Chronicle: In principle, setting a national entrance exam is the fairest way for China’s universities to determine which of the country’s millions of high-school students to admit each year. In practice, the exam is fraught with biases that favor children from Beijing, Shanghai, and other rich cities. Now, the Chinese government has begun a modest reform of university admissions. The grueling three-day exam, the gaokao, will remain, but universities will be free to apply their own supplemental criteria to select students.
The finding that the Saturnian moon may host layers of icy slush instead of a global ocean could change how planetary scientists think about other icy moons as well.
Modeling the shapes of tree branches, neurons, and blood vessels is a thorny problem, but researchers have just discovered that much of the math has already been done.
January 29, 2026 12:52 PM
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