Chinese ambivalence on coal
In 2021, Chinese President Xi Jinping announced that the Middle Kingdom would reduce its coal consumption from 2026. And yet, last year China approved 82 new coal-fired power plants each week, a record in 15 years. . These new power plants represent 5% of the current capacity, which is 60% coal-fired, according to the report by two American and Finnish NGOs, unveiled at the end of February.
Quiz
PHOTO PROVIDED BY THE UNIVERSITY OF HANOVER
A pilot whale, a type of toothed whale
What discovery did Scandinavian biologists make about the vocalizations of toothed whales?
Even though these vocalizations are emitted through the nose rather than the larynx, like terrestrial mammals, the mechanism involved is identical. The nose is the voice organ of toothed whales because it is less affected by changes in depth pressure, researchers explain in early March in the journal Science.
The number
PHOTO S. STEISS, UNIVERSITY OF BERLIN
Egyptian drawing of the Syrian goddess Astarte on horseback from 1000 BC, unearthed in Sinai
4500 years
This is the age of the oldest evidence of riding, found in Romania by archaeologists from half a dozen European countries. This discovery, announced at the beginning of March in Science Advances, represents the missing link between the domestication of the horse 5,500 years ago and the first chariots, 4,000 years ago. Researchers found skeletal trauma typical of riding in 9 out of 24 individuals from a location in Strejnicu, north of Bucharest. The use of the horse appeared in the Yamna culture, which at the time covered the steppes surrounding the northern Black Sea.
A millennium of floods
PHOTO WIKIMEDIA COMMONS
The Yellow River, China
The Yellow River floods in China have been 10 times more frequent in the past millennium than in the previous 10,000 years. This new study from Shandong University, between Beijing and Shanghai, shows that the intensification of agriculture and, paradoxically, attempts to contain seasonal flooding with embankments are responsible for this calamity. The 1887 flood is considered the worst in human history, with nearly a million deaths. The authors of the new study, published at the end of February in Science Advanceswarn that human activities are as important, if not more important for the risk of flooding than climate change.
100 years of Acfas
IMAGE PROVIDED BY BORÉAL
For the advancement of science – History of Acfas (1923-2023)by Yves Gingras
The Francophone Association for Knowledge is celebrating its 100th anniversary today. For the occasion, UQAM historian Yves Gingras updates his “biography” of Acfas published for his 75e anniversary. A third of the book has been updated, including a section on the debates around the name change at the beginning of the millennium, and the beginning of the involvement of English-speaking universities in Quebec.