Latest news with #scientists
South China Morning Post
4 hours ago
- Science
- South China Morning Post
Chinese scientists create edible fruit coating that ‘more than doubles' shelf life
Chinese scientists have developed an edible, washable protein-based coating that can extend the shelf life of fruits by 2½ times, by reducing moisture loss and microbial growth. Advertisement The low-cost coating was tested across 17 varieties of whole and cut fruits, including strawberry, tomato, kiwi and mango. It was shown to effectively delay rot by almost a week or more, at a cost of just 9 US cents per kilogram of fruit, according to a recent paper in the peer-reviewed journal Nature Communications. The new strategy is as effective as existing preservation methods but reduces carbon dioxide emissions and the potential for toxicity, offering a promising solution to a major factor in global food waste 'Addressing critical challenges in perishable fruit preservation…we present an eco-friendly amyloid-like protein coating strategy developed through computer-aided molecular simulation,' the team led by researchers at Shaanxi Normal University said in their paper published on May 31. 'With edible properties, easy washability, and low cost, the coating demonstrates universal applicability for post-harvest and fresh-cut fruits.' Advertisement Around a third of all food produced globally is wasted, most of it perishable items like fruits and vegetables.
Daily Mail
4 hours ago
- Climate
- Daily Mail
Scientists blame climate change for the UK heatwave: 32°C temperatures were made 100 TIMES more likely by global warming.
As the UK braces for the first heatwave of 2025, scientists warn that climate change is responsible. This weekend's 32°C (90°F) forecast was made 100 times more likely by global warming, according to the research group World Weather Attribution. Before humans began to alter the climate with fossil fuels, the UK would only see these temperatures in June once every 2,500 years. Today, Britons should expect to be hit by similar life-threatening extremes once every 25 years. Due to human activity, the planet's climate is now 1.3°C (2.34°F) warmer than it was before the Industrial Revolution. This has made heatwaves like the one the UK is currently facing both more severe and more frequent. Historically, a June heatwave with three or more days above 28°C (82.4°F) would only happen about once every 50 years in the UK. Now, every June has a 20 per cent chance of experiencing a heatwave - 10 times more likely than in the pre-industrial period. Scientists found that three-day heatwaves in southeast England are now 3°C (5.4°F) hotter due to human-caused climate change heating the planet This week, the UK has experienced prolonged and intense heat building to a peak over the weekend. The current forecast predicts maximum temperatures to reach 32°C (90°F) in some locations, with heatwave thresholds likely to be exceeded across the country. The hottest area, Humberside, is predicted to reach 33°C (91.4°F) on Saturday, while London exceeds 30°C (86°F) until Monday. On Thursday, the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) issued an amber heat alert for the whole of the UK, warning that there could be a 'rise in deaths'. In a new report, World Weather Attribution finds that these temperatures were made hotter and more likely by human-caused climate change. Dr Friederike Otto, a climate scientist at Imperial College London and co-lead of World Weather Attribution, says: 'We know exactly what has intensified this heatwave - burning oil, gas and coal, which has loaded the atmosphere with planet-heating greenhouse gases.' Overall, June heatwaves are now about 2-4°C (3.6-7.2°F) more intense due to climate change. In the report, the researchers warn that this is enough of a difference to turn June's forecast from 'warm sunny weather into dangerous heat'. While many people might be looking forward to enjoying the hot weather over the weekend, heatwaves are the deadliest extreme event in the world and kill hundreds of thousands each year. Professor Mike Tipton, a human physiologist from the University of Portsmouth who was not involved with the study, says: 'The human body is not designed to tolerate prolonged exposure to this sort of extreme heat. 'We know that when temperatures rise above 30 degrees there is a spike in excess deaths, particularly in vulnerable groups, and unfortunately we are likely to see that again in the coming days and weeks as the mercury once again rises to these dangerous levels.' Heatwaves are especially dangerous in June when people have not yet had a chance to acclimate to the heat. This is especially problematic for the elderly and infirm who might not be able to get outside to cool off or monitor their own temperature. During 2022, the UK experienced its most deadly heatwave on record when a record temperature of 40.3°C (104.5°F) was recorded at Coningsby, Lincolnshire. More than 1,000 excess deaths among older people were recorded around the four-day peak of the heatwave, with more than 3,000 heat-related deaths in England over summer 2022. Professor Tipton says: 'With the evidence that 