58 Time March 1/March 8, 2021
LI JIAQI28 • Livestream royaltyDubbed China’s Lipstick King,
Li Jiaqi is a livestreaming sales
powerhouse who has melted
hearts with his charismatic—
and candid—beauty-product
reviews. While peers plug lux-
ury items, Li has no problem
giving top brands withering
reviews—making his recom-
mendations highly coveted. In
2019, for example, Li helped
drive $145 million in sales on the
e-retailer Taobao during China’s
Singles’ Day shopping extrava-
ganza; the year before, he sold
15,000 lipsticks in just five min-
utes. When the COVID-19 pan-
demic began, Li worked with
state media to promote prod-
ucts from hard-hit Wuhan to
help stimulate the city’s econ-
omy. His charity work, particu-
larly benefiting rural farmers,
has further energized his online
fan base. “Whether it is fight-
ing COVID-19 or poverty allevia-
tion, I think we need to play our
part,” he told state newswire
Xinhua in September—and all
as one of the most recognizable
faces of China’s livestreaming
e-commerce industry, projected
to be worth $15 billion by 2023.
—Charlie CampbellRANGA
DIAS
40 • Engineering
energy
Let’s be clear: hoverboards,
magnetic levitation trains and
resistance- free power lines are
not coming this year or next.
But thanks to Ranga Dias,
they’re closer than they ever
were. Those technologies (and
many more) rely on developing
new superconductors: materials
through which energy can move
with no resistance. The catch
is that supercold temperatures
have long been necessary for
super conductors to work, mak-
ing them impractical. So Dias,
an assistant professor of me-
chanical engineering at the
University of Rochester, came
up with a solution that could
pave the way for future inno-
vations: a room- temperature
super conductor that’s super-
dense instead of super cold.
Dias developed a material made
of hydrogen, sulfur and carbon,
squeezed at a pressure equiva-
lent to 2.5 million atmospheres.
The extreme compression elimi-
nates electrical resistance, al-
lowing energy to traverse with
ease. Dias is aware of the break-
through nature of his work.
“People have been trying to de-
velop super conductors for a cen-
tury,” he says. They missed their
chance in the 20th. In the 21st,
thanks to Dias, they just might
succeed. —Jeffrey Kluger
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PHOTOGRAPH BY PAT MARTIN