Cluster of stars Share CLOSE Members of the Tsinghua University team pose with their tutor, Han Wentao (standing, left), as they prepare for the 2020 Student Cluster Competition. The university won the competition for the third consecutive year in November. LI PAI/FOR CHINA DAILY
It was 6 am, and a team of six students from Beijing s Tsinghua University finally breathed a sigh of relief after an arduous 72 hours of competition.
While it might not have been physically challenging in the traditional sense, the nonstop testing, calculating and computer work can still take a huge toll.
Fortunately, it was all worth the sore necks, aching wrists and depleted mental resources as they were announced the winner of the 2020 Student Cluster Competition.
δ
18O or written as ‘delta-O-18’. Delta-O-18 is a measure of the ratio of the stable isotopes oxygen-18 (
18O) and oxygen-16. It is commonly used as a measure of the temperature of precipitation, as a measure of groundwater and mineral interactions, and as an indicator of processes that show isotopic fractionation. The latter is an important tool to understand geochemical and biological systems. For example, biochemical processes cause changes in ratios of stable carbon isotopes in biomass.
This is what scientists from the Institute of Geography at Friedrich-Alexander University Erlangen in Germany, World Agroforestry (ICRAF), and the Department of Forestry and Environmental Science at Shahjalal University of Science and Technology in Bangladesh used in an experiment with three South Asian tree species. Their findings were published in the journal,