science-innovation
Huawei launches new green development solutions
Chinese telecom giant Huawei recently launched a new suite of green development solutions at the online programme Win-Win Huawei Innovation Week.
The solutions are aimed at helping operators systematically improve network energy efficiency as ICT infrastructure continues to evolve from 5G and F5G to 5.5G and F5.5G, green networks.
Read Huawei partners with Golden Harvest
Also, it will help operators systematically build green networks that simultaneously address traffic growth and carbon emission reduction, according to a media statement.
"Technological innovation is required at three levels," Huawei Carrier Business Group Chief Marketing Officer Philip Song said.
Read: Huawei Bangladesh to recruit 60 fresh graduates
"Firstly, to move sites fully outdoors, and increase equipment energy efficiency and the efficiency of using renewable energy; secondly, to maximise energy efficiency and make networks all-optical, simplified, and intelligent; and thirdly to achieve green O&M, new O&M and energy-saving policies more easily."
SpaceX launches 4 astronauts for NASA after private flight
SpaceX launched four astronauts to the International Space Station for NASA on Wednesday, less than two days after completing a flight chartered by millionaires.
It’s the first NASA crew comprised equally of men and women, including the first Black woman making a long-term spaceflight, Jessica Watkins.
“This is one of the most diversified, I think, crews that we’ve had in a really, really long time,” NASA’s space operations mission chief Kathy Lueders said on the eve of launch.
The astronauts were due to arrive at the space station Wednesday night, 16 hours after their predawn liftoff from Kennedy Space Center. They will spend five months at the orbiting lab.
SpaceX has now launched five crews for NASA and two private trips in just under two years. Elon Musk’s company is having an especially busy few weeks: It just finished taking three businessmen to and from the space station as NASA’s first private guests.
Also read: SpaceX’s Elon Musk: 1st orbital Starship flight maybe March
A week after the new crew arrives, the three Americans and German they’re replacing will return to Earth in their own SpaceX capsule. Three Russians also live at the space station.
Both SpaceX and NASA officials stressed they’re taking it one step at a time to ensure safety. The private mission that concluded Monday encountered no major problems, they said, although high wind delayed the splashdown for a week.
SpaceX Launch Control wished the astronauts good luck and Godspeed moments before the Falcon rocket blasted off with the capsule, named Freedom by its crew.
“Our heartfelt thank you to every one of you that made this possible. Now let Falcon roar and Freedom ring,” radioed NASA astronaut Kjell Lindgren, the commander. Minutes later, their recycled booster had landed on an ocean platform and their capsule was safely orbiting Earth. “It was a great ride,” he said.
The SpaceX capsules are fully automated — which opens the space gates to a broader clientele — and they’re designed to accommodate a wider range of body sizes. At the same time, NASA and the European Space Agency have been pushing for more female astronauts.
While two Black women visited the space station during the shuttle era, neither moved in for a lengthy stay. Watkins, a geologist who is on NASA’s short list for a moon-landing mission in the years ahead, sees her mission as “an important milestone, I think, both for the agency and for the country.”
She credits supportive family and mentors — including Mae Jemison, the first Black woman in space in 1992 — for “ultimately being able to live my dream.”
Also cheering Watkins on was another geologist: Apollo 17′s Harrison Schmitt, who walked on the moon in 1972. She invited the retired astronaut to the launch, along with his wife. “We sort of consider ourselves the Jessica team,” he said, chuckling
“Those of us who rode the Saturn V into space are a little bit jaded about the smaller rockets,” Schmitt said after the SpaceX liftoff. “But still, it really was something and on board was a geologist ... I hope it will stand her in good stead for being part of one of the Artemis crews that go to the moon.”
Also read: SpaceX’s Musk: 1st Starship test flight to orbit in January
Like Watkins, NASA astronaut and test pilot Bob Hines is making his first spaceflight. It’s the second visit for the European Space Agency’s lone female astronaut, Samantha Cristoforetti, a former Italian Air Force fighter pilot, and Lindgren, a physician.
