To commemorate the 125th anniversary of the founding of Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai Jiao Tong University and the US Association for the Advancement of Science and the US Association for the Advancement of Science jointly published the 125th Anniversary Commemorative Special Issue "125 Scientific Questions-Exploration and Discovery" ".
On April 10th, the 125 scientific issues were released to the world. Questions contributed by teachers Wang Fengping, Cao Ling and Zhou Lei from SOO were selected into the final 125 scientific questions.
Fengping WANG
Scientific Question:
How big is the deep biosphere, what microbes are there and how about their importance?
Reason for Selection：
Deep biosphere refers to the ubiquitously distributed prokaryotes living in Earth crust to high temperature volcanic basalt. Their discovery has greatly expanded the scope of biosphere on Earth. The exploration of their origin and evolution, and boundary of life in deep biosphere can not only make us have a deeper understanding of the origin and evolution of life on Earth, but also provide important clues for us to think and explore the possible life forms of other planets.
Ling CAO
Scientific Question:
What could help conservation of the oceans?
Reason for Selection：
With economic development, the shortage of terrestrial resources has become increasingly acute. Oceans will be our last guarantor of future human survival and development. However, over-exploitation of oceans by human beings has led to serious depletion of marine resources and frequent recurrence of ecological disasters. How to achieve a balanced development between the exploitation and protection of oceans has become a key challenge for future sustainable development.
Lei ZHOU
Scientific Question:
Will we be able to predict adverse catastrophic weather events (tsunami, hurricanes, earthquakes) more accurately?
Reason for Selection：
Nowadays, more than half of the world's population living in coastal regions (within 200km of a coastline), which are more vulnerable to the adverse weather events, such as tsunami and hurricanes. There is also a trend of migration to coastal regions both in the developed countries (such as the US) and the developing countries (such as China). What makes the challenge even more urgent is that, under the global warming and the climate change, the extreme weather disasters are likely to become more devastating. Therefore, a better prediction of the adverse weather events is a persistent and a timely question in science.
The 125 scientific questions that will be released are condensed by "Science" / American Association for the Advancement of Science editors and academic circles, Nobel Prize, Wolf Prize, Lasker Prize, Turing Prize, MacArthur Genius Prize winners, world-renowned scientists and scholars, masters and students of Shanghai Jiao Tong University.
These issues involve many fields such as mathematics, chemistry, medical health, life sciences, astronomy, physics, information science, materials science, neuroscience, ecology, energy science and artificial intelligence, covering a wide range and rich subject areas.
