China's Generation Z skateboarders have rocked the Asian Games like no one had imagined - bagging three of four gold medals of the discipline. It was not only just about the medals, but also about the energy, vitality and the uniqueness they inject into the Games.

On September 27, the youngest member of the Chinese delegation Cui Chenxi, 13, wrote her name in Chinese sports history after becoming the youngest Asian Games champion for her nation. In the same match, 18-year-old Zeng Wenhui bagged silver in women's street.

In the men's park, 15-year-old Chen Ye finished first. In men's street, China's 16-year-old Zhang Jie snatched a gold while his teammate 19-year-old Su Jianjun won a bronze. In the women's park final, Chinese athlete Li Yujuan, 20, won the silver medal, while Mao Jiasi, 15, won the bronze.

No doubt that skateboarding is a young and up-and-coming sport. Throughout the four days of the skateboarding competition, there was a friendly, young and relaxed atmosphere in the arena. In women's street final, seven of the eight contestants are under 18. Women's street final was even attended by the youngest athlete of the Asian Games at the age of nine. These athletes, however, showed the brilliant athleticism just like their role models, passed down from generation to generation. 

No pressure

Speaking with the Global Times, the young medalists displayed a similar  fighting spirit and the adherence to excellence just like the veteran athletes, but they also showed something noticeably different - their relaxed mindset toward pressure, their independence growing up as an athlete, and the unwavering support they received from their parents. 

After becoming Team China's youngest ever Asian Games champion, Cui told the Global Times that the title did not add any extra pressure. 

"I made a mistake in my first run, and on the second attempt, my coach wanted me to be steady, but I was eager to try a riskier maneuver on my own, and in the end, it worked out," Cui said.

The champion is always at ease. In the mix zone after the final, Cui instructed all the media reporters to line up and sought their opinions on where she should stand before patiently and frankly giving answers to all the questions. She said that she never actually expected the gold but she really wanted to win. 

"I might be telling some of these stories in Hangzhou to my classmates when I get back," said the middle-school girl. "I think they would be happy for me."

Different from traditional sports, there is no fixed action pattern in skateboarding. It requires skaters to freely use their imagination and creativity, which is challenging and makes the sport popular among fans. Similar to earlier generations, professional skateboards often mention that they started the sport because they found it fun. 

"When I started skateboarding, I felt that it was a very exciting and thrilling sport. I felt very happy after completing each move," Chen said, comparing it to the piano and other hobbies that his father, Chen Wanqin, tried to introduce to him, but which he found boring compared with playing with a skateboard.

When asked about his interest over skateboarding, Zhang Jie, who just won men's street, also shrugged grand expressions, but accredited all to "cool and fun."

Family support

The Gen-Z athletes also share similar positive family atmosphere. Usually training on their own without a professional team, they hailed the support they received from their family. 

After winning the final, Cui put on the Chinese national flag on her back and skated around the venue to a loud cheer. In the audience sat her father, who first introduced Cui to skateboarding and took her training at the age of nine.

For Chen, the training area made by Chen's father became the focus of media attention after his inspirational win. In an interview with the Global Times, Chen expressed his gratitude to his father as the person he most wanted to thank after winning the gold medal.

"I'm grateful to my father for building two bowls for training for me and studying skateboarding skills with me," Chen said. Chen said that he fell in love with skateboarding when he first encountered the sport in a shopping mall at the age of 8.

Once Chen Ye showed his true passion, his father respected him the choice and supported him. In 2019, Chen Ye joined the Guangdong provincial skateboarding team. To help his son's training, Chen Wanqin and his wife rented a warehouse of more than 200 square meters to build a practice bowl for him.  

After finishing second in the men's skateboarding park event at the 2021 National Games of China, Chen Wanqin built a new 900-square-meter skateboard park with a max height of nine meters in 2022 in order to improve his son's performance. Chen Ye said that during that time, his father quit his job and even spent all his savings to support his passion.