The just-completed private flight was NASA’s first dip into space tourism after years of opposition. The space agency said the three people who paid $55 million each to visit the space station blended in while doing experiments and educational outreach. They were accompanied by a former NASA astronaut employed by Houston-based Axiom Space, which arranged the flight.
“The International Space Station is not a vacation spot. It’s not an amusement park. It is an international laboratory, and they absolutely understood and respected that purpose,” said NASA flight director Zeb Scoville.
NASA also hired Boeing to ferry astronauts after retiring the shuttles. The company will take another shot next month at getting an empty crew capsule to the space station, after software and other problems fouled a 2019 test flight and prevented a redo last summer.
Top 10 Health and Medicine Breakthroughs of 2021
Never before has the world been so captivated by the most ordinary steps of scientific research. But, over the last two years, each incremental step forward in science—from lab research to better understand COVID-19's development and build a vaccine to combat it, to clinical trials, to pharmaceutical approval—has meant one thing: hope. That's what our list of the finest health breakthroughs of 2021 focuses on.
Best Innovations of 2021 in Medical Science
Here are the top ten innovations that the world has seen in the field of health and medicine.
Gene Therapy to Cure Haemoglobinopathies
Hemoglobinopathies are hereditary illnesses that impair the structure or synthesis of the hemoglobin molecule, which is the red protein that transports oxygen throughout the body. Sickle cell disease and thalassemia are two of the most prevalent hemoglobinopathies. Each year, more than 330,000 infants are born throughout the globe with these illnesses. In the United States alone, more than 100,000 people have sickle cell disease.
As a consequence of the most recent study into hemoglobinopathies, experimental gene treatment has been produced. This treatment should allow persons with thalassemia to produce functional hemoglobin molecules, reducing the presence of sickle blood cells or inefficient red blood cells. It will be able to avoid the difficulties linked with these conditions in this manner.
Read Top 10 Greatest Science Breakthroughs of 2021
Cure for Primary Progressive Sclerosis
Multiple sclerosis is an autoimmune illness in which the immune system assaults the nerve fibers' protective fatty myelin layer. This assault causes issues with communication between the brain and the rest of the body, which may lead to irreversible damage, degeneration, and death.
Approximately 15% of MS patients acquire a main progressive form of the illness. This subcategory of the illness is characterized by a consistent progression of signs and symptoms and a gradual development. The first and only therapy for MS in the primary-progressive MS population is a new therapeutic monoclonal antibody authorized by the FDA with a unique target.
Easier Cancer Detection Process
The key to battling cancer is early diagnosis, yet just a few procedures (Pap smears, mammograms, lung exams, and colonoscopies) can identify cancer at its most treatable stages. That's why a new technique that scans a blood sample for DNA fragments from more than 50 different cancers is causing such a stir.
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The Galleri test notifies a clinician whether a patient has a sickness signal and which organ it originates from. The test helped detect 29 individuals who didn't realize they had malignancies of the lung, ovary, rectum, neck, breast, and pancreatic, among other cancers, according to preliminary data from a clinical study involving 6,000 people over 50.
Fertility Testing Innovation
Home fertility tests have been available for a while, but most only test for one hormone in the urine. The new OVA tool, which is endorsed by Mount Sinai Hospital in New York, measures two to better define your "do it now" timeframe. The first, luteinizing hormone, is produced before the release of an egg, whereas the second, progesterone, is released shortly after ovulation. The precision of tracking both of them increases to the point where it approaches that of blood testing.
Smart pacemakers
Pacemakers give electrical impulses to the chambers of the heart muscle to contract and pump blood to the body in order to prevent or correct arrhythmias. Traditionally, these implanted devices have allowed for remote monitoring through a console at the bedside that sends data to the doctor in charge of the patient's care.
