumers, tea processing factories, refining factories, dealers, trade companies and more. Li is among a group of Chinese and British atmospheric scientists who aim to use their expertise to provide tea farmers with more accurate weather forecasting services – and help them better adapt to frequent meteorological disasters. These scientists have developed mathematical models based on data revealing meteorological factors that affect tea tree growth and tea production. “We need to understand how these factors influence tea cultivation and production before determining what type of weather forecasting to provide,” Li explained. Annual predictions of both tea yield and quality can guide farmers in purchasing agricultural insurance to protect their income and ensure a stable market supply. Subseasonal-to-seasonal forecasts can help farmers determine the optimal timing and strategies for activities such as harvesting fresh leaves, initial processing, fertilisation, and pest and disease management, she said. “We hope our predictions will give farmers insights into climate trends and anomalies, helping them plan production and field management to ensure consistent tea harvests,” Li added. However, this process is far from straightforward. Li revealed that inconsistencies between their initial research and real-world conditions often require them to revisit their models or conduct additional field studies. “We’re not just studying data – we’re studying living tea trees,” Li said. “It’s a challenging process, but also one full of joy, because scientific research is about the constant pursuit of truth.” Li’s work is part of a larger collaboration between China and the UK. The Climate Science for Service Partnership China (CSSP China) project, launched in 2014 by the UK Met Office, the China Meteorological Administration, and the Institute of Atmospheric Physics (IAP) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, aims to build climate-resilient services for economic and social development. With more countries facing extreme climate events, there is an urgent need to improve international collaboration and build services to enhance society’s resilience in the face of the impacts of climate change, Rowan Sutton, director of the UK Met Office Hadley Centre for Climate Science and Services, said at the CSSP China annual workshop held early this month. So far, this initiative has developed several climate service prototypes, including seasonal rainfall forecasts for the Yangtze River Basin, the maize yield in northeastern China, and the tea industry in Yunnan Province. Photo from the Institute of Atmospheric Physics (IAP) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences shows tea trees at a tea garden in Fengqing County, southwest China’s Yunnan Province on Aug 7, 2024. – Xinhua photo Li’s research in Yunnan Province is being complemented by similar studies in the UK. “We’re conducting case studies in Devon and Scotland, and we hope to complement our research by doing comparative studies between the two countries, where tea trees are grown in different environments,” said Stacey New, an expert from the UK Met Office. The team has found that the impacts of climate change on the tea industry vary widely depending on location, elevation and farming practices. “Therefore, there is no one-size-fits-all solution for climate change adaptation in the tea sector, and climate services need to be tailored and customised to the specific circumstances and needs of the stakeholders,” said New. The team’s research results have been detailed in a paper recently published in the journal Advances in Atmospheric Sciences. “The CSSP China project is a good example of Sino-British cooperation to jointly address climate change,” said Zhou Tianjun, deputy director of the IAP, adding that the experience gained could be expanded to other tea-growing regions and may even apply to other crops like coffee and sugarcane. In addition to weather forecasting, Li has also been looking into ancient farming practices in her quest for answers. She recently discovered an ancient tea plantation in southwest China, where the tea trees are hundreds of years old but still produce harvestable leaves of good quality. What sets this plantation apart is its natural and biodiverse ecosystem, which has made it more resilient to climate extremes. For example, among the diverse tree species in the ancient plantation, the alder tree plays a key role as a nitrogen-fixing plant, enhancing soil fertility. Additionally, the ground beneath tea trees there is typically covered with grass and a thick layer of humus, which helps retain moisture and regulate temperature, enhancing tea trees’ resilience to adverse weather conditions, she said. Li believes this ancient approach could hold valuable insights for modern tea farmers. “The ancient tea garden is an ecosystem that resists climate change,” she said. “I hope to integrate this wisdom into today’s tea cultivation practices to help more farmers adapt to climate challenges.” In Chinese character glyphs, the word for tea depicts a person between a blade of grass and a tree, symbolising the harmony between humans and nature. “Perhaps the answers to many of our scientific questions are hidden in these ancient practices and the wisdom of the ecosystem,” Li speculated. “A closer integration with nature could be the key to addressing climate change in the future,” she added. – XinhuaSUNLU Formnext 2024 Event Highlights: From Functional Filaments to FilaDryer E2sports attire for pageant 。

