solarz
Brigadier
They're already used for agriculture.
News on China's scientific and technological development.
- Thread starter Quickie
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They're already used for agriculture.
While it's true that it takes natural process hundreds or thousands of years to restore soil (if at all), the process can be greatly accelerated - down to a matter of years - with amendments like this, which the video posted by @Tam touched on
Jura The idiot
General
PiSigma
"the engineer"
Chongqing is not a dessert, in fact it's known for lots of rain.
The study plot wasn't planted in Chongqing, it was planted in Inner Mongolia. The study was conducted by researchers from Chongqing Jiaotong.
As for the broader point about deserts, land suitable for reclamation (at least the easier kind) isn't "desert", it's land degraded by centuries of overgrazing, deforestation, and other harmful practices. It's an annoying misuse of terminology that's unfortunately caught on. China - having supported an extensive agrarian civilization for quite some time, add to that the frenetic industrialization that saw widespread clearing of forests - has a lot of degraded land suitable for rehabilitation. Such land typically gets sufficient rain (else it wouldn't have been what it was before it was moonscaped), which in fact can be a problem since the lack of vegetative cover and topsoil usually means that water runs off and floods rather than infiltrate and drain into aquifers.
Even deserts proper can be greened if sufficient water can be transferred or pumped from the ground, but that's not needed in China's case. There's plenty of ravaged land to fix before considering that.
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Jura The idiot
General
inside:
is something like ten miles to the north-east
"... experimental field is located at 39°36’32”N, 106°39’02”E ..."
is something like ten miles to the north-east
Hendrik_2000
Lieutenant General
Sweet watermelons growing on gravel-covered land in Ningxia, China
This is amazing Chinese farmer found by accident that mixing 30% sand/soil with 70% of gravel will reduce evaporation and retain water making it suitable for agriculture, turning barren land into productive agricultural land
Bottomless wisdom of common people in China(Laobaixing) in their struggle for better life . That is why I said trust Chinese people they are tough, hard working and ingenious
Mixing gravel and soil
Sweet watermelon grow on unproductive land
Acres and acres of sweet water melon bringing wealth to the farmer
Here is the video
This is amazing Chinese farmer found by accident that mixing 30% sand/soil with 70% of gravel will reduce evaporation and retain water making it suitable for agriculture, turning barren land into productive agricultural land
Bottomless wisdom of common people in China(Laobaixing) in their struggle for better life . That is why I said trust Chinese people they are tough, hard working and ingenious
Mixing gravel and soil
Sweet watermelon grow on unproductive land
Acres and acres of sweet water melon bringing wealth to the farmer
Here is the video
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Scientists discover way to grow back tooth enamel naturally
Researchers in China hope to regrow tooth enamel without using fillings and start trials in people within one to two years.
Fillings could be a thing of the past as scientists say they have found a way to grow back tooth enamel.
Enamel, a highly mineralised substance that acts as a barrier to protect the tooth, can become susceptible to degradation, especially by acids from food and drink.
Despite being the hardest tissue in the body, it cannot self-repair, leaving people exposed to cavities and in need of fillings.
But scientists in China have found that mixing calcium and phosphate ions - two minerals which are found in enamel - with the chemical trimethylamine in an alcohol solution causes enamel to grow with the same structure as teeth.
The discovery has not yet been proven to work in the "hostile environment" of the mouth, but experts say regrown tooth enamel may be tested in people in the near future.
When the mixture was applied to human teeth, it repaired the enamel layer to around 2.7 micrometres of thickness. It also achieved the same structure of natural enamel within 48 hours.
Dr Zhaoming Liu, a co-author of the study from Zhejiang University in China, said: "Our newly regenerated enamel has the same structure and similar mechanical properties as native enamel.
"We hope to realise tooth enamel regrowth without using fillings which contain totally different materials and we hope, if all goes smoothly, to start trials in people within one to two years."
He said past attempts to regrow enamel by using a range of materials such as composite resins, ceramics and amalgam had failed to achieve permanent repair because of the imperfect combination between these foreign materials and the native enamel.
The researchers behind the study, published in the journal Science Advances, managed to defeat this problem by developing a way to produce tiny clusters of calcium phosphate - the main component of enamel - with a diameter of just 1.5 nanometres.
With the presence of trimethylamine, the clusters were prevented from clumping.
Currently, nothing can be done to repair damaged teeth in the dentist's chair apart from fillings or crowns. Many scientists are looking for ways to grow back enamel.
Last year, Researchers at Queen Mary University of London said they had .
The team found a protein able to trigger the growth of crystals, in a similar way to how crystals grow when dental enamel develops in the body.
Lead author Professor Alvaro Mata said the "key discovery" had been finding a way to exploit proteins to control and guide the process of mineralisation.
He said: "Through this, we have developed a technique to easily grow synthetic materials that emulate such hierarchically organised architecture over large areas and with the capacity to tune their properties."
Researchers in China hope to regrow tooth enamel without using fillings and start trials in people within one to two years.
Fillings could be a thing of the past as scientists say they have found a way to grow back tooth enamel.
Enamel, a highly mineralised substance that acts as a barrier to protect the tooth, can become susceptible to degradation, especially by acids from food and drink.
Despite being the hardest tissue in the body, it cannot self-repair, leaving people exposed to cavities and in need of fillings.
But scientists in China have found that mixing calcium and phosphate ions - two minerals which are found in enamel - with the chemical trimethylamine in an alcohol solution causes enamel to grow with the same structure as teeth.
The discovery has not yet been proven to work in the "hostile environment" of the mouth, but experts say regrown tooth enamel may be tested in people in the near future.
When the mixture was applied to human teeth, it repaired the enamel layer to around 2.7 micrometres of thickness. It also achieved the same structure of natural enamel within 48 hours.
Dr Zhaoming Liu, a co-author of the study from Zhejiang University in China, said: "Our newly regenerated enamel has the same structure and similar mechanical properties as native enamel.
"We hope to realise tooth enamel regrowth without using fillings which contain totally different materials and we hope, if all goes smoothly, to start trials in people within one to two years."
He said past attempts to regrow enamel by using a range of materials such as composite resins, ceramics and amalgam had failed to achieve permanent repair because of the imperfect combination between these foreign materials and the native enamel.
The researchers behind the study, published in the journal Science Advances, managed to defeat this problem by developing a way to produce tiny clusters of calcium phosphate - the main component of enamel - with a diameter of just 1.5 nanometres.
With the presence of trimethylamine, the clusters were prevented from clumping.
Currently, nothing can be done to repair damaged teeth in the dentist's chair apart from fillings or crowns. Many scientists are looking for ways to grow back enamel.
Last year, Researchers at Queen Mary University of London said they had .
The team found a protein able to trigger the growth of crystals, in a similar way to how crystals grow when dental enamel develops in the body.
Lead author Professor Alvaro Mata said the "key discovery" had been finding a way to exploit proteins to control and guide the process of mineralisation.
He said: "Through this, we have developed a technique to easily grow synthetic materials that emulate such hierarchically organised architecture over large areas and with the capacity to tune their properties."
Jura The idiot
General
let me add
(plus it reminded me I should call my dentist on Monday to schedule a regular checkup LOL