32-degree days in June are now 100 times more likely, it is undeniable that climate change is now costing British lives.' This comes after a study conducted by the Met Office predicted that summers rivalling the famous 1976 heatwave could become the norm as the climate continues to warm. During that summer, the UK spent a sweltering fortnight above the heatwave threshold of 28°C (82°F). Looking ahead, the Met Office warns that the UK might spend two-thirds of the summer at those temperatures, with continuous heatwaves lasting up to a month. The study warned there is now a 50/50 chance of the UK hitting 40°C again in the next 12 years, with a maximum of 46.6°C (115.9°F) now 'plausible' in today's climate. World Weather Attribution also warns that climate change is increasing the risk of wildfires in the UK. Theodore Keeping, wildfire researcher at Imperial College, says: 'Hotter temperatures mean an exponential increase in the evaporation of moisture from vegetation. 'This leads to much drier conditions, and results in a higher chance of wildfires starting and spreading as leaf litter and grasses become tinder dry.' The UK is already in the midst of a record year for wildfires, smashing the all-time record in the first four months of the year. Tom Lancaster, land, food and farming analyst at the Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit, says: 'We're in the midst of a record-breaking year for wildfires, with exceptionally severe fire risk forecast for this weekend, bringing home the reality of continuing to pump carbon emissions into the atmosphere.' Ahead of this weekend's heatwave, emergency services around the country have issued warnings about the increased risk of fires. According to the Met Office, the fire severity risk is currently 'very high' in many places and 'high' in others. Mr Keeping adds: 'People going outside to enjoy the warm weather should not be using fire or disposable barbecues, dispose of cigarette butts carefully and should immediately notify emergency services if they do notice a fire.
Times
9 hours ago
- Politics
- Times
Inside Britain's top secret nuclear bunker
Secure vaults containing decades-old enriched uranium and plutonium are dotted across Britain's sprawling atomic weapons establishment site in the Berkshire countryside. Some are underground, inside 1960s-era buildings, guarded by police on the roof tops armed with C8 Carbine assault rifles used by the Special Air Service (SAS). Cameras keep watch and security guards patrol the perimeter — lined by a fence and razor wire, like a prison — and 56 dogs are on hand to sniff out any sign of toxic chemicals. 'The guards and guns are not here to protect us, they are here to protect the material,' said one of the scientists giving a tour of the grounds. 'You can't get anywhere near them [the vaults] even if you tried,' added another. There are measures in place to ensure that if an airliner hit the site inadvertently, the risk of a radioactive fallout would be minimised. The threat of terrorists trying to steal the uranium is greater than that of a jet deliberately bombing the site. It is the first time in more than a decade that journalists have been allowed access here. On one side of the 700-acre site are crumbling chimneys towering above an 'out of service' factory where uranium was once enriched. Due to its international treaty obligations, Britain no longer enriches material. Once its stockpile runs out, it will be recycled. It is at this site in the quaint village of Aldermaston that scientists examined the teapot containing the lethal polonium-210 used to kill Alexander Litvinenko, the Russian defector, in London in November 2006. Some £15 billion is now being poured into modernising the facility, once a Second World War air force base and now home to 9,500 employees — 1,000 more than there were two years ago. The Ministry of Defence is drawing up designs for the next generation of sovereign nuclear warheads, known as Astraea, and the focus on Britain's nuclear programme is intensifying. The Astraea, also known as the A21/Mk7, will replace the Holbrook warheads on the Trident missiles deployed on Britain's four nuclear deterrent submarine boats. It has been two decades since the AWE (Atomic Weapons Establishment) worked on warheads, which is why the site needs a huge investment programme to prepare the facilities. Astraea is being developed in parallel with the US W93/Mk7 warhead but not together with the US because the nuclear material cannot be transported plan is for the warhead to be ready for use in the 2030s, although it is still in design phase. Amid warnings of a 'third nuclear age' in which Britain is threatened by multiple enemies including Russia, speed will be critical. 'This is a new era of threat and there's a sense of urgency. We need to step up,' said Marina Dawes, director of science at the site. The nuclear bombs are made up of fissile materials including uranium, plutonium and other components such as high explosives. For the first time, the bombs that are produced will never have been tested in real life. The UK, along with others, has agreed not to test its nuclear bombs in the way Robert Oppenheimer oversaw the testing of the world's first nuclear weapon, nicknamed Trinity, in the Jornada del Muerto desert within the Alamogordo Bombing Range in New Mexico, in July 1945. Instead, scientists and engineers in the UK today rely on the Orion laser, which enables them to simulate the hot and dense conditions at the moment of detonation but without the need for nuclear materials. 