Chinese Journal of Nature

Prospect of lunar metallurgical industrial research

CHEN Zhi-Yuan;ZHOU Guo-Chi

2013, 35(1): 1-008.

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Exploiting programs on the moon are developed in several nations at the initial decade of 21st century. Mineralogy is the principal direction of the study of the Moon. ISRU (in situ resource utilization) focuses on the production of raw materials from minerals on the lunar surface, which is an important study of lunar exploitation. However, the production methods and systems developed in the viewpoint of metallurgy are rare. Lunar extraction metallurgy is different from the traditional industrial production processes currently on the Earth. New processes should be developed by metallurgists. Some studies which considered metallurgical production in ISRU are concluded and the suggestion of the development of lunar metallurgy industry was raised.

The climate change and social development over the last two millennia in China

GE Quan-Sheng;LIU Hao-Long;ZHENG Jing-Yun; Xiao-Ling-Bo

2013, 35(1): 9-021.

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An analysis of the corresponding relationship between climate change and social development over the last two millennia in China, leads to the following conclusion that how historical climate change impacted aspects of ancient society. Firstly, warm period was beneficial to social development while cold period was not. The law was appropriate for most of ancient times. Secondly, historical climate change imposed impacts of five levels on the society, which were transmitted step by step from nature subsystem to economic and humane subsystems. Thirdly, when climate became terrible, social unrest was often closely related to the poor whose living conditions were limited by regional environmental vulnerability to a large extent. Fourthly, climate change was only the external conditions for social development, while the reform of production relations was the most important impetus to the social development. At last, with advances in science and technology, the negative impacts of climate change on society were generally reduced.

''Climategate'' and the debate on historical significance of the 20th century warming in the last millennium

ZHENG Jing-Yun;GE Quan-Qing;LIU Hao-Long; Xiao-Ling-Beo

2013, 35(1): 22-029.

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Abstract Climategate, which happened before 2009 UN Climate Change Conference at Copenhagen, have sharply intensified the debate within the scientific community on the so-called ''hockey stick'' reconstruction of temperature variations over the last millennium. In this paper, a brief summary of the development of the debate is made and special attention is given to two key issues, namely, whether the Medieval Warm Period and the Little Ice Age existed on a global scale, and whether the 20th century was the warmest one in the last millennium. It's found that along with the uncertainties of large-scale temperature reconstructions being increasingly reduced with the update of proxy dataset and improvements of reconstruction methods during the last 20 years, a general consensus among scientists on the issues is beginning to emerge. Particularly, several latest large-scale temperature reconstructions showed that the 20th century warmth, no matter in amplitude or rate, was not unprecedented in the last millennium.

On geography in contemporary scientific and social perspectives

CAI Yun-Long

2013, 35(1): 30-039.

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The relationship between human beings and the environment, and the important features of the Earth's surface and their spatial structural changes longterm concerned by geography, are becoming the core issues of contemporary science and society, and directing at today's pressing concerns of general public and policy makers. However, the understanding of society to geography is far from sufficient, so that the responses to such major issues as environmental change, resource scarcity, unbalanced development and national conflicts subject to many restrictions. Therefore, it is necessary to rediscover geography in the new perspective of contemporary science and society. With new perspectives of global change and sustainability, this article discusses the study objects, research approaches, core concepts, position in scientific knowledge system, and roles to meet social needs and in national science and technology development of geography.

Organic-inorganic energy minerals interactions and the accumulation and mineralization in the same sedimentary basins

LIU Chi-Xiang;MAO Guang-Zhou;QIU Xin-Wei;Wu Bai-Lin;Zhao-Hong-Ge;WANG Jian-Qiang

2013, 35(1): 47-055.

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The coexistence and enrichment in the same basin of oil, gas, coal and uranium are universal, and the origin and distribution relative to each other closely. Organic-inorganic interactions is the genetic mechanism and connection link of the multi-energy resources coexistence and mineralize. The strong absorption, reducing environment, complexation and other functions from organic oil, gas and coal played an important and positive role in accumulating of inorganic uranium. Inorganic component plays an important catalysis in the process of hydrocarbon generation. Uranium has good ligancy due to its special atomic structure, thus it has excellent characteristic of complexing catalysis and oxidation/reduction. Uranium may offer energy to living beings to keep their propagation and vegetation, lead erupting multiply, and favor the formation of high quality source rocks. Uranium can promote the generation of liquid hydrocarbon in advance, increase the total hydrocarbon production of hydrocarbon source rock at lower temperature, meanwhile, it can prevent organic matter from overmature to preserve hydrocarbon produced at high temperature well. Uranium should be one of the inorganic accelerating factors of the hydrocarbon generation. The generation and migration of such a small amount of hydrocarbon can turn the host reservoir with good poroperm characteristics at eogenetic stage into lipophilicity in a wide rage, and it provides advantage conditions for migration and accumulation of late large scale generated hydrocarbons. It is possible that even though the dense reservoir also become a large-scale commercial hydrocarbon reservoir/field.

Mechanical model of brittle faulting in lithosphere

TONG Heng-Mao

2013, 35(1): 56-063.

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Fault is one of the two most basic types of structural element (faults and folds) in lithosphere. The stress state in the lithosphere is discussed, the classic mechanical faulting model, Anderson's faulting model, is introduced, and the limitation of Anderson's model is discussed in the paper. On this basis, a recently proposed mechanical faulting model with pre-existing weakness, i.e., ''non-Andersonian faulting model'', is focused on. In addition, the sandbox modeling verification of this model and its application prospects are introduced.

Zebrafish as a model to study cardiovascular diseases

CHEN Kan;WANG Chang-Qian

2013, 35(1): 64-072.

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Over the last few years, the zebrafish has entered the field of medical research. The zebrafish possesses a host of advantages that made it as an excellent model organism. These advantages include small size and cost, optical clarity and ease of genetic manipulation and transgenesis. In this review, we focus on the use of the zebrafish for the research of cardiovascular diseases. Firstly, we introduce the cardiovascular development, cardiovascular imaging, and genetic techniques of the zebrafish. Secondly, we analyze the advantages and disadvantages of the zebrafish in cardiovascular research. Finally, we summarize previous studies with the use of this organism to model such diseases and processes as atherosclerosis, arrhythmia, cardiomyopathy, congenital heart diseases, heart failure, cardiac regeneration, inflammation, collateral vessel development, thrombosis, and novel drug screening.

New year, new science

GUAN Yi

2013, 35(1): 73-078.

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