Happy #FieldworkFriday#! We retrieved our trail cam from Emerald Ridge (RER) last week which took daily photos from September 2023 to January 2025. This insight shows that our extended solar panel plays a vital role, at times being the only thing above the deep snow.

Happy #FieldworkFriday#! PNSN field crew recently took a helicopter ride to upgrade equipment at seismic station OSD (Snow Dome) on Mount Olympus in Olympic National Park. Ride along to check out the views!

Happy #FieldworkFriday#! After wrapping up work at station BOW2, our field team spottted two young fawns nearby. Were they curious future field assistants, or just taking a quick break from playing tag with each other?

Meet Imogen Parsley, a Yenching Academy master’s graduate originally from Wales, UK. Her bond with Chinese culture stretches back four decades, beginning with her mother’s Chinese language studies in Beijing. From studying Chinese at Cambridge to conducting fieldwork across rural China, she has spent years bridging cultures. Speaking as a student representative at the PKU Graduation 2026 ceremony, she shared that she will devote her career to being a cross-cultural bridge, linking people around the globe to foster deeper mutual understanding. Class of 2026

Why did private firms, not state-owned enterprises (SOEs), come to dominate China’s EV sector? My new @ChinaJournal article (co-authored with Xiao Ma @maxiaoalex) challenge the "top-down industrial policy" narrative. The real engine? Strategic alliances between local governments and private capital. 🧵 Based on 3+ years of fieldwork, 60+ interviews (with officials, entrepreneurs, and engineers), and rich first-hand accounts, we show how strict central regulations inadvertently drove local states to bet big on private EV players. Here is the story: (1/15)

Prez Donald Trump announced that the United States had entered into an agreement giving it permanent control over security in Greenland, called it an Infinite Life Agreement with no end, and said everything had been agreed that day. It has not been signed. Its text is unpublished. Two parliaments must still vote. That comes from the Danish prime minister's own office, which said the same day that the three governments expect to sign in the coming week at the United Nations General Assembly, and that the agreement then enters into force subject to the necessary national parliamentary procedures. A negotiated bargain exists. Binding law does not, yet! The duration being announced is 75 years old. The Defense of Greenland Agreement of 27th April 1951 runs for the duration of the North Atlantic Treaty, which is to say it already has no expiry date. The Igaliku amendment of 6th August 2004 already named Greenland's own government as a party, signed by Colin Powell and Per Stig Moller, and its own text states it enters into force on the date of signature. The 2004 amendment was law the day it was signed. The 2026 text is not signed and then needs Copenhagen and Nuuk. There is a closer benchmark. The last US-Denmark defence agreement was signed in Washington on 21st December 2023 and entered into force on 1st July 2025, 558 days later, and it expressly does not cover Greenland or the Faroes. President Trump also said no previous president was able to do anything about Greenland. The 1941 Kauffmann agreement, the 1951 defence agreement and the 2004 amendment are the record. No cost is the second claim. Sec. Marco Rubio put it as zero cost to the US taxpayer. The United States already holds an operations and maintenance contract for Pituffik Space Base with a ceiling near 3.95 billion dollars running to 2034. The 1951 agreement already provided for no compensation to Denmark inside agreed defence areas. So no cost is coherent only as no purchase price for the island, which was the demand that got dropped. What would genuinely be new is narrower and sharper than control. US officials briefing anonymously describe an explicit ban on non-NATO bases and troops, a screen on sensitive investments aimed at Russia and China, and rights that survive Greenlandic independence. The first two are plausible additions. The third would bind a state that does not yet exist. None of the three appear in the Danish statement, which speaks instead of sovereignty, territorial integrity and the right to self-determination. Eleven days before the announcement, Ursula von der Leyen stood in Nuuk with Frederiksen and Nielsen and announced 200 million euros for connectivity, clean energy and critical raw materials. Those are close to the sectors an investment screen would police, which makes the first real test of that screen European rather than Chinese. A survey commissioned by The Copenhagen Post, fieldwork in late January 2026 with 610 respondents, found 5% of Greenlanders favouring closer cooperation with the United States and 65% favouring the European Union. Eight months old, and the only public sample there is. Signature is expected at the General Assembly this week. Then the Folketing. Then the Inatsisartut. Publication at signature is the first moment three incompatible summaries can be checked against one document. An announcement can be permanent on the day it is made. An agreement cannot be permanent before it is signed and before the two parliaments the Danish state itself named have voted.