Science, Technology & Architecture~

Engels and Foundations of Marxism

June 3, 2023 CEN_com 0

Engels and the Second Foundation of Marxism The following article by Professor John Bellamy Foster is based on his Engels Memorial Lecture presented to the Marx Memorial Library in London, England, on November 30, 2022. The author has revised it here, including the addition of a lengthy postscript, from the earlier version published in the Marx Memorial Library’s journal Theory and Struggle (May 2023). CEN republishes the article from Monthly Review, Volume 75, […]

Food security: protecting China’s soils

May 25, 2023 CEN_com 0

China launches national soil survey to protect arable land Originally Posted August 7, 2022 After rapid development and intensive farming, China is to carry out a new national soil survey to help with its food security and carbon targets. China Dialogue recently published an article by three Chinese scientists. The authors are soil science experts – Chen Nengchang and He Xiaoxia are with the Guangdong Institute of Eco-environmental and Soil […]

China’s commercial Small Modular Reactor

May 21, 2023 CEN_com 0

China is building the “Linglong-1,” a small modular reactor (SMR) in the country’s southern island province of Hainan. It’s the world’s first of this type of reactor to be approved by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), and it intends to serve the region’s diverse power needs. A design sketch of a completed Linglong-1 power unit. /Hainan Nuclear Power “We believe that there will be a trend of nuclear energy because it can […]

China improves soil quality with humus

May 21, 2023 CEN_com 0

Originally Posted 19 Dec 2021 A type of biological humic acid, featuring high purity and high activity, extracted from agricultural and forestry waste has been industrialized and used for soil restoration in China. A large amount of agricultural and forestry wastes are burned in the open air due to the lack of large-scale high-value utilization, resulting in environmental pollution and resource wastage. Humic acid is an internationally recognized green and effective […]

New Environmental History of Socialism

May 20, 2023 CEN_com 0

Review of: Salvatore Engel-Di Mauro, Socialist States and the Environment: Lessons for Ecosocialist Futures (London: Pluto Press, 2021), 288 pages, $26.95, paperback. Review by associate professor Andy Bruno. Starting in the late 1970s, a narrative emerged about the extreme levels of environmental damage in the Soviet Union and, by implication, most state-socialist countries. The explosion and initial cover-up at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in 1986 did much to crystallize this image […]

China finds gene to boost grain yield

May 10, 2023 CEN_com 0

 Originally posted 24 July 2022 Chinese scientists have found a gene in crops such as rice and wheat which can improve the efficiency of photosynthesis and nitrogen utilization and significantly boost grain yield. The researchers enhanced the expression of the OsDREB1C gene in two rice varieties through genetic engineering technology. And they conducted field trials at three different sites in Beijing, Hangzhou, and Sanya in northern, eastern, and southern China, […]

China’s plan to clean up ‘new pollutants’

May 5, 2023 CEN_com 0

“This is a significant step forward for China’s chemical regime.” Liu Jianguo, Associate Professor, Peking University Hopes are high that a Chinese action plan will help control chemicals with ongoing harmful effects. In 2014, China declared a “war on pollution”. Since then, air quality has improved significantly, with nationwide levels of PM2.5 – harmful fine particles less than 2.5 micrometres wide – dropping by 58%. With the first campaign in that war […]

China’s new solar semi-satellite drone

September 13, 2022 CEN_com 0

In a big step toward green development, China has built its first solar-powered large unmanned aerial vehicle. The drone successfully carried out its maiden flight on Saturday. It took off from an airport in Yulin, northwest China’s Shaanxi province and landed smoothly after 26 minutes airborne with all systems operating normally, according to a report in state-run Global Times. How does the drone use solar energy? The Qimingxing-50 (Morning Star) is […]

China chairs Biodiversity Convention on

August 26, 2022 CEN_com 0

China currently holds the rotating Presidency of the Conference of Parties to the UN Convention on Biodiversity (CBD). This is the first time China has overseen a major UN intergovernmental negotiation on the environment. The first meeting in the current round of Conference of Parties (COP15) of the CBD was officially opened by China in Kunming in October 2021, largely as an online event due to Covid-19, at which parties […]

China chairs Biodiversity Convention

August 26, 2022 CEN_com 0

China currently holds the rotating Presidency of the Conference of Parties to the UN Convention on Biodiversity (CBD). This is the first time China has overseen a major UN intergovernmental negotiation on the environment. The first meeting in the current round of Conference of Parties (COP15) of the CBD was officially opened by China in Kunming in October 2021, largely as an online event due to Covid-19, at which parties […]