Ocean University of China in Qingdao publishes Blue Book on marine CO2 absorption

https://spc.jst.go.jp/news/250903/topic_2_03.html

A “China Blue Carbon 2025” Blue Book was released in Qingdao. The Blue Book project was led by the Marine Carbon Neutrality Center of the Ocean University of China, and had invited more than 70 experts and scholars from over 30 institutions in China and abroad to conduct joint special research.

The blue paper predicts that carbon dioxide absorption by China’s blue carbon ecosystems has been on the rise for over the past decade, reaching 500 million tons of carbon dioxide equivalent by 2035, at which point China will play a central role in global blue carbon contributions. By 2025, China’s total mangrove area will be approximately 303 square kilometers, with a total carbon storage of 6.03 million tons; seagrass beds will be approximately 265 square kilometers, with a total carbon storage of 2.3 million tons; and coastal salt marshes will be approximately 2,980 square kilometers, with a total carbon storage of 91.55 million tons.

The paper also notes that carbon absorption by shellfish and algae farming in China’s coastal waters has increased over the past 20 years. At the same time, China’s marine energy has also developed, with its offshore wind power capacity now number one in the world and its marine primary and secondary industries achieving “carbon minus” status.

According to the president of Ocean University of China, the university aims to achieve synergistic effects on the ecosystem, society, and economy by developing seagrass bed restoration technology, to building a blue carbon resource survey and calculation system, and even developing technologies to track and treat the sources of coastal pollutants.

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Green Carbon reaches a significant milestone: indexing in ESCI

https://www.sciencedirect.com/journal/green-carbon

The journal, founded only in 2023, has been formally accepted for indexing in the Emerging Sources Citation Index (ESCI), part of the Web of Science Core Collection by Clarivate. This achievement marks important recognition of the journal’s growing quality, editorial standards, and international relevance. ESCI inclusion will significantly enhance the journal’s visibility and provide authors with a broader platform for the dissemination of their research.

A wheelchair directed by the blinks of your eye…

https://j.people.com.cn/n3/2026/0203/c95952-20422094.html

A professor at Qingdao University in Shandong Province has developed a groundbreaking system that generates electricity when people blink, supplying power to glasses that allow patients with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) to control their wheelchairs simply by moving their eyes.

With conventional eye tracking devices, patients who wanted to operate a wheelchair and move around had to wear a heavy device on their head and be connected to a long electrical cord. Furthermore, alarms of low battery levels did discouraging patients from moving around on their own.

The eye tracking system of the team generates and supplies electricity by attaching dimethylpolysiloxane (PDMS) to the surface of the user’s eyeball like a contact lens, creating a “micro-friction generator.” When the user blinks or moves their eyeball, friction occurs between the eyeball and PDMS, continuously generating electricity.

In an eyeglass frame worn by the user, transparent electrodes made of indium tin oxide are embedded, acting as a transducer. The transparent electrodes precisely track the distribution and changes of electric charge through electrostatic induction and convert it into a recognizable electrical signal in real time. This signal is then transmitted to an external device via a control circuit, ultimately enabling highly precise control.

Before this technology can leave the lab and be widely applied, however, a series of hurdles must be overcome for industrialization.

An illustration of controlling a wheelchair through blinking and eye movements (photo courtesy of interviewee).

“Ramanomics” simplify quality control in beer brewing – QIBEBT

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.biortech.2025.133788

http://english.cas.cn/newsroom/research_news/life/202601/t20260114_1145714.shtml

Breweries typically monitor fermentation by analyzing broth composition. Alcohols, esters, acids and residual sugars are quantified via chromatography-based assays. While reliable, these tests are time-consuming and only yield batch-average results.

A research led by scientists from the CAS Qingdao Institute of Bioenergy and Bioprocess Technology (QIBEBT) has simplified this process and developed a novel workflow dubbed “process ramanomics,” which is based on spontaneous single-cell Raman spectroscopy.

To validate the approach, the researchers tracked an industrial beer fermentation process using the lager yeast Saccharomyces pastorianus, sampling a single production batch over an eight-day period. At each stage of fermentation, they collected high-throughput Raman spectra from individual cells (a “ramanome”) and matched these unique molecular fingerprints to conventional lab measurements of 43 extracellular phenotypes in the fermentation medium.

Using multivariate regression analysis, the team found that ramanomes could accurately predict 19 extracellular phenotypes. This included four higher alcohols, four esters, four amino acids, two organic acids, four mono- and disaccharide substrates, and the alcohol-to-ester ratio—a commonly used indicator tied to beer flavor balance. In practical terms, a single, rapid cellular analysis can now replace multiple time-intensive chemical assays—without sacrificing single-cell resolution details.

Because the models output cell-level predictions, the researchers also tracked phenotypic heterogeneity over time. Different metabolite classes displayed distinct heterogeneity trajectories, and for several phenotypes higher heterogeneity tended to accompany lower metabolite levels—suggesting that dispersion among cells may be a useful process-state indicator.

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