This report shares insights on economic corridor development (ECD) from the 2023 Regional Cooperation and Integration (RCI) Conference, discussing how ECD can help diversify trade, cut costs, and support regional growth.

Asia and the Pacific’s developing economies are projected to grow 5.0% this year on the back of resilient domestic demand and strong export growth, particularly in the electronics sector.

The proposed SMEDP2-Phase 2 will consist of a $100 million concessional loan from ADB's ordinary capital resources and an attached technical assistance of $950,000 in aggregate from TASF-7 and Financial Sector Development Partnership Special Fund. It will finance the continuation and expansion of activities financed under the SMEDP2 project by increasing the number and size of commercially viable cottage, micro, small and medium enterprises (CMSMEs), as well as supporting employment in the CMSME sector.

The project will support increased contributions of clean energy in Mongolia's energy mix while also supporting energy security, efficiency, and resilience. The project will finance the construction of a new 220 kilovolt (kV) transmission line to connect to the 90-megawatt (MW) Erdeneburen hydropower plant (HPP) to the existing grid network, which will increase supply in the Western Energy System (WES), eliminate costly and high-emission imports from the Russian Federation, and facilitate maximized utilization of wind and solar generating capacity.

The proposed Northern China Agriculture and Food Ecosystem Net Zero Transformation Project (project) will support the PRC to achieve its climate commitment through catalyzing financing and strengthening institutional capacity for net zero transformation in agriculture and food ecosystem.

The proposed project will undertake a long-term and strategic approach to deliver climate adaptive solutions for water resources management in the Amu Darya River Basins in Uzbekistan. Predicted climate change impacts include increased temperatures, increased frequency and severity of extreme events such as floods and droughts, and a reduction of water availability and increased variability of water flows in the major river basins. Decreasing availability and increased water requirements by different sectors are leading to a growing seasonal and absolute supply-demand gap.

The TA will provide implementation support to a series of ongoing and ensuing projects. It's objective will be to strengthen the quality of implementation of ongoing projects. The focus will be on procurement, contract management, DPP/TAPP approvals, project design and management.

The TA will focus on evaluating the wind potential of various site/s for government investment in wind energy. A feasibility analysis of viable wind sites will be carried out, which will inform the government on the scale of wind projects and how best to develop this potential. The TA will also fund the equipment for measuring wind speeds and directions to confirm site selection and build capacity for wind energy development in the EA.

Cyanobacteria exposed to shorter days are better at surviving cold conditions, showing that even simple organisms can prepare for the arrival or summer and winter

The largest pterosaurs, ancient reptiles that were the first vertebrates to master flight, may have mostly soared while smaller ones flapped their wings, a pattern that persists in today's birds

From migrating sauropods and semi-aquatic predators to doting parents, palaeontologists are finally uncovering the mysteries of the lifestyles of dinosaurs

A group of frogs from Madagascar have mating calls that sound like Star Trek sound effects – now their species names honour captains from the series

The natural motors that power tail-like appendages in bacteria seem to have a single evolutionary origin, allowing parts from different species to be combined to create a tiny new engine

Experiments where vampire bats were made to run on a treadmill have revealed how they extract energy from protein in their latest blood meal

Are points of infinite curvature, where general relativity breaks down, always hidden inside black holes? An audacious attempt to find out is shedding light on the mystery of quantum gravity

One hundred years ago, we discovered there were other galaxies beyond our own. Now, we might be on the verge of another discovery: that there are other universes

It may soon be possible to vaccinate ourselves against the diseases of old age, keeping our body and brain healthier for longer

The slow-running movement, in which people meet for unhurried jogs, is booming – but don't be fooled into thinking that if there's no pain, there's no gain

Forget atomic clocks. Nuclear clocks, which only drop a second every 300 billion years, can test whether nature's fundamental constants are constant after all

From migrating sauropods and semi-aquatic predators to doting parents, palaeontologists are finally uncovering the mysteries of the lifestyles of dinosaurs