'We create the condition at the moment of detonation,' said another scientist, showcasing the equipment. This isn't a giant death ray, but a bespoke scientific tool,' added another. Twelve lasers beam down on to one tiny target — no more than 5mm long and painstakingly created by hand over many months. There is an entire building for a super-computer, which is able to make four trillion calculations in a second. It has stored data from previous experiments and is used to validate tests to ensure what the scientists are creating will work in a realistic scenario. Bunkers store massive quantities of high explosives across the base. At Aldermaston, the components are manufactured before they are shipped off to another site, at AWE Burghfield, less than ten miles away. There they are put together and later weaponised ready for use. Transporting the materials is a huge endeavour involving highly secure trucks, escorted by more than 50 vehicles, including a tow truck, police cars and motorbikes. Down the road is the Blacknest site, where scientists monitor for seismic signals that may suggest another country has tested a nuclear weapon. Those who work at Aldermaston are proud of the work they do. 'Being a nuclear weapons state is an awesome responsibility. It is the most serious of serious things,' said another senior employee at the site. At Aldermaston and other defence nuclear industry sites, salaries average £45,500 — 20 per cent higher than the UK average — yet they are still desperate to recruit. Women from diverse backgrounds and the neuro-diverse are among those being targeted. At present, only 20 per cent of the workforce is female, according to Mandy Savage, the engineering director. YouGov polling commissioned by the MoD found that in March this year, 65 per cent of those polled supported maintaining the UK's independent nuclear deterrent. This was the highest level of support since the MoD began polling in June 2018. Amid fears the US could bomb Iran's nuclear facilities, triggering a wider conflict in the Middle East, John Healey, the defence secretary, was given his first tour of the site on Thursday. He said the technology being developed was 'keeping us all safe every minute of the day'. He added: 'The skilled men and women working here play a fundamental role in deterring global conflict and that cannot be underestimated.'
BBC News
10 hours ago
- Health
- BBC News
Why your fingers wrinkle in water (and what it can reveal about your health)
The skin on our fingertips and toes shrivels like prunes when soaked for a few minutes in water. But is this an adaptation that occurred to help us in our evolutionary past? And what can it reveal about your health today? Spend more than a few minutes soaking in a bath or paddling around a swimming pool and your fingers will undergo a dramatic transformation. Where there were once delicate whorls of lightly ridged epidermis, engorged folds of ugly pruned skin will now be found. And according to a recently published study, this striking change is worth a closer inspection – each time your fingertips pucker in this way, the wrinkles create the same pattern. It is the latest discovery about a phenomenon that has occupied the thoughts and work of scientists for decades. Bafflingly, only the skin on our fingers and toes wrinkles when immersed in water. Other body parts such as our forearms, torso, legs and face remain no more crinkled than they were before being submerged. Most researchers in the field have puzzled over what causes this puckering in the first place, but more recently the question of why and what purpose it may serve, has attracted their attention. Perhaps more intriguing still, however, is what our shrivelled fingers can reveal about our own health. Scientists have discovered changes in how our fingers wrinkle can point to diseases including type 2 diabetes, cystic fibrosis, nerve injuries and even cardiovascular problems. What causes our fingers to wrinkle It takes around 3.5 minutes in warm water – 40C (104F) is considered the optimal temperature – for your fingertips to begin wrinkling, while in cooler temperatures of about 20C (68F) it can take up to 10 minutes. Most studies have found it takes around 30 minutes of soaking time to reach maximum wrinklage, however. (Interestingly, recent research has shown that soaking your hands in warm vinegar can make your skin wrinkle far faster – in around just four minutes.) Fingertip wrinkling was commonly thought to be a passive response where the upper layers of the skin swelled as water flooded into the cells via a process known as osmosis – where water molecules move across a membrane to equalise the concentration of the solutions on either side. But as long ago as 1935, scientists have suspected there is more to the process