The Chinese skateboarding team, composed of athletes born after the year of 2000, continues to make breakthroughs, and the future looks promising. Showered by love, support and confidence, they are never afraid to share their ambition to go to the top. 

"First I will concentrate on getting there, then I can make a big attack," Cui told the Global Times when asked about Paris 2024.

Fascination with faces is nature, not nurture, suggests a new study of third-trimester fetuses.

Scientists have long known that babies like looking at faces more than other objects. But research published online June 8 in Current Biology offers evidence that this preference develops before birth. In the first-ever study of prenatal visual perception, fetuses were more likely to move their heads to track facelike configurations of light projected into the womb than nonfacelike shapes.

Past research has shown that newborns pay special attention to faces, even if a “face” is stripped down to its bare essentials — for instance, a triangle of three dots: two up top for eyes, one below for a mouth or nose. This preoccupation with faces is considered crucial to social development.
“The basic tendency to pick out a face as being different from other things in your environment, and then to actually look at it, is the first step to learning who the important people are in your world,” says Scott Johnson, a developmental psychologist at UCLA who was not involved in the study.

Using a 4-D ultrasound, the researchers watched how 34-week-old fetuses reacted to seeing facelike triangles compared with seeing triangles with one dot above and two below. They projected triangles of red light in both configurations through a mother’s abdomen into the fetus’s peripheral vision. Then, they slid the light across the mom’s belly, away from the fetus’s line of sight, to see if it would turn its head to continue looking at the image.
The researchers showed 39 fetuses each type of triangle five times. Of the 195 times a facelike triangle was projected, fetuses turned their heads 40 times. In contrast, the nonfacelike triangles elicited only 14 head turns, says study coauthor Vincent Reid of Lancaster University in England. The finding suggests that fetuses share newborns’ predisposition for looking at facelike shapes, the researchers conclude.
Psychologist Melanie Spence of the University of Texas at Dallas, who was not involved in the work, says it’s a leap to draw too many similarities between the visual perceptions of fetuses and newborns. Although the triangle images mimic facelike ones used to test newborns, they aren’t the same, she notes. Scientists typically show babies faces in black and white, with head-shaped borders.

Still, Johnson says evidence that a fundamental aspect of facial perception may be hardwired into humans’ visual system is “very, very exciting.” The new study’s method of projecting images into the womb and watching the fetus’s reaction also “opens up all kinds of new doors to understand human development,” Johnson says. A similar light projection and 4-D ultrasound technique might be used to see whether fetuses can distinguish between different quantities in the same way that babies can.

Across Europe, rivers aren’t flooding when they used to.

Long-term changes in temperature and precipitation are making some rivers flood days, weeks or even months earlier than they did 50 years ago, and pushing flooding in other areas much later, researchers report August 11 in Science. Those changes could impact people, wildlife and farms near rivers.

Previous studies have shown that climate change is likely to increase the severity and frequency of coastal floods, but it can be tricky to concretely link river flooding to climate change, says Günter Blöschl, a hydrologist at the Vienna University of Technology who led the study.
Coastal flooding is worsened largely by one overriding variable that can be tracked: sea level rise. But river flooding is affected by a complex set of factors, says Rob Moore, a policy analyst at the Natural Resources Defense Council in Chicago who specializes in water issues. Both the timing and quantity of precipitation matter, as does the type of soil and whether it’s dry or already waterlogged when rain hits. What’s more, changes in land use around a river or engineering projects such as dams that change river flow can also affect flood risk — but aren’t necessarily related to the climate.
So instead of tracking the size or frequency of river floods, the researchers examined the seasonal timing of those floods. That measurement is less impacted by factors that have nothing to do with climate. Blöschl worked with researchers from 38 countries to analyze hydrological data collected at 4,262 sites across Europe from 1960 to 2010.

