BEIJING, Sept. 7 (Xinhua) — The following is a summary of published science and technology news of China.

COVID-19 VACCINE

Two Chinese inactivated vaccines, including a trivalent one and a monovalent one against Omicron variants, have received approval for clinical research in Chile, the vaccine developer Sinovac has announced.

The trivalent vaccine targets the Delta and Omicron variants alongside the original strain of COVID-19, according to the Chinese biopharmaceutical company.

In the forthcoming clinical research, a multicenter, randomized, double-blind and positive-controlled method will be adopted to study the immunogenicity of the two vaccines among adults aged over 18 who have received four doses of COVID-19 vaccines.

CARB DIET

A starch analysis of dental calculus has revealed the earliest direct evidence of a hominin diet and human ancestors’ tooth-picking habit in East Asia.

Those early modern humans between 120,000 and 80,000 years ago ate acorns, roots, tubers, grass seeds and some unidentified plants, but they hadn’t yet evolved to consume any agricultural crops like rice.

A group of Chinese researchers examined the starch grains in the dental calculus of Fuyan Cave hominins, the hunter-gatherers who lived in today’s central China’s Hunan Province and were among the earliest modern humans in East Asia.

SATELLITES FOR QUAKE RELIEF

China has applied its Gaofen series satellites to help with relief work following a 6.8-magnitude earthquake in southwest China’s Sichuan Province, according to the website of state broadcaster China Central Television (CCTV).

More than 10 satellites were deployed to capture images of the quake-hit areas 10 minutes after the earthquake jolted Sichuan’s Luding County at 12:52 p.m. Monday, including the Gaofen-3 01/02/03 satellites, a Gaofen-1 D satellite and a Gaojing-1 satellite, according to the Earth Observation System and Data Center of the China National Space Administration.