The traditional Chinese solar calendar divides the year into 24 solar terms. Major Cold, or da han in Chinese, is the last solar term in the annual solar calendar. Here are some things about Major Cold.

During Major Cold, as the cold current moves southward, the weather is often cold to the extreme. Though the related data in China show that the lowest temperature in a year is usually recorded during the Major Cold period, it may not be as cold as Minor Cold in most areas on the whole since spring is approaching.

During Major Cold, the freezing weather has a big influence on Chinese people’s lives. Rather than take up outdoor activities, people tend to reduce movements and choose to stay at home to keep fit in various ways. For example, to stay warm, people in Beijing have a habit of eating dispelling cold cake, a kind of rice cake that is thought good to warm and nourish. Besides, in Chinese, “rice cake” has the same pronunciation with the words “higher in a new year”, which symbolizes good luck and continual promotion. For another example, residents in Nanjing, Jiangsu Province like to drink nourishing chicken soup during Major Cold.

Major Cold often coincides with the end of the year, so the folk customs of this period have an added sense of farewell to the old and welcoming the new. With the traditional Spring Festival around the corner, people are busy making preparations for it, like stocking up delicacies, sweeping and decorating. The cheerfulness of the reunion adds warmth to the cold winter days.

When Huang Xiqin took a job as an appraiser (估价员) after graduating from university in 1992, her occupation was a strange concept to most Chinese people. On the China’s mainland, there were no more than 100 appraisers, according to Huang, chairwoman of Guozhonglian Appraisals and a member of the 13th National Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference.

Shenzhen in Guangdong Province, where her company is headquartered, was the first China’s mainland city to introduce the value consulting industry thanks to the reform and opening-up policy launched in 1978. It was not until 1996 that such qualification examinations were made available nationwide. She advised we should learn from our neighbor Hong Kong. At that time, many of the appraisal reports in Shenzhen were written in traditional Chinese characters, which are widely used in Hong Kong.

Enthusiastic about the new industry, Huang devoted almost all of her time to studying and she went on to pass three of the qualification tests for appraisers between 1996 and 1998. It was challenging. The test for asset appraisers, for example, requires knowledge on almost all items related to company balance sheets. One of the subjects is electromagnetically engineering, and examinees must master all major items of large-scale equipment in China in order to pass. She was so busy that she could only finish work at 8 pm. And she would go to the library and stay there studying until closing time. After going home, she continued studying until midnight, and kept going like this for more than seven years.

Though tired and having almost no time for entertainment, she was thankful for the reform and opening-up policy that enabled Shenzhen to pioneer in many aspects and allowed her company to develop.

Few marsupials (有袋哺乳动物) have gone from miraculous survival to the edge of extinction as quickly as the Kangaroo Island dunnart (狭足袋鼩).

In 2019 and 2020, devastating fires burned nearly 10 million hectares of southeastern Australia. The flames threatened hundreds of species with extinction, but the Kangaroo Island dunnart — which already numbered less than 500 before the fires — seemed to be one that was beyond expectation in the aftermath. But now these rare creatures may be more at risk than ever, researchers say June 16 in Scientific Reports. The danger, as domestic as it sounds, is getting eaten by a cat.

As of 2008, invasive wildcats had contributed to at least 13 percent of extinctions worldwide. That’s one reason why the government has been euthanizing (安乐死) wildcats on Kangaroo Island for years. The scientists who conducted the dunnart study knew all this — but when they studied the remains of wildcats euthanized in 2020, they were still surprised by what they saw: Seven out of 86 wildcats had recently dined on dunnart.

“We were not expecting to find so many,” says Louis Lignereux, a field researcher at the University of Adelaide School of Animal and Veterinary Science. “It’s particularly bad news, ”he says, “if you think of what was in the wildcats as only a brief description of what they ate in the last 36 hours.” Taking that into account, those seven wildcats alone could have eaten enough to wipe out the Kangaroo Island dunnart within a few months, if they had survived—and there are hundreds of other wildcats on the island.

A small habitat makes the dunnarts especially vulnerable. It’s like putting all your eggs in one basket, Lignereux says. Since the fires, the Kangaroo Island dunnart is thought to now live in an area about one-tenth of the size of Manhattan. “If something happened to this spot,” he says, “then the dunnart is gone forever.”

Cutting 20% of sugar from packaged foods and 40% from beverages could prevent 2.48 million cardiovascular disease events, 490,000 cardiovascular deaths, and 750,000 diabetes cases in the U.S. over the lifetime of the adult population, according to a micro-simulation study published in Circulation.

A team of researchers from Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH), the Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy at Tufts University, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and New York City Departnent of Health and Mental Hygiene (NYC DOHMH)created a model to simulate and quantify the health, economic, and equity impacts of a pragmatic sugar-reduction policy proposed by the U.S. National Salt and Sugar Reduction Initiative (NSSRI). As a partnership of more than 100 local, state and national health organizations convened by the NYC DOHMH, the NSSRI released draft sugar-reduction targets for packaged food sand beverages in 15 categories in 2018. This February, NSSRI finalized the policy with the goal of industry voluntarily committing to gradually reformulate their sugary products.

Ten years after the NSSRI policy goes into effect, the U.S. could expect to save $4.28 billion in total net healthcare costs, and $118.04 billion over the lifetime of the current adult population (ages 35 to 79), according to the model. Adding the societal costs of lost productivity of Americans developing diseases from excessive sugar consumption, the total cost savings of the NSSRI policy rises to $160.88 billion over the adult population’s lifetime. These benefits are likely to be an underestimation since the calculations were conservative. The study also demonstrated that even if partial industry observed the policy, it could generate significant health and economic gains.

“Sugar is one of the most obvious additives in the food supply to reduce to reasonable amounts,” says Dariush Mozaffarian, MD, DrPH, co-senior author and leader of the Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy at Tufts University. “Our findings suggest it’s time to implement a national program with voluntary sugar reduction targets, which can generate major improvements in health, health disparities, and healthcare spending in less than a decade.”