Male pattern baldness could soon be a thing of the past, with new hair loss treatments beginning to show tantalising results

Understanding the “effort paradox” can help you reshape your relationship to exertion so that you commit to those hard but truly meaningful activities

Discoveries from the genomes of the last Neanderthals are rewriting the story of how our own species came to replace them

Could the universe's missing matter be hiding in a "dark" extra dimension? We now have simple ways to test this outlandish idea - and the existence of extra dimensions more generally

What life is and how the mind works fall within the compass of one bold concept. But critics say that by attempting to explain everything, it may end up explaining nothing

An outlandish experiment searching for a brain network that tunes up and down the feeling of immersion is hoping to unlock the therapeutic effects of psychedelics

Extreme weather and a growing population is driving a food security crisis. What can we do to break the vicious cycle of carbon emissions, climate change and soaring food costs – or is it already too late?

The physicist Peter Higgs quietly revolutionised quantum field theory, then lived long enough to see the discovery of the Higgs boson he theorised. Despite receiving a Nobel prize, he remained in some ways as elusive as the particle that shares his name

To capture the clearest and most direct images of a “Wigner crystal”, a structure made entirely of electrons, researchers used a special kind of microscope and two pieces of graphene unusually free of imperfections

The Linac Coherent Light Source in California fired an X-ray pulse that lasted only a few hundred billionths of a billionth of a second but carried nearly a terawatt of power

Are points of infinite curvature, where general relativity breaks down, always hidden inside black holes? An audacious attempt to find out is shedding light on the mystery of quantum gravity

One hundred years ago, we discovered there were other galaxies beyond our own. Now, we might be on the verge of another discovery: that there are other universes

A set of mathematical equations can help turn apparently random observations into a clock – and then measure its accuracy

The gamma ray burst known as GRB221009A is the biggest explosion astronomers have ever glimpsed and we might finally know what caused the blast

Forget atomic clocks. Nuclear clocks, which only drop a second every 300 billion years, can test whether nature's fundamental constants are constant after all

If gravity is a truly quantum entity, something as simple as measuring the strength of an object’s gravitational field should change its quantum state

A mathematical proof shows that some quantum states can resist nature’s tendency to disorder – but only under very specific conditions

A new technique uses glowing molecules, laser light and microscopes to measure distances as minuscule as 0.1 nanometres – the width of a typical atom

Could the universe's missing matter be hiding in a "dark" extra dimension? We now have simple ways to test this outlandish idea - and the existence of extra dimensions more generally

A surprising reversal of our usual understanding of the second law of thermodynamics shows that it may be possible for heat to move in the “wrong” direction, flowing from a cold area to a warm one

Shapes created by vortices in water often fall apart, but an odd quantum fluid made from ultracold atoms could support vortex knots that never lose their knottiness

Droplets of fluid have been known to hover above a hot surface, but a new experiment suggests the same can happen to tiny jets of liquid too

Chris Packham's new BBC series, Earth, looks at significant moments in Earth's history, including anthropogenic climate change and biodiversity loss, "It's not a sixth mass extinction event that we're precipitating," he says, "it's a mass extermination event"

Climate researchers thought that current global average sea levels were the highest in more than 100,000 years, but new models suggest oceans just 6000 years ago may have been higher than at the beginning of the industrial revolution, and possibly even higher than today

An analysis of satellite observations has identified some extreme thunderstorms over the Indian Ocean and Gulf of Mexico with lightning flashes so frequent that the sky would appear continuously lit

As a 15-kilometre crack formed ahead of the recent eruptions, magma flowed into it at the highest rate observed anywhere in the world

In an ongoing swarm of earthquakes that began hitting Japan in 2020, the shifting weight of surface water may have spurred the shaking

Sea-floor nodules raise oxygen levels in the deep ocean, suggesting they may have a valuable role in ecosystems and adding to concerns about the impact of deep-sea mining

Rapid erosion caused by a geological act of “piracy” tens of thousands of years ago may have raised Earth’s crust and elevated Mount Everest by as much as 50 metres