than this. Doctors studying patients with injuries that had severed the median nerve – one of the main nerves that run down the arm to the hand – found that their fingers did not wrinkle. Among its many roles, the median nerve helps to control so-called sympathetic activities such as sweating and the constriction of blood vessels. Their discovery suggested that the water-induced wrinkling of fingertips was in fact controlled by the nervous system. Later studies by doctors in the 1970s provided further evidence of this, and they proposed using the immersion of the hands in water as a simple bedside test to assess nerve damage that might affect the regulation of unconscious processes such as blood flow. Then in 2003, neurologists Einar Wilder-Smith and Adeline Chow, who were working at the National University Hospital in Singapore at the time, took measurements of blood circulation in the hands of volunteers as they soaked them in water. They found that as the skin on the volunteers' fingertips began to wrinkle, there was a significant drop in blood flow in the fingers. When they applied a local anesthetic cream that caused the blood vessels in the fingers of healthy volunteers to temporarily constrict, they found it produced similar levels of wrinkling as water immersion. "It makes sense when you look at your fingers when they go wrinkly," says Nick Davis, a neuroscientist and psychologist at Manchester Metropolitan University, who has studied fingertip wrinkling. "The finger pads go pale and that is because the blood supply is being constricted away from the surface." Wilder-Smith and his colleagues proposed that when our hands are immersed in water, the sweat ducts in our fingers open up to allow water in, which leads to an imbalance in the salts in our skin. This change in the salt balance triggers the firing of nerve fibres in the fingers, leading to the blood vessels around the sweat ducts to constrict. This in turn causes a loss of volume in the fleshy area of the fingertip, which pulls the overlying skin downwards so that it distorts into wrinkles. The pattern of the wrinkles depends on the way the outermost layer of skin – the epidermis – is anchored to the layers beneath it. More like this: There have also been suggestions that the outer layers of skin may also swell a little to enhance the wrinkling. By osmosis alone, however, our skin would need to swell by 20% to achieve the wrinkles we see in our fingers, which would leave them hideously enlarged. But when the upper layers of skin swell slightly and the lower levels shrink at the same time, the wrinkling becomes pronounced far sooner, says Pablo Saez Viñas, a biomechanical engineer at the Technical University of Catalonia, who has used computer modelling to examine the mechanism. "You need both to have normal levels of wrinkles," he says. "If you don't have that neurological response, which happens in some individuals, wrinkles are inhibited." But if wrinkling is controlled by our nerves, it means our bodies are actively reacting to being in water. "That means it is happening for a reason," says Davis. "And that means it could be giving us an advantage." Why did our fingers evolve to wrinkle in water? It was a question from one of his children during a bath about why their fingers had gone wrinkly that recently led Davis to dig into what this advantage could be. With the help of 500 volunteers who visited the Science Museum in London during 2020, Davis measured how much force they needed to use to grip a plastic object. Perhaps unsurprisingly, those with dry, unwrinkled hands needed to use less force than people whose hands were wet – so their grip on the object was better. But when they submerged their hands in a water bath for a few minutes to turn their hands wrinkly, the grip force fell between the two even though their hands were still wet. "The results were amazingly clear," says Davis. "The wrinkling increased the amount of friction between the fingers and the object. What is particularly interesting is that our fingers are sensitive to this change in the surface friction and we use this information to apply less force to grip an object securely." The object that Davis' volunteers were gripping weighed less than a couple of coins, so the amount of grip required was small. But when performing more arduous tasks in a wet environment, this difference in friction could become more important. "If you don't have to squeeze as hard to grip something, the muscles in your hands get less tired and so you can do it for longer," he says. His findings match those by other researchers who have found that the wrinkling of our fingertips makes it easier for us to handle wet objects. In 2013, a team of neuroscientists at Newcastle University in the UK asked volunteers to transfer glass marbles of varying sizes and fishing weights from one container to another. In one case the objects were dry, and in the other they were at the bottom of a container filled with water. It took 17% longer for the participants to transfer the submerged objects with unwrinkled fingers than when they were dry. But when their fingers were wrinkled, they could transfer the