Read Top 10 In-demand Tech Skills Freshers Should Learn in 2022
Despite the fact that millions of people utilize these devices, many still don't comprehend how they operate. Connecting these devices to a smartphone app would help patients to acquire a better knowledge of their cardiac therapy while also sending important data to their physicians.
PARP Inhibitors
Pharmacological inhibitors disrupt proteins called PARPs that help repair damaged tumor DNA in persons with mutations in the BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes and are well-known for their effectiveness in women's cancer. Two of them have been found to slow the growth of prostate cancer in individuals with refractory disease and DNA repair pathway abnormalities.
Trachea Transplant
Several surgeons led a huge team to execute the world's first successful trachea transplant, offering hope to patients throughout the globe and future therapies for people on ventilators. Although it seemed to be a simple object at first glance, since it looks like a tube, it turns out to be a very complicated organ system.
Read Game-based Programming: Best Coding Games for Children
Hepatitis C Cure
Hepatitis C, dubbed a "hidden epidemic" by the CDC, is one of the most serious public health issues in the United States. Cirrhosis, liver failure, and liver cancer are all severe concerns for anyone infected with the virus, and they may all be fatal.
There are medications available to treat the disorder. However, they have been shown to be ineffective in certain genotypes of the disease or to have unfavorable side effects in others. A new FDA-approved treatment option, a fixed-dose combination of medications, has been demonstrated to be more than 90% successful in treating hepatitis C, making it a viable choice for a broader number of patients.
Artificial Intelligence for Human Health
The Mount Sinai Health System has launched the first-of-its-kind Artificial Intelligence in the Human Health Department, led by Thomas Fuchs, DSc, and Dennis Charney, MD, Dean of the Icahn School of Medicine. According to Dr. Fuchs, "If you're serious about this, you'll need computer scientists to collaborate with doctors on the front lines. One of the critical reasons why big tech has failed in health care is that you can't simply toss artificial intelligence over the fence into a hospital and expect it to function. It must emerge from systems like ours."
Read Best Flagship Smartphones Released in 2021
COVID Impact Reduction
The impact of COVID on everyday functioning lasted at least a year in those who had it for a long time. "Our study, as well as those of others, has shown that this has an effect on people's capacity to organize, process information, and do their daily work obligations," Dr. Putrino continued. "They suffer significant memory loss and an inability to form new memories, as well as speaking problems."
Bottom Line
With the pandemic still looming, a spate of major and modest health achievements occurred in 2021, including the use of ground-breaking CRISPR gene-editing technology, the World Health Organization's approval of the first malaria vaccine, and novel cardiac therapies. In the medical area, there are many more inventions to unbox in the next year.
Read Why You Don’t Need an Expensive Flagship Phone Anymore?
Space telescope launched on daring quest to behold 1st stars
The world's largest and most powerful space telescope rocketed away Saturday on a high-stakes quest to behold light from the first stars and galaxies and scour the universe for hints of life.
NASA's James Webb Space Telescope soared from French Guiana on South America's northeastern coast, riding a European Ariane rocket into the Christmas morning sky.
The $10 billion observatory hurtled toward its destination 1 million miles (1.6 million kilometers) away, or more than four times beyond the moon. It will take a month to get there and another five months before its infrared eyes are ready to start scanning the cosmos.
First, the telescope's enormous mirror and sunshield need to unfurl; they were folded origami-style to fit into the rocket's nose cone. Otherwise, the observatory won't be able to peer back in time 13.7 billion years as anticipated, within a mere 100 million years of the universe-forming Big Bang.
NASA Administrator Bill Nelson called Webb is a time machine that will provide "a better understanding of our universe and our place in it: who we are, what we are, the search that's eternal."
"We are going to discover incredible things that we never imagined," Nelson said following liftoff, speaking from Florida's Kennedy Space Center. But he cautioned: "There are still innumerable things that have to work and they have to work perfectly ... we know that in great reward there is great risk."
