Chinese President Xi Jinping held talks with Italian President Sergio Mattarella in Beijing on Friday.

Xi sends congratulatory letter to inaugural World Conference of Classics

A four-legged robot recently made its debut as a marathon pacesetter at an international tournament in Hangzhou, East China's Zhejiang Province, capturing public attention and curiosity, according to a report by China Central Television (CCTV) on Monday.

A total of two four-legged robots and one humanoid robot were showcased during the 2024 Hangzhou Marathon on Sunday, which is one of the longest-established running events in China, according to the Xinhua News Agency.

One of the two quadruped robots, B2, took on the role of pacesetter for the final stage of the half marathon, while the other one, Go2, ran alongside the participants in the race, according to a statement sent to the Global Times by Unitree Robotics, a Hangzhou-based civilian robotics company presenting these unveiled robots.

B2 has exceptional endurance and load capacity, an employee from Unitree said. It features a combined operating range of up to 4-6 hours, a sustained walking load of 40-50 kilograms and a maximum standing load capacity of 120 kilograms. To ensure that B2 could perform its duties safely and successfully, tech assistants had conducted nearly 10 on-road tests before the race, said the company, examining human interference, obstacle avoidance and hill-climbing ability across the half marathon route.

The four-legged Go2 robot looks like a rabbit and is capable of performing actions such as making a hand heart, shaking hands, performing backflips and handstands. It can also run while playing music, delivering cheering messages and safety tips, providing runners with packed motivation and emotional value, and encouraging more runners to finish the race.

Many netizens commented that these robots deliver lots of emotional value. A father who attended the race with his child said that the robots brought fun to the track, "(without the robots) children would have become bored and restless. My child enjoyed watching the robots," he said, as reported by CCTV.

"I followed the B2 for the entire race, and it is quite high-tech," a participant named Liu Chang, who participated specifically for the advanced robot, told the CCTV.

In addition to the four-legged robots, a humanoid robot was also showcased in this marathon. It is equipped with interactive functions such as waving, handshaking and posing, congratulating the participants on their victories by making broadcasts, the Global Times learned from Unitree.

The organizing committee of Alibaba Global Mathematics Competition released a statement on Sunday regarding the 2024 competition. In addition to announcing that a total of 86 participants receiving awards, the statement said in this competition, a teacher surnamed Wang from Lianshui Secondary Vocational School in Jiangsu province provided assistance to a student instructed by him during the preliminary round, which violated the "no discussion" rule set for the preliminary. The committee also expressed apologies for the incident.

The statement said that Wang and the student he instructed entered finals, sparking public attention. According the results of the final evaluation, neither of them won an award, the statement said. 

The news that a Chinese vocational school student entered the finals of Alibaba Global Mathematics Competition while most finalists are from prestigious institutions such as Peking University, Cambridge or MIT captured wide public attention in June 2024.

The statement said that investigation found that Wang had provided assistance to the student he instructed during the preliminary round, thereby violating the competition's "no discussion" rule. 

The incident also exposed issues such as competition system is not well-developed and management not rigorous enough. "In response, we sincerely apologize for this," the statement said.

On the same day, Lianshui Secondary Vocational School in Jiangsu province, where Wang worked, also issued a statement on its official account addressing the incident, which said it is learned that in the 2024 Alibaba Global Mathematics Competition preliminary round, teacher Wang from their school provided assistance to the student he instructed, violating the competition's "no discussion" rule.

Following a review, the school gave Wang a warning and revoked his eligibility for this year's awards and honors. The school indicated that it will further strengthen teacher ethics, school spirit, and academic atmosphere guiding teachers and students to establish correct values and views on success. At the same time, the school appeals to the public to give more tolerance and care for minors.

Chinese scientists have successfully extracted a 324-meter ice core with domestically-made drilling equipment in Purog Kangri Glacier in Tsonyi, China's highest-altitude county, averaging over 5,000 meters above sea level in Xizang Autonomous Region, setting the record for the longest ice core drilled from a glacier in the world's mid- to low-latitudes, the Institute of Tibetan Plateau Research (ITP) under the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) told media outlets on Wednesday. 

The previous record, set in 1992, was held by the Guliya Ice Cap in Xizang's Ngari Prefecture on the Qinghai-Xizang Plateau, which was the longest ice core ever drilled on the plateau and the longest outside polar regions globally. Scientists from China and US drilled a 308.6-meter ice core, spanning more than 700,000 years, said Xinhua.

The scientifically rewarding research was achieved thanks to a team led by Xu Baiqing, a deputy director of the ITP, after more than a month's effort at the top operating point of Glacier.

Xu said that the longest ice core on the plateau is characterized by unique geographic and climatic features, capturing historical changes in the region, including vital climate indicators like temperatures and precipitation, as well as environmental incidents like volcanic eruptions and atmospheric pollution, which offer both valuable data and samples for studying the patterns, mechanisms, and potential future trends of global climate change, and for predicting future trends.

Drilling and preserving ice cores allows us to understand changes in climatic conditions by obtaining valuable historical data, Xu added.

Yao Tandong, an academician of the CAS, said that by measuring the thickness and extracting ice cores, scientists have the opportunity to better examine both recorded and current environmental changes in the largest ice field in low- to mid-latitude regions, fostering a deeper understanding of global warming's effects on glaciers. 

According to Xinhua, the Purog Kangri Glacier scientific research project represents a key component of a scientific expedition launched in Lhasa in August 2024, which aims to propose critical measures for ecological protection and restoration, along with scientific recommendations for green development.

The Global Times learned from ITP earlier in September that a team led by Chinese academician Fang Xiaomin from the ITP, also engaged in this expedition, set a new record of 750 meters in environmental science drilling in the Qinghai-Xizang Plateau.

This research offers scientists a detailed record of the uplift of the central Tibetan Plateau and the historical changes in climate and ecological environment, and making it one of the primary areas for studying the co-evolution of tectonics, climate, biology and ecology.