submerged marbles and weights 12% quicker than when their fingers were wet and unwrinkled. Interestingly, there was no difference in transferring the dry objects with wrinkled or unwrinkled fingers. There are other baffling mysteries – women take longer to develop wrinkles than men do Some scientists have suggested that the wrinkles on our fingertips and toes may act like rain treads on tyres or the soles of shoes. The channels produced by the wrinkles help to squeeze water away from the point of contact between the fingers and an object. This suggests that humans may have evolved fingertip and toe wrinkling at some point in our past to help us grip wet objects and surfaces. "Since it seems to give better grip under water, I would assume that it has to do with either locomotion in very wet conditions or potentially with manipulating objects under water," says Tom Smulders, an evolutionary neuroscientist at Newcastle University who led the 2013 study. It could have given our ancestors a key advantage when it came to walking over wet rocks or gripping branches, for example. Alternatively, it could have helped us when catching or foraging for food such as shellfish. "The latter would imply it is unique to humans, whereas if it's the former, we would expect it to happen in other primates as well," says Smulders. Finger wrinkling has yet to be observed in our closest relatives in the primate world such as chimpanzees, but the fingers of Japanese macaque monkeys, which are known to bath for long periods in hot water, have been seen to also wrinkle after they have been submerged in water. But the lack of evidence in other primates does not mean it doesn't happen, it may simply be because no-one has looked closely enough yet, says Smulders. "We don't know the answer to this question yet." There are some other interesting clues about when this adaptation may have appeared in our species. Fingertip wrinkling is less pronounced in saltwater and takes longer than it does in freshwater. This is probably because the salt gradient between the skin and surrounding environment is lower in saltwater, and so the salt imbalance that triggers the nerve fibres is less dramatic. So, it could be an adaptation that helped our ancestors live in freshwater environments rather than along coastlines. But there are no firm answers, and some believe it could just be a coincidental physiological response with no adaptive function. What can we learn from the wrinkles? Strangely there are other baffling mysteries – women take longer to develop wrinkles than men do, for example. And why exactly does our skin return to its normal state – normally after 10-20 minutes – if there is no clear disadvantage to our grip on dry objects of having wrinkly fingertips? Surely if having wrinkly fingers can improve our grip in the wet, but not harm it when dry, why would our fingertips not be permanently wrinkly? One reason for that could be the change in sensation the wrinkling also causes. Our fingertips are packed with nerves, and the pruning of our skin changes the way we feel things we touch (although one study has shown it does not affect our ability to discriminate between objects based on touch). "Some people have a real aversion to it because picking something up with wrinkly fingers feels weird," says Davis. "It could be because the balance of skin receptors have changed position, but there could be a psychological dimension too. It would be fun to investigate why. There could be other things we can do less well with wrinkly fingers." But the wrinkling of our fingers and toes in water can reveal key information about our health in surprising ways too. Wrinkles take longer to form in people with skin conditions like psoriasis and vitiligo, for example. Patients with cystic fibrosis experience excessive wrinkling of their palms as well as their fingers, and this has even been noticed in people who are genetic carriers of the disease. Patients suffering from type 2 diabetes also sometimes show markedly decreased levels of skin wrinkling when their hands are placed in water. Similarly reduced wrinkling has been seen in people who have suffered heart failure, perhaps due to some disruption in the control of their cardiovascular system. Unsymmetrical wrinkling of the fingers – where one hand wrinkles less than the other despite the same immersion time – has even been suggested as an early sign of Parkinson's disease as it indicates the sympathetic nervous system is not functioning correctly on one side of the body. So, while the question of why our fingers and toes began wrinkling in water in the first place remains open, our pruney digits are proving useful to doctors in other surprising ways. * This article was originally published on 21 June 2022. It was updated on 19 June 2025 to include details of a new study on the repeatability of wrinkle patterns on wet fingers. -- If you liked this story, sign up for The Essential List newsletter – a handpicked selection of features, videos and can't-miss news, delivered to your inbox twice a week. For more science, technology, environment and health stories from the BBC, follow us on Facebook, X and Instagram.