Intended as a successor to the aging Hubble Space Telescope, the long-delayed James Webb is named after NASA's administrator during the 1960s. NASA partnered with the European and Canadian space agencies to build and launch the new 7-ton telescope, with thousands of people from 29 countries working on it since the 1990s.
With the launch falling on Christmas and a global surge in COVID-19 cases, there were fewer spectators at the French Guiana launch site than expected. Nelson bowed out along with a congressional delegation and many contractors who worked on the telescope.
Around the world, astronomers had eagerly waited to see Webb finally taking flight after years of setbacks. Last-minute technical snags bumped the launch nearly a week, then gusty wind pushed it to Christmas. A few of the launch controllers wore Santa caps in celebration.
"We have delivered a Christmas gift today for humanity," said European Space Agency director general Josef Aschbacher. He described it as a special moment, but added: "It's very nerve-racking. I couldn't do launches every single day. This would not be good for my life expectancy."
Cheers and applause erupted in and outside Launch Control following Webb's flawless launch, with jubilant scientists embracing one another amid shouts of "Go Webb!" and signs that read: "Bon Voyage Webb." Cameras on the rocket's upper stage provided one last glimpse of the shimmering telescope, before it sped away.
The telescope's showpiece: a gold-plated mirror more than 21 feet (6.5 meters) across.
Protecting the observatory is a wispy, five-layered sunshield, vital for keeping the light-gathering mirror and heat-sensing infrared detectors at subzero temperatures. At 70 feet by 46 feet (21 meters by 14 meters), it's the size of a tennis court.
If all goes well, the sunshield will be opened three days after liftoff, taking at least five days to unfold and lock into place. Next, the mirror segments should open up like the leaves of a drop-leaf table, 12 days or so into the flight.
In all, hundreds of release mechanisms need to work — perfectly — in order for the telescope to succeed. "Like nothing we've done before," said NASA program director Greg Robinson.
Retired astronaut-astronomer Steven Hawley is more stressed over Webb than he was for Hubble, which he released into orbit from space shuttle Discovery in 1990. That's because Webb will be too far away for rescuing, as was necessary when Hubble turned out to have blurry vision from a defective mirror.
Spacewalking repairs by astronauts transformed Hubble into a beloved marvel that has revolutionized humanity's understanding of the universe, casting its eyes as far back as 13.4 billion years. It's now up to Webb to draw even closer to the Big Bang 13.8 billion years ago, its infrared vision keener and more far-reaching than Hubble's is in the shorter visible and ultraviolet wavelengths.
NASA is shooting for 10 years of operational life from Webb. Engineers deliberately left the fuel tank accessible for a top-off by visiting spacecraft, if and when such technology becomes available.
When he released Hubble, "I never would have believed that it would still be going strong almost 32 years later," Hawley, now professor emeritus at the University of Kansas, said in an email. "I hope that in 32 years we'll be able to say that JWST did as well."
SpaceX’s Musk: 1st Starship test flight to orbit in January
SpaceX founder Elon Musk said Wednesday that his company will attempt to launch its futuristic, bullet-shaped Starship to orbit in January, but he’s not betting on success for that first test flight.
“There’s a lot of risk associated with this first launch, so I would not say that it is likely to be successful, but we’ll make a lot of progress,” he said during a virtual meeting organized by the National Academy of Sciences.
Musk said he’s confident Starship — launching for the first time atop a mega booster — will successfully reach orbit sometime in 2022. After a dozen or so orbital test flights next year, SpaceX then would start launching valuable satellites and other payloads to orbit on Starships in 2023, he said.
NASA has contracted with SpaceX to use Starship for delivering astronauts to the lunar surface as early as 2025. Musk plans to use the reusable ships to eventually land people on Mars.