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Donald Trump will ring the New York Stock Exchange bell as he's named Time's Person of the YearYou share a lot more than just meals and hobbies with your family and friends: you also give each other gut microbes, meaning your personal flora can serve as a detailed profile of your social life. A new study has found just how much face-to-face social interactions impact the human gut microbiome. The study, led by Yale University researchers Francesco Beghini and Jackson Pullman, involved pairing a social network map of 1,787 adults living in isolated villages in Honduras with a detailed analysis of the microbes that live in each participant's gut. "[It] was a long labor of love (if one can use that expression for the collection of hundreds of stool specimens from isolated jungle villages)," sociologist and physician Nicholas Christakis, also from Yale, told ScienceAlert. They also collected information on the villagers' social networks to create a detailed picture of who spent time with who in the community. The data is drawn from a larger project that began in 2013 in collaboration with local and regional public health agencies and local leaders, and was used not only for research but to provide diagnosis and treatment for participants whose samples reflected a need. Participants were instructed on how to collect their own stool samples and passed them on to a local team who put them on ice and shipped them off to the US for analysis. While the larger project involved 176 villages, for this study the team chose to focus on data from 18 particularly isolated villages in the western highlands of Honduras. "W e needed to study isolated populations for our work, where social ties were within a circumscribed community – hence these isolated villages," Christakis explained. They plan to conduct similar studies in other parts of the world, like Greece, to see how things compare across different cultures, but Christakis thinks that even this study of remote villages in Honduras offers a universal insight into how human microbiomes are molded by our social structures. "W e believe our findings are of generic relevance, not bound to the specific location we did this work, shedding light on how human social interactions shape the nature and impact of the microbes in our bodies." They found that microbial species and strains are shared not only between families, but other non-familial and non-household connections – close friends, for instance. They also found that the gut flora of socially central people – those who have a greater number of social connections in the community – is more similar to the overall village than people who live on the social periphery. And that strain-sharing amplifies through social connections over time: among 301 people whose microbiome was measured again after two years, the gut flora strains of those who had more face-to-face connections had become more similar to each other than among otherwise similar co-villagers who were less socially connected. For those who find themselves increasingly isolated from face-to-face interactions, reduced contact with others is almost certain to play a role in their microbiome's makeup. "If you are physically and hence socially isolated, you have different microbes than if you are a social butterfly," Christakis explained. But we don't yet know whether that's for better or worse. As with most biological phenomena, it probably depends on many factors. " The sharing of microbes per se is neither good nor bad, but the sharing of particular microbes in particular circumstances can indeed be good or bad," said Christakis. "For instance, after a person takes antibiotics, their guts may be denuded of healthy microbes , and they must be recolonized with the healthy, normal microbes we need to function. This recolonization likely often occurs via social interactions." Christakis pointed out that studies have linked gut microbiomes with mental and physical health conditions that aren't otherwise considered biologically contagious, like obesity , depression , and arthritis . This research suggests that community structure may have an impact on how the microbial profiles of those conditions might emerge. This research was published in Nature .

