The Official Newsletter of Zhejiang University

A research team led by Professor QI Jianhua has published a research paper entitled “Identification of an Asexual Reproduction Inducer of Phytopathogenic and Toxigenic Fusarium” in Angewandte Chemie International Edition, a top journal in chemistry. This paper was highly spoken of by two reviewers, which was rarely seen according to the editor. The research has laid an important foundation for the development of specific antibiotics and antimicrobials.The discovery of hormones (or pheromones) ...

The structure and diversity of the microorganism community plays a crucial role in agro-ecosystems. If the diversity of the microorganism community in soil is destroyed, nourishments in soil will be lost, the structure of soil will degenerate and the ecological function will decline, thereby severely affecting its productivity and health. It is one of the most common agricultural measures to apply nitrogen fertilizers, which will improve crop yield in the short term. However, Long-term elevated ...

The research team led by Prof. ZHANG Guoping with the Department of Agronomy, Zhejiang University, published an article entitled “Genomic adaptation to drought in wild barley is driven by edaphic natural selection at the Tabigha Evolution Slope” in the April 30 issue of the journal of PNAS. Its lead author and corresponding author are WANG Xiaolei (a Ph.D. student) and Prof. DAI Fei.Microsite evolution involving ecological divergences due to geological, edaphic, or climatic conditions req...

Recently, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) of the UNESCO unveiled a list of lead authors of the Sixth Assessment Report. A total of 707 authors from across the world, among whom 37 are from China, will participate in the finalization of the report. Prof. CAO Long with the School of Earth Sciences, Zhejiang University, is greatly honored to be one of the lead authors.The IPCC was set up in 1988 by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) and United Nations Environ...

Finding clues from a small piece of data is no longer an arduous task; however, when facing real-world problems, there is often more than one source of data available. When the clues lie in front of you, how are you able to deduct the truth from them?Recently, Alibaba-Zhejiang University Joint Research Institute of Frontier Technologies (AZFT) has published their latest research, which is called RelationLine. RelationLine is a visual analysis system that is capable of in...

The zebra’s stripes, the snail’s spirals and the leaf’s convolution……It has been an intriguing enigma as to how these regular and repetitive patterns form in nature. As early as 1952, English scientist Alan Turing made a prediction that two chemical substances, activator and inhibitor, can, under certain conditions, react and diffuse with each other to generate spatiotemporal stationary structures. Through what is dubbed as a “reaction-diffusion” process, these two substances will spontan...

The Second edition of the Chinese Folk Music Concert kicked off with a rousing and vigorous guzheng (zither) performance of “Fighting the Typhoon” in the Residential College of Haining Campus on May 2.This concert was featured by traditional Chinese musical instruments, including the guzheng, the guqing, the pipa, the xiao, the bamboo flute and the hulusi. The piano was also a perfect complement to the concert. A series of classical masterpieces, including Fisherman’s Chant at Night...

The 2nd World Industrial Design Conference was held in Mengqi Town, Hangzhou on April 21-28. Guests from more than 30 countries and regions and around 60 international design organizations attended the conference.With the theme “Design and Ecology”, the conference aims to set up an international cooperation platform to promote design creation and harmonious development between economy and society. ZJU and local government of Yuhang District jointly planned the conference.The con...

Zhejiang University and the University of Sydney have signed a university-wide partnership agreement, each committing to invest RMB500,000 every year for the next three years to fund joint research projects and academic mobility.     ZJU and USyd share a long history of cooperation. The two universities signed a Memorandum of Understanding in 2008, and a student exchange agreement in 2009. In 2017, ZJU and USyd signed an agreement on short-term faculty exchange, to provide funding...