Read: SpaceX crew flight delayed; Musk gets mixed COVID-19 results
The shiny, stainless steel Starship and its first-stage booster — called the Super Heavy — will be the biggest rocket ever to fly, towering 394 feet (120 meters). Liftoff thrust, Musk noted, will be more than double that of NASA’s Saturn V rockets that carried astronauts to the moon a half-century ago.
The Super Heavy has yet to soar. But a full-scale Starship model in May flew to an altitude of more than 6 miles (10 kilometers) before successfully landing back at the SpaceX complex near Texas’ southernmost tip.
The Starship and Super Heavy for the first orbital test flight have both been completed, according to Musk. By the end of November, the company hopes to be finished with the launch pad and tower, with testing in December. The Federal Aviation Administration should be done by the end of the year with its review, leading to a launch in January or February at the latest, Musk noted.
To date, about 90% of Starship’s development costs have been covered by SpaceX, according to Musk, with NASA covering the rest with its lunar lander contract. He did not say how much had been spent so far.
Read: Elon Musk tweets to ask if he should sell some Tesla stock
Musk plans to build multiple Starships in the near term. He envisions needing 1,000 of them to make life truly multiplanetary, his ultimate goal.
He said something natural or manmade will eventually bring about the end of civilization — a pandemic worse than COVID-19, continually decreasing birth rates, nuclear Armageddon or perhaps a direct hit by a killer comet. Moving people to Mars and elsewhere as quickly as possible, he noted, is essential “for preserving the light of consciousness.”
Bezos' Blue Origin gets OK to send him, 3 others to space
Jeff Bezos’ rocket company has gotten government approval to launch people into space, himself included.
The Amazon founder will climb atop his New Shepard rocket next Tuesday in West Texas, joined by his brother, an 82-year-old female aviation pioneer and a $28 million auction winner. It will be the first launch with passengers for Blue Origin, which like Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic plans to start flying paying customers in the months ahead.
READ: Virgin Galactic’s Richard Branson flying own rocket to space
The Federal Aviation Administration issued its OK on Monday. The license is good through August.
On Sunday, Virgin Galactic’s billionaire founder Richard Branson rode his own rocket plane to space, accompanied by five company employees. A specially designed aircraft carried the winged ship aloft over New Mexico. The space plane dropped away, fired its rocket motor and soared to 53.5 miles (86 kilometers), before gliding to a runway touchdown.
Blue Origin’s flight — featuring an automated capsule launched atop a reusable booster — should reach a maximum altitude of roughly 66 miles (106 kilometers) before parachuting into the desert.
READ: Richard Branson announces trip to space, ahead of Jeff Bezos
Joining Blue Origin and Virgin Galactic in the chase for space tourists is Elon Musk’s SpaceX. But SpaceX plans to send its customers into orbit, not on brief up-and-down hops. Musk has yet to commit to a launch himself.
Bezos, 57, stepped down last week as Amazon’s CEO. He founded Blue Origin in 2000.
Scientists hail golden age to trace bird migration with tech
A plump robin wearing a tiny metal backpack with an antenna hops around a suburban yard in Takoma Park, then plucks a cicada from the ground for a snack.
Ecologist Emily Williams watches through binoculars from behind a bush. On this clear spring day, she’s snooping on his dating life. “Now I’m watching to see whether he’s found a mate,” she said, scrutinizing his interactions with another robin in a nearby tree.
Once the bird moves on at season’s end, she’ll rely on the backpack to beam frequent location data to the Argos satellite, then back to Williams’ laptop, to track it.
The goal is to unravel why some American robins migrate long distances, but others do not. With more precise information about nesting success and conditions in breeding and wintering grounds, “we should be able to tell the relative roles of genetics versus the environment in shaping why birds migrate,” said Williams, who is based at Georgetown University.
Putting beacons on birds is not novel. But a new antenna on the International Space Station and receptors on the Argos satellite, plus the shrinking size of tracking chips and batteries, are allowing scientists to remotely monitor songbird movements in much greater detail than ever before.