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The House of Assembly will be in session on Friday [Dec 6] and statements listed on the Order Paper include the tabling of Amendments to the Clean Air Act 2024, the Bermuda College Annual Report 2023-2024, the Cruise Ship Season 2025 and the 2023-2024 Annual Report of the Department of Financial Assistance. : , ,

CLARKSVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — Chase Artopoeus threw two touchdown passes and ran for a score to lead Chattanooga to a 24-17 victory over Austin Peay in a nonconference regular-season finale on Saturday. Chattanooga (7-5) jumped out to a 10-0 first-quarter lead on Jude Kelley's 28-yard field goal and Artopoeus' 9-yard touchdown toss to Javin Whatley with 42 seconds left. The score came five plays after Alex Mitchell intercepted a pass from Austin Smith, giving the Mocs the ball at the Governors' 26-yard line. Austin Peay answered in the second quarter with help from a Chattanooga turnover. Ellis Ellis Jr. picked off Artopoeus and the Governors took over at the Mocs' 30. Smith completed three straight passes — the last one covering 4 yards to Jaden Barnes to get Austin Peay within three points. Carson Smith followed with a 35-yard field goal to tie it at 10. Chattanooga regained the lead with 4:01 left in the third quarter when Artopoeus capped a nine-play drive with a 3-yard touchdown run. Smith had a 23-yard touchdown run to get Austin Peay within seven with 8:08 left in the game. The Governors drove to the Mocs' 30, but Smith's fourth-down pass fell incomplete with 41 seconds to go. Artopoeus completed 15 of 21 passes for 161 yards for Chattanooga. He had a 7-yard scoring toss to John McIntyre to put the Mocs up 24-10 early in the final quarter. Smith finished with 192 yards on 21-for-36 passing for Austin Peay, which finishes its first season under head coach Jeff Faris with a 4-8 record. Rusty Wright became the first Chattanooga coach to finish .500 or better in each of his first six seasons. Chattanooga snapped Austin Peay's nine-game win streak with a 24-21 victory on the road to close out the regular season last year. Get poll alerts and updates on the AP Top 25 throughout the season. Sign up here . AP college football: https://apnews.com/hub/ap-top-25-college-football-poll and https://apnews.com/hub/college-football

JAMES MADISON 71, JACKSONVILLE STATE 65

Dyskinetic Cerebral Palsy: A Closer Look at Symptoms, Diagnosis and Clinical Research UnderwayCollege Football Playoff's first 12-team bracket is set with Oregon No. 1 and SMU in, Alabama out SMU captured the last open spot in the 12-team College Football Playoff, bumping Alabama to land in a bracket that placed undefeated Oregon at No. 1. The selection committee preferred the Mustangs, losers of a heartbreaker in the Atlantic Coast Conference title game, who had a far less difficult schedule than Alabama of the SEC but one fewer loss. The inaugural 12-team bracket marks a new era for college football, though the Alabama-SMU debate made clear there is no perfect formula. The tournament starts Dec. 20-21 with four first-round games. It concludes Jan. 20 with the national title game in Atlanta. Alabama left out of playoff as committee rewards SMU's wins over Crimson Tide's strong schedule The College Football Playoff committee took wins over strength of schedule, taking SMU over Alabama for the final at-large spot in the field. The field was expanded from four to 12 teams this season, but that didn’t save the committee from controversy. SMU showed it could compete against a traditional power, losing to Clemson 34-31 on a 56-yard field goal in the ACC title game on Saturday. Alabama had some ups and downs in its first season under coach Kalen DeBoer. The Crimson Tide had quality wins against Georgia and South Carolina, but lost at Vanderbilt, Tennessee and Oklahoma. Big Ten wins playoff selection derby, followed by SEC despite notable Alabama omission College football’s conference shakeup left concerns about two super conferences dominating the playoff field. They weren’t totally unfounded, or 100% born out. The Big Ten, not the Southeastern Conference, was the biggest winner. The ACC scored, too. The Big Ten led the initial 12-team playoff field with four making the cut, topped by a No. 1 Oregon team that was part of the Pac-12 exodus. Then came the SEC — and one notable omission. ACC runner-up SMU got the nod over college football blue-blood Alabama, another blemish in Kalen DeBoer’s first season as Nick Saban’s championship-or-bust successor. Darnold delivers for Vikings with career-high 347 