BEIJING, March 30 (Xinhua) -- The following is a summary of published science and technology news of China.
SATELLITE LAUNCH
China launched a Long March-2D carrier rocket on Thursday evening to place new remote-sensing satellites in space.
The satellites of the PIESAT-1 constellation were lifted at 6:50 p.m. (Beijing Time) on Thursday from the Taiyuan Satellite Launch Center in northern China's Shanxi Province, and then entered the preset orbit.
They will mainly provide commercial remote-sensing data services.
CUBIC ICE
In a new study published in the journal Nature, Chinese scientists described the formation of ice crystallites in real-time at molecular resolution, solving the mystery of how water freezes into a diamond-like, face-centered cubic crystal structure.
The researchers, led by those from the Institute of Physics under the Chinese Academy of Sciences, used in-situ cryogenic transmission electron microscopy imaging and water vapor deposition on graphene to follow the ice crystals' formation from vapor at minus 170 degrees Celsius.
They found that most of the resulting ice was pure-phase cubic ice, demonstrating that the nucleation of cubic ice is preferential on low-temperature substrates. The proportion of ice with a hexagonal lattice structure increases over time.
ECO-GLASS
Chinese researchers have developed a new type of biodegradable and biorecyclable glass, offering an eco-friendly alternative with a minimal environmental footprint.
The researchers from the Institute of Process Engineering under the Chinese Academy of Sciences developed the biodegradable glass using biologically derived amino acids or peptides through the heating-quenching procedure.
The glass exhibits excellent glass-forming ability and optical properties, making it ideal for 3D-printing additive manufacturing and mold casting, according to the study published in the journal Science Advances. ■