“We’re in a sort of golden age for bird research,” said Adriaan Dokter, an ecologist at Cornell University who is not directly involved with Williams’ study. “It’s pretty amazing that we can satellite-track a robin with smaller and smaller chips. Ten years ago, that was unthinkable.”
The device this robin is wearing can give precise locations, within about 30 feet (about 10 meters), instead of around 125 miles (200 kilometers) for previous generations of tags.
That means Williams can tell not only whether the bird is still in the city, but on which street or backyard. Or whether it’s flown from the Washington, D.C., suburbs to land on the White House lawn.
A second new tag, for only the heaviest robins, includes an accelerometer to provide information about the bird’s movements; future versions may also measure humidity and barometric pressure. These Icarus tags work with a new antenna on the International Space Station.
That antenna was first turned on about two years ago, “but there were some glitches with the power-supply and the computer, so we had to bring it down again with a Russian rocket, then transport it from Moscow to Germany to fix it,” said Martin Wikelski, director of the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior, whose scientific team is honing the technology. After “the usual troubleshooting for space science,” the antenna was turned back on this spring.
As researchers deploy precision tags, Wikelski envisions the development of “an ‘Internet of animals’ — a collection of sensors around the world giving us a better picture of the movement of life on the planet.”
The American robin is an iconic songbird in North America, its bright chirp a harbinger of spring. Yet its migratory habits remain a bit mysterious to scientists.
“It’s astounding how little we know about some of the most common songbirds,” said Ken Rosenberg, a conservation scientist at Cornell University. “We have a general idea of migration, a range map, but that’s really just a broad impression.”
An earlier study Williams worked on showed some robins are long-distance migrants — flying more than 2,780 miles (4,480 km) between their breeding area in Alaska and winter grounds in Texas — while others hop around a single backyard most of the year.
What factors drive some robins to migrate, while others don’t? Does it have to do with available food, temperature fluctuations or success in mating and rearing chicks?
Williams hopes more detailed data from satellite tags, combined with records of nesting success, will provide insights, and she’s working with partners who are tagging robins in Alaska, Indiana and Florida for a three-year study.
Scientists have previously put GPS-tracking devices on larger raptors, but the technology has only recently become small and light enough for some songbirds. Tracking devices must be less than 5% of the animal’s weight to avoid encumbering them.
In a Silver Spring, Maryland, yard, Williams has unfurled nylon nets between tall aluminum poles. When a robin flies into the net, she delicately untangles the bird. Then she holds it in a “bander’s grip” — with her forefinger and middle finger loosely on either side of the bird’s neck, and another two fingers around its body.
On a tarp, she measures the robin’s beak length, takes a toenail clipping and plucks a tail feather to gauge overall health.
Then she weighs the bird in a small cup on a scale. This one is about 80 grams, just over the threshold for wearing the penny-sized Argos satellite tag.
Williams fashions a makeshift saddle with clear jewelry cord looped around each of the bird’s legs. She then tightens the cord so the tag sits firmly on the bird’s back.
When she opens her hand, the robin hops to the ground, then takes a few steps under a pink azalea shrub before flying off.
In addition to providing very precise locations, the satellite tags transmit data that can be downloaded from afar onto Williams’ laptop. The data on older tags couldn’t be retrieved unless the same bird was recaptured the following year — a difficult and uncertain task.
Wikelski hopes the new technology will help scientists better understand threats birds and other creatures face from habitat loss, pollution and climate change.
“It is detective work to try to figure out why a population is declining,” said Ben Freeman, a biologist at the Biodiversity Research Centre at the University of British Columbia. Better information about migration corridors “will help us look in the right places.”
A 2019 study co-written by Cornell’s Rosenberg showed that North America’s population of wild birds declined by nearly 30%, or 3 billion, since 1970.
He said tracking birds will help explain why: “Where in their annual cycles do migratory birds face the greatest threats? Is it exposure to pesticides in Mexico, the clearing of rainforests in Brazil, or is it what people are doing in their backyards here in the U.S.?”