yards and 5 TDs to beat Falcons, Cousins 42-21 MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — Sam Darnold threw for 347 yards and five touchdowns, both career highs, and the Minnesota Vikings pulled away from Kirk Cousins and the Atlanta Falcons 42-21 for their sixth straight victory. Darnold added another highlight to his brilliant first season with the Vikings following Cousins' departure in free agency to Atlanta with a 22-for-28 performance and no turnover-worthy plays despite heavy first-half pressure. Jordan Addison had eight catches for 133 yards and three scores and Justin Jefferson racked up seven receptions for 132 yards and two touchdowns. Cousins threw two more interceptions without a touchdown in his return to Minnesota. Saquon Barkley sets Eagles season rushing record and has Dickerson's NFL mark in his sights PHILADELPHIA (AP) — Saquon Barkley has broken LeSean McCoy's Eagles franchise record for rushing yards in a season. Barkley has 1,623 yards. He surpassed McCoy's mark of 1,607 yards with a 9-yard run in Sunday's 22-16 win over Carolina. Barkley finished the game with 124 yards, within a yard of his season average. He has four games left and is on pace to break Eric Dickerson's 40-year-old NFL record of 2,105 yards. Dickerson set that record in a 16-game season and Barkley has one more game. Eagles fans serenaded Barkley with “MVP!” chants and McCoy congratulated him on social media. Saints QB Derek Carr injures left hand on dive in 4th quarter of win over Giants EAST RUTHERFORD, N.J. (AP) — New Orleans Saints quarterback Derek Carr injured his left hand late in the fourth quarter of Sunday’s 14-11 victory over the New York Giants when he went airborne while trying for a first down and crashed to the turf. Carr tried to leap over a Giants tackler and landed at the New Orleans 39-yard line, extending his non-throwing hand to break his fall. He was on the turf for a minute or two before walking to the medical tent. He was examined and slowly walked to an area where X-rays are done. The injury could hurt the already slim playoff hopes of the Saints. Tamar Bates scores 29 points to help Missouri beat No. 1 Kansas 76-67 COLUMBIA, Mo. (AP) — Tamar Bates had 29 points and five steals to help Missouri beat Hunter Dickinson and No. 1 Kansas 76-67. Mark Mitchell scored 17 points in Missouri’s first win over Kansas since a 74-71 victory on Feb. 4, 2012. Anthony Robinson II had 11 points and five steals for the 8-1 Tigers. Dickinson had 19 points and 14 rebounds, but he also committed seven turnovers. The 7-2 Jayhawks have lost two straight on the road after falling 76-63 against Creighton on Wednesday night. Scottie Scheffler ends his big year in the Bahamas with his 9th victory NASSAU, Bahamas (AP) — Scottie Scheffler ended his biggest year with another victory. Scheffler was coming off a two-month break and looked as good as ever. He shot 63 in the Hero World Challenge and set tournament records at Albany with a 72-hole total of 263 and a six-shot victory. Tom Kim was the runner-up and Justin Thomas finished third. Scheffler ends his year with nine victories in 21 tournaments. That includes the holiday tournament in the Bahamas and the Olympic gold medal in Paris. It's the third-highest winning percentage in the last 40 years. Tournament host Tiger Woods had two better years. Lindsey Vonn is encouraged by how close she is to being competitive in ski racing return at age 40 COPPER MOUNTAIN, Colo. (AP) — Lindsey Vonn is encouraged by how close she is to being competitive again in her ski racing return at 40 years old. Vonn is still getting her ski equipment dialed in and getting used to going full speed again on her new titanium knee. That’s why all that she's reading into being more than two seconds behind in a pair of lower-level super-G races Sunday is that she’s right there. This after nearly six years away from ski racing and an abbreviated prep period. She was 2.19 seconds behind in the first race and 2.06 in the second. Both were won by her American teammate Lauren Macuga. Plane circles MetLife Stadium with message to co-owner John Mara to fix the Giants' 'dumpster fire' EAST RUTHERFORD, N.J. (AP) — A small plane circled MetLife Stadium roughly 90 minutes before New York was to play host to the New Orleans Saints on Sunday, asking Giants co-owner John Mara to overhaul the team that has made the playoffs twice since winning the Super Bowl in February 2012. “Mr. Mara, enough. Please fix this dumpster fire!” the message read as it was towed behind the rear of a small plane.

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