Sustainability Times
12 hours ago
- Science
- Sustainability Times
'China Achieves Unthinkable Feat': This Bold Extraction of 99.9% Ultra-Pure Rubidium from Salt Lake Brine Stuns the World
IN A NUTSHELL 🔬 Chinese scientists have developed a method to extract 99.9% pure rubidium chloride from low-grade brine, marking a significant breakthrough. from low-grade brine, marking a significant breakthrough. 🇨🇳 This achievement reduces China's reliance on foreign imports, particularly from Canada, strengthening its strategic mineral supply chain . . 💡 The new process involves innovative techniques like ore washing , rubidium leaching, and solvent extraction, offering substantial cost savings. , rubidium leaching, and solvent extraction, offering substantial cost savings. 🌍 China's advancement in rubidium extraction underscores its commitment to technological innovation and industrial resilience amid global competition. In a groundbreaking development, Chinese scientists have unveiled a novel method for extracting ultra-pure rubidium chloride from brine containing trace amounts of the metal. This achievement is a significant milestone for China's critical minerals supply, potentially reducing the country's dependency on foreign imports. As the world's largest consumer of rubidium, China has been reliant on countries like Canada for the majority of its imports. The breakthrough, reported by the Qinghai Institute of Salt Lakes, showcases China's growing expertise in strategic mineral extraction, promising a more self-sufficient future in high-tech and defense applications. The Significance of 99.9% Pure Rubidium The Qinghai Institute of Salt Lakes (ISL), a division of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, announced this remarkable achievement. Researchers succeeded in producing rubidium chloride with an astounding 99.9% purity from potassium chloride material, which contained a mere 0.001% rubidium. Previously, this ultra-low concentration was deemed commercially unviable, but the new process has changed that perception entirely. Rubidium is a soft alkali metal with critical applications across multiple sectors. It plays a vital role in high-tech fields, including atomic clocks, perovskite solar cells, aerospace systems, and specialized glass. The importance of rubidium is underscored by its use in ultra-precise atomic clocks, which lose less than one second over 3.7 million years. Additionally, its applications extend to medical research, particularly in imaging tumor cells. Despite holding some of the world's largest rubidium reserves, China has faced challenges in domestic development, primarily because over 97% of its rubidium is locked in low-grade hard rock deposits that are difficult and costly to process. Only a small fraction of rubidium is found in more accessible forms, such as salt lake brine, predominantly in Qinghai province and Tibet. This breakthrough could mark a turning point in China's rubidium industry. 'Biggest Wind Turbine Ever': China Smashes All Records With This Colossal Machine—But a Hidden Flaw Threatens the Whole Project A First for China: Reducing Dependency In 2021, China imported over 19,500 tons of rubidium concentrate, with a dependency rate of 66.3% on external sources like Canada and Zimbabwe. The addition of rubidium to the United States' critical minerals list in 2022 heightened the geopolitical stakes surrounding mineral access. He Xinyu, in China Mining Magazine, emphasized the need for China to bolster resource security through technological innovation and diplomatic engagement. The ISL's electrochemical separation group addressed the scientific and engineering challenges of rubidium extraction. They developed a high-fidelity model to trace rubidium's distribution during potassium salt processing, identifying the reasons for rubidium's resistance to enrichment. This model not only optimizes rubidium concentration but also has potential applications in resource mapping and separation techniques. The integrated process devised by ISL encompasses ore washing, rubidium leaching, enrichment, solvent extraction, and purification. This system has been successfully tested using potassium chloride from Qinghai's Qarhan Salt Lake, one of China's largest inland salt lakes, consistently yielding 99.9% pure rubidium chloride from low-grade feedstock, which was previously considered unusable. 'China Leaves West in the Dust': Its Small Nuclear Reactor Leap Puts Beijing Years Ahead in the Future of Clean Energy Impact on Costs and Industrial Resilience Beyond its technological significance, this innovative process could result in substantial cost savings. A 2022 cost analysis by ISL scientist Gao Dandan's team found that rubidium chloride produced through this method could be manufactured at just one-third of its current market price. This economic advantage could strengthen China's industrial resilience amid growing global competition for strategic minerals. Supported by the National Natural Science Foundation, CAS, and Qinghai provincial authorities, this development signifies a crucial step in China's pursuit of self-reliance in strategic mineral resources. By enhancing its capacity to produce rubidium internally, China is better positioned to withstand external pressures and maintain its lead in high-tech sectors. This breakthrough not only underlines China's commitment to technological advancement but also its determination to secure essential resources. As the global demand for strategic minerals intensifies, China's innovative approach could set a precedent for other nations seeking to bolster their mineral independence. China's Massive Nuclear Laser Project Exposed by U.S. Satellite—This Shocking Military Development Could Tip the Balance of Power The Future of Strategic Mineral Extraction The success of China's new rubidium extraction method is a testament to the country's growing capabilities in strategic minerals. As technological advancements continue to unfold, the implications for global mineral supply chains are profound. China's achievement could inspire similar innovations in other countries, potentially reshaping the landscape of mineral extraction worldwide. The Qinghai Institute of Salt Lakes' approach to overcoming challenges in rubidium extraction reflects a broader trend of leveraging scientific research to enhance resource security. By reducing dependency on foreign sources, China is strengthening its position in the high-tech and defense sectors, ensuring a more stable and sustainable future for its industries. As the world grapples with the complexities of mineral supply chains, China's breakthrough prompts an open-ended question: How will other nations respond to the increasing need for strategic mineral self-reliance in the face of evolving global dynamics? Our author used artificial intelligence to enhance this article. Did you like it? 4.7/5 (23)