NASA releases stunning new pic of Milky Way’s ‘downtown’
NASA has released a stunning new picture of our galaxy’s violent, super-energized “downtown.”
It’s a composite of 370 observations over the past two decades by the orbiting Chandra X-ray Observatory, depicting billions of stars and countless black holes in the center, or heart, of the Milky Way. A radio telescope in South Africa also contributed to the image, for contrast.
Astronomer Daniel Wang of the University of Massachusetts Amherst said Friday he spent a year working on this while stuck at home during the pandemic.
“What we see in the picture is a violent or energetic ecosystem in our galaxy’s downtown,” Wang said in an email. “There are a lot of supernova remnants, black holes, and neutron stars there. Each X-ray dot or feature represents an energetic source, most of which are in the center.”
This busy, high-energy galactic center is 26,000 light years away.
His work appears in the June issue of the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.
Launched in 1999, Chandra is in an extreme oval orbit around Earth.
Navigation error sends NASA’s Mars helicopter on wild ride
A navigation timing error sent NASA’s little Mars helicopter on a wild, lurching ride, its first major problem since it took to the Martian skies last month.
The experimental helicopter, named Ingenuity, managed to land safely, officials at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory reported Thursday.
The trouble cropped up about a minute into the helicopter’s sixth test flight last Saturday at an altitude of 33 feet (10 meters). One of the numerous pictures taken by an on-board camera did not register in the navigation system, throwing the entire timing sequence off and confusing the craft about its location.
Ingenuity began tilting back and forth as much as 20 degrees and suffered power consumption spikes, according to Havard Grip, the helicopter’s chief pilot.
Also read: 4th flight fizzles for NASA’s Mars helicopter, retry Friday
A built-in system to provide extra margin for stability “came to the rescue,” he wrote in an online status update. The helicopter landed within 16 feet (5 meters) of its intended touchdown site.
Ingenuity became the first aircraft to make a powered flight on another planet in April, two months after landing on Mars with NASA’s rover Perseverance.
The 4-pound (1.8-kilogram) helicopter aced its first five flights, each one more challenging than before. NASA was so impressed by the $85 million tech demo that it extended its mission by at least a month.
Saturday’s troubled flight was the first for this bonus period. Engineers have spent the past several days addressing the problem.
Biden’s solar ambitions collide with China labor complaints
The Biden administration’s solar power ambitions are colliding with complaints the global industry depends on Chinese raw materials that might be produced by forced labor.
A big hurdle is polysilicon, used to make photovoltaic cells for solar panels. The global industry gets 45% of its supply from Xinjiang, the northwestern region where the ruling Communist Party is accused of mass incarceration of minorities and other abuses. Other parts of China supply 35%. Only 20% comes from U.S. and other producers.
Biden’s climate envoy, John Kerry, says Washington is deciding whether to keep solar products from Xinjiang out of U.S. markets. That sets up a conflict with President Joe Biden’s plans to cut climate-changing carbon emissions by promoting solar and other renewable energy while also reducing costs.
In Xinjiang, more than 1 million Uyghurs and other members of predominantly Muslim ethnic groups have been forced into detention camps, according to foreign researchers and governments. Authorities are accused of forced sterilizations of minorities and of destroying mosques.
Chinese officials reject accusations of abuse and say the camps are for job training aimed at economic development and deterring radicalism.
U.S. and some Chinese solar vendors have pledged to avoid suppliers that might use forced labor. It isn’t clear, however, whether they can meet rising demand without Xinjiang, where Beijing won’t allow independent inspections of workplaces.
The biggest manufacturers all use raw materials from Xinjiang and have a “high risk of forced labor in their supply chains,” according to a May 14 report by researchers Laura T. Murphy and Nyrola Elimaat of Britain’s Sheffield Hallam University.