Flood season shifted as much as 13 days earlier or nine days later per decade, the researchers found. Over the entire study period, that shift added up to floods in some regions occurring, in the most extreme cases, as much as 65 days earlier or 45 days later. The biggest changes were in Western Europe, where a quarter of the monitoring sites recorded flood timing shifts of more than 36 days over the 50-year period. Elsewhere, effects were more moderate, though still measurable: In northeastern Europe and the area around the North Sea, for instance, more than half of the stations showed shifts of more than 8 days.
The effect varies substantially by region because not all parts of Europe experience the same sorts of floods, says Blöschl. In southern Sweden and the Baltics, floods are mostly driven by snowmelt. Warmer local temperatures make the snow melt earlier in the spring, shifting flood season up, too. In southern England, on the other hand, heavy autumn rains saturate the soil, and subsequent winter deluges can cause flooding. Flood season there is driven by when the soil gets too waterlogged to take in more moisture.

The study shows that flood timing has changed, but does not address specific consequences. It’s clear, though, that off-season flooding could have far-reaching effects, especially if these trends continue. Animals that rely on river conditions at a certain time of year in order to breed or find food could be affected by surprise floods. Out-of-season floods or unexpected dry spells could damage crops.

Plus, people are less prepared when big floods happen off-season, says Moore. While a comprehensive study like this one hasn’t been done in the United States, floods are occurring at unusual times here, too, he notes. Moore cites devastating floods that swelled the upper Mississippi River to a record size in December 2015 — not the time of year when the river is expected to overflow its banks. That flooding, combined with tornadoes spurred by the same storm system, killed more than 50 people and caused almost $2 billion in damage.

Just a stab in the dark, but you’ve probably heard: There is a total solar eclipse today, August 21.

For the first time since 1979, the moon’s shadow will zip across the continental United States. The shadow will travel from Oregon to South Carolina in a swift 92 minutes. For those in the path of totality, total darkness will last only a couple of minutes. There and elsewhere in most of the United States, the moon will partially block the sun for around three hours.
If you don’t already have plans to travel to the 115-kilometer-or-so-wide path of totality, well, you’re probably too late. But here are some links to help you experience the eclipse, whether or not you’re able to see it in person.

The eclipse will be visible in all of North America — as well as in Central America and a small part of South America. Wondering what you’ll see where you live? Check out this interactive map from NASA or this cool tool from Vox.

Still need eclipse glasses? While many retailers have been sold out for days, some organizations are handing out free glasses at eclipse-watching events. Check your local TV/newspaper/radio stations’ newsfeeds for the latest. Make sure your glasses are safe.

No eclipse glasses? Never fear! You can still see the moon eclipsing the sun by making a pinhole projector or a box projector. Or just let sunlight shine through something that has holes, like a colander or Ritz Cracker (look at the ground to see the shape of the shadow the holes cast).

Watching with kids? Check out Growth Curve blogger Laura Sanders’ tips for protecting little ones’ eyes during the eclipse.
Which reminds me: Whatever you do, don’t look directly at the sun. Permanent damage to your eyes may result. If you’re in the path of totality, officials say it’s OK to look directly at the sun once the moon completely blocks it. But that’s very brief, so be prepared to quickly look away or shield your eyes once the moon slips out of total alignment.

Want to do more with your eclipse experience? It’s not too late to participate in a citizen science project.

Stuck indoors, or out of totality? Watch the livestream. NASA’s programming begins at noon Eastern on NASA TV, which you can watch at this link or right here:
Want some tunes to go along with it? The NASA interns made an eclipse playlist. There are also several Spotify playlists around, like this one from WXPN, this from the Washington Post and this one from the Boston Globe.

If all this excitement has you fancying a future in eclipse chasing, check out our interactive map of the next 15 total solar eclipses.

And let’s not forget that there will be a ton of science going on during the eclipse. Here are the big questions physicists and astronomers will seek to answer today.

Still want more? Follow us on Facebook and on Twitter for eclipse updates and RT’s of our correspondents in totality. Watch as the Science News team takes over the Society for Science & the Public’s Snapchat (Society4Science). And come back to Science News later today for a report from our astronomy writer, Lisa Grossman, who is spending the day in Casper, Wyo., with a research team that’s studying the sun’s wispy atmosphere, the corona.