The possibility of forced labor “is a problem,” Kerry told U.S. legislators last week. He cited “solar panels that we believe in some cases are being produced by forced labor.”
Western governments have imposed travel and financial restrictions on Chinese officials blamed for abuses. The U.S. government has banned imports of cotton and tomatoes from Xinjiang, citing concerns over forced labor.
The administration was assessing whether to extend that ban to solar panels and raw materials from Xinjiang, Kerry said. He said he didn’t know the status of that review.
At issue is the government’s “labor transfer” program, which places workers in Xinjiang with companies.
Chinese officials say it is voluntary, but Murphy and Elimaat argue it takes place in “an environment of unprecedented coercion” and is “undergirded by the constant threat of re-education and internment.”
“Many indigenous workers are unable to refuse or walk away from these jobs,” their report says. It says the programs are “tantamount to forcible transfer of populations and enslavement.”
Murphy and Elimaat said they found 11 companies engaged in forced labor transfers of Uyghurs and other minorities and 90 Chinese and foreign enterprises whose supply chains are affected. They said manufacturers need to make “significant changes” if they want to avoid suppliers that use forced labor.
Read: Biden directs US to mitigate financial risk from climate
Murphy and Elimaat say the biggest global solar equipment manufacturers — JinkoSolar Inc., LONGi Green Energy Technology Co., Trina Solar Energy Co. and JA Solar Holdings Co. — might have forced labor in their supply chains.
Trina and JinkoSolar also have “possible labor transfers” in factories, while a JinkoSolar facility is in an industrial park that also has a prison, according to Murphy and Elimaat.
JinkoSolar, LONGi, Trina and JA Solar didn’t immediately respond to questions about the report.
At the same time, a supply crunch as demand surges has boosted polysilicon prices more than 100% since January to a 9-year high.
The market is “already undersupplied,” Johannes Bernreuter, head of Germany’s Bernreuter Research, said in an email.
China is both the biggest global market for solar equipment and the biggest producer.
That reflects multibillion-dollar government spending over the past two decades to promote solar energy. The ruling party wants to curb reliance on imported oil and gas, which it sees as a security weakness, and take the lead in an emerging industry.
A supply glut as hundreds of Chinese manufacturers rushed into the industry 15 years ago drove prices down. That hurt Western competitors but accelerated adoption of solar in the United States and Europe.
Seven of the top 10 global producers are Chinese. Canadian Solar Inc. is registered in Canada but its production is in China. South Korea’s Hanwha Q-Cells is No. 6.
The only U.S. producer in the top 10, First Solar Inc., has no exposure to the Xinjiang polysilicon supply chain because the Tempe, Arizona, company uses thin film technology that requires no polysilicon.
Vendors serving U.S. and European markets probably can get enough polysilicon outside Xinjiang, Bernreuter said. But he said supplies might be squeezed if other countries impose the same requirement.
Potential non-Chinese suppliers include Germany’s Wacker Chemie AG and the Malaysian arm of South Korea’s OCI Co.
However, those companies also buy polysilicon from Xinjiang’s biggest supplier, Hoshine Silicon Industry Co., according to Murphy and Elimaat. They cited documents they said show Hoshine, also known as Hesheng, participates in “labor transfer.”
Hoshine didn’t immediately respond to questions about the report.
U.S. solar equipment vendors have been trying since last year to overhaul supply chains to eliminate problem suppliers, according to their trade group, the Solar Energy Industries Association.
In February, 175 companies including the U.S. arms of JinkoSolar, LONGi, Trina and JA Solar signed a pledge to oppose use of forced labor by their suppliers.
Potential changes should be done by the end of June, according to the group’s president, Abigail Ross Hopper.
“If their customers and the U.S. government are demanding it, they will need to move quickly,” Ross Hopper told PV Magazine USA in February.
Bernreuter warned the Chinese government “might interfere” with an overhaul, though there is no sign that has happened.